Author Archives: amypanfalone

Nostalgia in a Digital World

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It never seems to fail that whenever families gather for special occasions or Sunday dinners, someone digs out the old photo albums.  It’s a time for reminiscing of fond memories and certainly for sharing a few good laughs.  One of the downsides of the advances in technology, many would say, is the declining hobby of making old school photo albums.  Scores of photos sit on cameras or computers, never to even be printed – let alone organized in an album. We do have camping friends that are diligent with scrapbooking and we have created photo books of some of our trips with Shutterfly, but one great thing about our blog is that it serves as a digital “footprint” of all of our adventures while camping.

Having a blog encourages us to frequently upload photos, and share in some of the experiences we have had.  By publishing campground reviews, it also challenges us to visit new places instead of returning to the same places over and over.  While we may never fully reproduce the sensory nostalgia of a decades old photo album, with its faded and worn pages, our hope is that we will continue to look back at this blog with equally fond memories for many years to come. We have even returned to places we visited with our families as kids like Frankenmuth, Leelanau, and Higgins Lake in Michigan.

We are also trying to challenge ourselves to embrace new things along the way such as instagram and the art of the “selfie”. I am currently challenging myself to come up with fun ways to incorporate selfies into our travel photography routine.  I was looking through our photos and found a few that we have taken-whether intended or not.

Heck, if you really want you can give your photos instant nostalgia with an instagram filter:

Another recent trend is to recreate those old photos taken in our youth by returning to and recreating the same photos as adults.  What do you say, Spencer?  Do you think mom still has the little wagon somewhere in the garage?  🙂

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Speaking of the little guy in the photo, you can check out some of his adventures in nature here.

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And we would like to extend this challenge to our followers.  If you have fun, creative, selfies ,instagram photos, or throwback photo recreations taken while camping – we would love to include them in an upcoming blog post.  Send us your photos with name and location to crazy4camping1@gmail.com

Weekly Photo Challenge: Abandoned

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We routinely walk a trail with the dogs near our home, but we were recently disappointed to arrive there and discover it was closed for trail maintenance.  The dogs are always excited when we go for a car ride, undoubtedly anticipating the walk.  So we certainly didn’t want to return home with dejected pups.  We instead drove a bit further to another nearby trail.  I had my camera in tow to capture the recent snowfall and discovered this abandoned farm equipment off one of the trails.  As you can see, it has certainly been here for quite some time! Long enough for a tree or two to grow up through it!  I wonder what circumstances left it here?

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Can Fish Hear?

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Submitted by Joe Panfalone

When I was visiting a supplier in Japan, our host was extremely proud of their koi pond and wanted to demonstrate something. He took us to the pond’s edge and clapped his hands. From the murky depths of the pond emerged huge koi breaking the surface with mouths open. As their reward, he tossed them a handful of fish food.

While everyone else was enamored with his ability to have trained the fish, I was awestruck with the fact that they could hear the sound of clapping deep down into the pond. No wonder dad kept telling me to be quiet or I’d scare the fish away. I just thought it was his way of getting some peace and quiet.

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 According to the National Wildlife Federation, fish don’t have ears that we can see, but they do have ear parts inside their heads. They pick up sounds in the water through the lateral lines that run down each side of its body and is transmitted to their internal ear. The lateral line also acts like a sonar. Most bodies of water have limited range of sight so the lateral line enables the fish to sense movement around them. Some fishing lures have small BB’s inside to make noise and supposedly attract fish.

So the next time you are fishing, remember Dad’s words…be quiet or you will scare the fish away.