For Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Happy, we once again had a difficult time figuring out what to post. Our first thought was to use one of our pictures from hiking in the mountains, because that always makes us happy. We could have easily put a picture of our children doing what they love, they are always hamming it up for the camera. In the end, we decided to go with this photo from Puerto Vallarta. Perhaps it is just because we’re both a little tired with work at the moment, or maybe its just that we’re getting a little older these days, but the thought of hopping on a ship and sailing into the sunset to some new destination yet unknown, seems really appealing to us right now. Hopefully this will take you to a happy place of your own.
Most people understand having the travel bug, but there are some people that we know that just don’t seem to get it. Obviously, we currently live in Colorado and spend quite a bit of time hiking in the mountains and enjoying our beautiful state. But, when the two of us first met, we lived in a resort town on the ocean in Maryland. In fact, our first condominium that we lived in together was right on the water and we spent many evenings watching the sun set over the bay. The first year of our marriage was basically a working vacation filled with water skiing, strolls on the beach, and plenty of sun.
Sunset from Our Old CondoA Much Younger PeterAnd a Younger Dona in Front of Our Condominium
Twenty-seven years have gone by since we first met, but we still look back at those days when life was carefree and it instilled a desire to see the world. Maybe it was because we spent so many days staring out at the ocean and wondering what was on the other side of the horizon. Since those sunny days, work has moved us several times until we landed here in Colorado and now our sunsets occur behind the peaks of the rocky mountains, but the want to see the world is just as strong.
Sunset From Our Current House 🙂Another Sunset from Ocean City, Maryland
An argument could be that having had the opportunity to live by the ocean and then the mountains should have cured us of the travel bug, but it has only made it stronger. No life is a series of sunsets and romantic places and our opportunities to travel aren’t as often as we’d like, but we try to make the most out of the time that we do have. Maybe this doesn’t completely explain why both of us have had the travel bug as long as we’ve known each other, but maybe it explains it a little.
For this week’s challenge, Half-Light, we were supposed to take inspiration from a poem, song lyric, or literary work of art for a picture that captured the moments just before dusk. Watching the ships coming in from the Strait of Gibraltar brought back fond memories for us since we lived on the water for the first year of our marriage. We used to sit outside in the restaurants and watch the fishing ships come in to the harbor through the channel in Ocean City, Maryland.
“But the old man always thought of her as feminine and as something that gave or withheld great favors, and if she did wild or wicked things it was because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.” – Santiago from Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.
Cargo Ships on the Strait of Gibraltar
The day that we took this picture, the sea had clearly decided to grant her favors to the cargo ships as the water was as calm as glass. The calm water just adds to the reflection of the sun, which is just starting to make its way down towards the horizon. We thought that the photo below, from Estepona, Spain, would have also been fitting, but thought that the photo from Gibraltar was more fitting.
