Photos We Got, Got Away #2of2

A missed photo opportunity occurred in the bright sunshine as we drove from Interlaken towards Grindelwald, Switzerland. There were beautiful scenes with the leaf colors in full bloom, but no place to park on this narrow road, so we could take a photo. The James Bond movie, “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” had been filmed nearby, at Piz Gloria, the mountain peak of the Schlithorn, in a round building with a revolving restaurant.

Suddenly, as the road curved there stood a remarkable tree, much like a sculpture with bare branches and twigs, each heavily coated with ice from the recent shower. Just then the sun broke through the clouds, and while a meteorologist or scientist might say it is impossible, the icy tree, back-lit by the beaming sun, gleamed with all the colors of the rainbow. We could tell by the excited motions and gestures of people in the other cars, they were as astonished and amazed as we were. The camera was not in hand, there was no shoulder of the road where we could stop and grab the camera, then snap a photo. In a moment, as we passed the tree the sun again hid behind the cloud, the colors vanished.

Here's another one we missed. We had spent the night in Monrupino, Italy, and were on our way to Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, to visit the Saturday outdoor market we had visited a previous year. It was very cold, cloudy and rainy, with a lot of fog, and we saw a mile or two of what is called “hoarfrost.” It was so cold the fog froze on everything it touched—tree limbs and twigs, wires, fences, buildings, road signs, everything. We were on the Autobahn with no place to stop and take a picture, but we should have stopped anyway. In all our years living in cold climate, neither of us have ever seen this phenomena in such magnitude.

While traveling through Poland we saw more horse-drawn farm-wagons, then in all other countries combined. We wanted to take a photo of an unusual scene, but of course we missed the very best one — a wagon piled high and wide with hay, with three young men sprawled on top, just as nonchalant as could be.

As you might have concluded by now, I am often justifiably accused of “name-dropping.” Even more, I enjoy “name-catching” and “picture catching,” the everlasting joys of travel. Our ear may catch the name, and our eye may catch a picture of a thousand cities, towns, or buildings, and with the help of our mind’s eye we find an added reward for our years of travel. We like that even more than “name dropping.”