A failed return to Rose

The photograph above pretty much sums up my travels to Rock County today. The Elkhorn River has been flooding all the way from its beginning to its end near Omaha. After a detour near West Point on the way up here, my plans to revisit the area around the near non-existent town of Rose were foiled by the water over the road shown above. While I have a lot of confidence in my Subaru, I do feel it's best suited for dry land.


Despite the flooding doing its best to get in the way, today was a beautiful day once the clouds cleared in the morning. Best of all, due to the highway to Rose being under water, I had time to take a short drive on Nebraska Highway 7 north of Bassett to the Niobrara River. I always forget just how impressive the elevation changes coming into the Niobrara valley can be, and this may be the best place I've found to cross the river. The photograph above just doesn't do the scenery out there justice.

It's another drive to add to my list of the best ones in the state. I'll have to put together a list for this blog one of these days. If you're heading out to see the Sandhills, it's well worth the drive up here to see the Niobrara on the way up to Valentine.

Also visited: Wisner, Neligh, Long Pine and Newport.

Pawnee City, Nebraska

Pawnee County, along the Kansas border in eastern Nebraska, has been another county that just doesn't seem to cooperate with me. After two visits, I still felt like I could do better with the photograph of the county for ninety-three. I am happy to report that I was able to find something that I am satisfied with on the third try. This leaves me with only a trip up to the northeastern part of the state to call the project completely finished.

Above is detail from a shop window on the downtown square in Pawnee City. The appropriately named Memory Magic deals in scrap booking supplies.

It has been just about three years since my last trip to Pawnee City. The last time through, I photographed a rundown building downtown that someone had written SOLD in one window and NEEDS ROOF BAD in another. Sure enough, despite all the time that has passed, there was the same building with the same writing scrawled in the windows.


July 2007 above, today below. Not much changes in a small town, other than the paint slowly peeling away from a window.

Say Hello to Etsy

Today marks the grand opening of my Etsy store. I'm excited to have a place to sell my photographs that is both affordable and offers more exposure than I would be able to get by creating a web outlet on my own.

josephvavak.etsy.com

I'll be adding more photographs over the next few days, but there's already quite a bit available for sale. All 36 images from the ninety-three exhibition at Hot Shops are listed, the first time many of them have been online in any form. Some images from the On The Road and Details series are also listed, a few in two different sizes.

If you are looking for something you don't see listed on the Etsy site, leave me a comment and I'll see about getting it added.

Out and about

Today I revisited a few places from my ninety-three travels along with some new ones. The day started out miserably enough in Grand Island. The sky dark gray and sad, cold rain steadily falling for hours. Around 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the sun began to make hurried appearances before the clouds finally gave way.

I keep telling myself that I'll let the project be, but I can't seem to let go and call it finished. Every time I am ready to close it out, I decide to go back and improve an image or two (or three). As much as I may want to move on to something else, this state always finds a way to reel me back in. There's a freedom to Nebraska, the vast openness and peaceful solitude of the countryside, that I can never get enough of.

The above photograph is from the village of Alda, a small bump in the road just west of Grand Island on U.S. Highway 30. The rain was practically a downpour at this point.

Also visited: Wood River, Cairo, Howard City, Rockville, Loup City, Sherman Reservoir, Ansley, Mason City, Litchfield, Hazard and Ravenna.