Baltimore Inner Harbor in September 1984

I found some pictures of my very first trip to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. It was in 1984 – a little over a year since we’d moved to the east coast. We were still living in Virginia so it was a day trip for us to see Baltimore. It’s hard to internalize that it was over 30 years ago!

It must have been a great day for being out on the water based on the number of boats. The rental paddle boats were simpler then that the ones that are there now.

The National Aquarium had been open for a few years (according to Wikipedia it opened in August 1981) and was expanded in the early 2000s – so this show what it was like before the expansion.

We were making a lot of day trips and exploring the Mid-Atlantic area back in the mid-80s. My husband was working on a post doc and we weren’t sure how low we would live in the Washington DC area --- but we ended up staying. Now we favor the natural areas over the urban attractions of museums and tours.

Baby Hands

Have you ever noticed - baby hands have dimples rather than knuckles! Their hands have a very different distribution of fat than they will as they get older. This picture was taken in the last ‘80s when my daughter was a few months old. The chubbiness of babies overall feeds their growth spurts so I wonder if the knuckles start to show more than the dimples by the time they are walking around – and usually take on their childhood slimness.

Now that we have digital photography where experimentation is ‘free’ – the idea of taking a series of baby hand pictures weekly or month would be a good project to try….next time I am around a baby on a daily basis.

1980 Flooding in Plano TX

When we bought our first house in the late 1970s, we were told it was in a 100-year-flood-plain and we were required to have flood insurance. The closest we came to needing it during the 5 years we lived in the house was in 1980 – twice!

In the spring time, heavy rains caused the little stream in the park less than a block from our house to swell and overflow its bank. Water rich is sediment roared through the park scouring grassy slopes. Debris caught on trees that has been growing on the stream bank but were in the middle of the fast moving water during the flood.

The water covered the sidewalk and made the signage for the park look short. The area of houses across the park from where we lived was newer. I wonder now if the runoff was made worse by the increase in impervious surfaces with the new housing developments that were springing up all over the area.

In the fall there was another flood. We got out and drove around a little. Some roads were closed – but they were side roads rather than main thoroughfares. The water was not very deep (note the person walking out into the water on the left of the picture below.

The stream in the park near out house flooded again. As soon as it stopped raining – people in the neighborhood came out to take a look.

My husband also took a picture of the failing infrastructure that ran along the side of the stream. The flood water probably had more than just rain runoff in it; the sewer system was overwhelmed at least in some places.

In the time since 1980, that area of North Texas has continued to develop. The land is relatively flat so municipalities have made greenways with space to let water collect or channels to move water more quickly to places where it can collect. I’m glad my current house (in Maryland) is not in a flood plain!

Charlottesville VA in 1980

I recently scanned pictures from a conference my husband went to at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville back in 1980. At the time, we didn’t even think about me accompanying him; I was working full time but we were both still in graduate school…and very conscious of living within our means. So – the one or two roles of film he took on the trip was the extent of my experience of the trip. I think my favorite image from the beginning was the oculus skylight from The Rotunda at the university. Evidently there was a tour offered to conference participant to Monticello as well.

The thing that I realized as I was looking more closely at these pictures was that we still take very similar pictures today but, because we don’t have to worry about the cost of film and its processing, we take many more images and probably try more experiments. Enjoy the slideshow of the University and Monticello in 1980!

I picture that my husband was surprised by was a picture of a Ryder truck that had gotten stuck under an overpass! It was with the pictures of Charlottesville so it was probably something he came upon as he was walking around the campus.

The Grand Canyon in 1971 and 1983

I posted about our visit to Grand Canyon National Park back in January 2015. My scanning project has digitized the pictures I have from 2 earlier visits! The first was in March of 1971. The two pictures below were probably taken through a bus window.

We hiked down a little way down the Bright Angel Trail. The wind was cold and a light snow started to fall. You can see some of the accumulation in the rocks.

But the sun came out soon. I remember getting sand in my contact lenses (this was before the soft contact lenses were invented…so it hurt a lot) and being very teary eyed on the hike up because I was afraid the lenses would blow away if I tried to take them out.

Back at the rim – it’s easy to see that the clouds with the snow are moving away…and the dust on the color slide that I didn’t get off before I scanned it.

Skipped forward to late May of 1983 – we got up at dawn and caught the sunrise on the rocks.

We started early for a hike down to the plateau.

We could see the river soon enough.

See how brown the river looks? I looked up when the Glen Canyon Dam came online because I knew that when it did the sediment in the river was dramatically reduced...but discovered that it was completed in the 1960s. The Wikipedia entry did mention that in the spring and early summer of 1983 the water level in the dam was very high (and climbing) because of the runoff from the heavier than usual snow that fell the previous winter. The dam almost failed and a lot of water was being released…along with sediment...during the time we visited the Grand Canyon!

It appears that there were people on rafts in the river in 1983!

The path down is a lot of switch backs then a downward slope of the plateau.

We were walking but there were people on mules on the same trail - all the way down.

Looking up to the sky…..from inside the canyon...good memories.

Washington DC in the Early 1980s

We moved to the Washington DC area in summer of 1983. I recently scanned the slides from those first few years and thought I’d post them on the 4^th of July since there are so many celebrations of our national history in the city. We made a house hunting trip in March 1983 and took time out to do a little sightseeing. The best pictures are of the capitol,

The National Gallery of Art,

And the Supreme Court building.

Thirteen months later (April 1984), my parents came for a visit. My favorite pictures from that visit are of the Lincoln Memorial

And the Einstein statue (with my mother in the picture holding a deciduous magnolia blossom that she picked up from the ground nearby).

In August 1984, we evidently made the trek into the city at night. The pictures my husband took of the monuments were quite good: The Lincoln Memorial,

The Washington Monument, and

The White House.

And then from the top of the Washington Monument: The White House,

The Jefferson Memorial, and

The Capitol.

I know that we made the effort to see the fireworks from The (Smithsonian) Mall at least twice during the subsequent years of the 1980s but I haven’t found any slides from those visits. I’ll save them for the next 4^th of July!

Camping 35+ Years Ago

Back in the late 70s and early 80s, most of the vacations we took involved camping. It was a way to travel inexpensively and we enjoyed National Parks and Forests. One of the first places we camped was at Mesa Verde National Park – driving from where we lived near Dallas all the way across the panhandle of Texas and Colorado to get there. We borrowed a relatively large tent and purchased a Coleman stove and lantern…some ice chests. My husband took one campsite documenting picture on that trip. I was only in it for scale! Surprisingly – we still have and use the green ice chest seen in the picture.

We bought a smaller tent that took a lot less space for subsequent trips. There was an annual fall foliage trip to southeastern Oklahoma (Ouachita National Forest). On one such trip there were 3 couples. Our new 2-person tent is the one in the middle.

We made trip to Colorado the next summer with the smaller tent. The space we saved by having a smaller tent was taken up with the addition of a lawn chair. We still had the Coleman stove but often cooked our meal over a camp fire in a ring of stones. By that time, we had our own grill to put over the fire that we also packed with our camping gear.

The chipmunks were interested in everything going on in the campsite. We were glad we had not left the bag of M&Ms open! This picture also reminds me that we were still using borrowed sleeping backs (the red, yellow and brown colors behind the rodent).

The spring before we moved to the Washington DC area, we made a trip to the Grand Canyon with friends. We camped the night before we hiked down to the plateau. I vividly remember my legs being very sore before we even got back to the top and realizing that my hiking boots were not as broken in as I thought they were (raw ankles). Standing in the camp shower (coin operated) felt so good and I used up all the change I’d taken with me! We were all feeling even more sore the next day – no additional long hikes for that vacation. The blue ice chest in the picture is still something we have and use; our choices of ice chests have proved to be very durable. The blue car with the trunk open is a 1983 Honda Accord that we had just purchased; we owned it until the early 1990s.

Between that time period and now we have not done much camping. We’ve recently bought a new large tent and two air mattresses. The motivation is not so much to save money but to be able to stay at Dark Sky sites for Star Parties. The camping equipment can only take about half the cargo space because a telescope has to come too!