[photo walk] Florida railroad museum

Once again, it's not about the photography but about the socialization.



The boys and I had been to the Florida Railroad Museum years ago for A Day Out with Thomas. I should have remembered that it wasn't an exciting trip and that I only had 2 blurry photos of the boys in the club car. I didn't remember and signed up.



Since Parrish is about an hour away, Jeff had suggested carpooling for those in Pinellas County. I decided to suggest a carpool group in New Tampa. Not having done this before, I got to the parking lot early but no one showed. Or maybe I missed people by sitting in my car reading Little Women.


I drove alone and played my music loud. I got to Parrish a bit after 10. Then we waiting in line to exchange our online vouchers for actual tickets. We had little time to shoot before they were boarding the train. The open coach filled first. I was disappointed to have position the middle car which had air conditioning. We sat for about a half hour. I sat with Bob. I had only met him once before and thought we would talk. But he didn't talk too much. In fact, he fell asleep when we were moving and rocking.



My disappointment disappeared once I realized there was little to photograph. The trip goes through scrub and only I a few places is it cleared that there is a view. And most of the time, those views are empty fields. We did go by one area that had a recent controlled burn. The colors are what made it interesting, the green foreground, the red burned leaves and the blue sky.



Another area of some interest were tomato crops in front of the power plant. Mostlythe sky is what holds the interest.



We continued to Willow. A small town without a town. It is on the map but we drove through it without knowing we did. There, we saw the old abandoned trains. They stopped long enough to let us shoot but did not let us off the train.



We went back the way we came. Knowing it held little interest was a comfort since I did not have to keep looking for something interesting.




We got off the train and went to shoot the cars we missed before we left.the red caboose was OK. Someone had said it was better than the orange caboose at Heritage Village but I am not sure. I took some hand held HDR. It didn't seem worth the effort to get my tripod.











Then we went to Linger Lodge. The hype was more than they place. and when 70 of us showed up, they couldn't handle it. Inside is filled with stuffed snakes and fish and other wild life. It was dark in there so I didn't try many shots. Even at 1600 ISO, my shutter speed was very low.







We had finally finished eating when I noticed it was after 3! I had to be home so dad to go to church. I paid and rushed home to find the power out. I was there just past 4:30 but dad chose to stay home. The power came back on at 5:18. The a/c worked all evening to get back down to 80 inside.