Back from a while away

I've been traveling and thinking and planning and house and garden fixing, and all of those things have kept me busy and away from my blogs. I want to consolidate things, but for now, I have to admit that I am having the hardest time whittling down my blogs. So, for now, this one continues. I want to keep a fun experimental blog going, and for now this one is my best answer to that desire.
So the good news is that I had a lovely holiday to my childhood homeland. The bad news is that my Polaroid 350 decided to rebel and I didn't get one shot out of it. The other goodness (because I hate to end on bad news) is that my other cameras cooperated, and I have a few scanned and ready to start sharing, and others that I have yet to get developed.
Lots and lots to share from beautiful Texas coming up.
For now, here's a Polaroid:

A rare day

A rare day, originally uploaded by Janelka.

Pine Valley, UT. First it snowed a bit, and then it was just this lovely, dreamy, quiet. This was only about 45 min away from my house (driving), but it felt like a different world. And so different from my last visit there.
Polaroid Spectra (first edition), Image Softtone film. 

Kauai through a plastic lens

A few photos taken around Kauai. I brought along my trusty Holga and snapped quite a few shots. 

This photo was literally taken while wandering around the island. It was taken on my first full day there. Jon and I just took off walking up the coast, and it ended up being quite a long hike. 

If you click on this photo to see it larger, you'll see that there's a local fishing right in the line up of palm trees. This was taken near sunset and just after eating dinner. 

This was taken on one of the stretches of road that we traveled on quite a bit. I couldn't get enough of the tree-line street, so I had to stop once and snap this. 

Hanakpi`ai Falls, on the NaPali Coast hike. This was as far as we made it on our hike that day. The white haze at the top of the photo is the waterfall's mist refracting light. As gorgeous as the day was, being right by the falls felt like standing in front of an open refrigerator. 

Queen's Bath. A beautiful and deadly place. On the hike in, there was a sign warning of the deaths that have taken place here. This photo was taken as the tide was going out. On that day we got to swim with a sea turtle. 

Queen's Bath as the tide was coming in. If you click on the image to see it bigger, you can tell that water is rolling off of the cliff at the right of the image. Within an hour, the cove (where people in the foreground are hanging out) was completely submerged and the water looked like it was boiling. 

This image as well as the photo below were taken on my last day in Hawaii.We did our best to squeeze every last bit of Hawaiian sunshine into our day before getting on a plane for 11 hours. 

So much snorkeling went on this day.