Hungry Horse Thursday Doors

For this week’s Thursday Doors, I am offering all you starving Door-Folks a small selection of Doors we discovered in the little town of Hungry Horse, Montana. Hungry Horse is just a short drive from the West Entrance to Glacier National Park, and just about 30 miles south of the Canadian Border…

The day we arrived in Hungry Horse, we walked from our lovely B&B (Hungry Horse Hideout) to the grocery store. On our way back, we wandered around and found some interesting doors. I started this gallery off with the door to the shed in the backyard of our B&B. It looks pretty new, but already it is showing a bit of weathering! Then as we walked, we saw this great green door fitted neatly to the front of a little green bungalow! And, of course, one green door deserves another… the next one the entryway through a stockade fence. Look closely through the screen in the closeup and you can see the vertical logs of the house, and just a snippet of the front door of the house. Since a green door can be used in the fence, why can’t a gate in a fence be used as a door? And since a rustic gate has qualified (in my mind anyway) as a door, why not the barely visible chain link gate?

To see what the DoorMaster, Norm, considers to be a door, as well as other Door Watchers from around the globe, go to Norm2.0  home of Thursday Doors...

Shed door @ B&B

Green door on green house

Green screen door in fence…

Closeup

Rustic gateway (call it a door please)

Chain link gate

 

Thursday Doors – Kilauea

The Mrs and I were married in September, 2006. For our honeymoon, we chose to travel someplace neither one of us had ever been before – Hawaii. My Thursday Door is from that trip. We were on the island of Kauai and visited the Kilauea Lighthouse and Wildlife Refuge.

Long view cuz the lighthouse is just too cool!

I assume if you are a woman/girl from Australia, you are allowed beyond the sign…

Thursday Doors is a weekly challenge for door-seeking souls (some of us perpetually on vacation…) in search of group-inclusiveness. It is the blog-child of Norm 2.0. Want to see more doors from around the globe? Go to his site HERE and travel past all his wonderful door pics (9 this week I believe) and click on the blue-rectangle-encased-frog…

 

Thursday Doors… NOLA

The Mrs & I just returned home yesterday evening after almost 2 weeks on holiday in coastal Alabama and Louisiana. We packed up the van with all sorts of travel and vacation stuff. Pretty much anything we imagined we could want, need, use. Well, everything except my FujiXP digital camera with full charged battery and totally empty 32GB memory card. I dutifully left it sitting next to my computer as we left the house. So, my Thursday Doors photos were taken with my old-dumb-flip fone “camera function”. I think the image quality is measured in Crayola-MessyBits…

All these photos were taken in the Garden District of New Orleans on Tuesday, March 14th. We walked just about 10 miles this days…whew…

I confess I noticed the ivy growing on the steps before I noted the door…. (sorry Norm)

This last doorway, as well as the attached house/mansion AND metal corncob fence, is for sale, FYI…

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Visit Norm 2.0 for more doors and details. When you get to Norm’s site, look for The Blue Frog rectangular box thingie and click-it.

 

Thursday Doors – Estero, Florida (& the Bathtub Messiah)

On December 29, 2014 at 7:13 am on a chilly midwestern morning, The Mrs & I pulled out of our driveway in our old mini-van, pulling our old pop-up Dutchmen Duck camper. We were headed south to the Fort Myers, Florida area for a few days of sunshine and inviting beaches. This was a rare opportunity for us, to leave town over New Years… In the past, one or the other of us would usually have a NY Eve commitment – I either had a band gig, or The Mrs was doing her one woman comedy show for First Night. But not this year!

We took a couple days to drive to Florida, and camped at the Koreshan State Historic Site in Estero, FL. We were 9 days in the warm sunshine of Florida! You can read about our escapades from the perspective of The Mrs starting HERE… I’m here to post a door picture. This is a picture of our little camper which we set up in the dark once we got to KSHS…

And here, note the four doors on just one side of the historic Koreshan Planetary Court building. We were camped just a short walk from the grouping of old historic buildings that comprise the Koreshan compound.

You can read more about the Koreshans and “The Bathtub Messiah”, starting with this interesting article.

And for some door pictures from the frozen Great White North, visit the website of the Door Sensei (先生) , Norm 2.0 … if you click on the blue frog towards the bottom of his posting, you will be magically transported to a page of portals to doors from AROUND THE WORLD!!!! WooHoo!!!

Thursday Doors – Vienna, Österreich

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. Visit Norm 2.0 for more doors and details.

Wien, Österreich – 2007

I have enjoyed riding my bicycle for fun, exercise, and basic transportation since I was a kid. I convinced The Mrs in 2007 that we should take a bicycle trip for our anniversary that year. Grace had not ridden her bike like I had, so we settled on a sag-supported trip along the Danube (Donau) River from Germany to Vienna (Wien). No major changes of elevation on the bike paths, and mostly on paved surfaces.  We had a wonderful trip. Once in Vienna, we surrendered our rental bikes and explored on foot. Back then, I was not a door fueled freak like I am these days, so most of my photos that might even somewhat include a door were either from a panoramic shot of an entire building or block of buildings, or of a detail of architecture adjacent to a door. THIS photo is of a balcony door to a loft apartment I assume, and it just absolutely fascinated me. The photo below is of another loft apartment… I believe these were near the Naschmarkt .

Couple more gratuitous building photos from Wien… (sans doors I am afraid.)

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Mackinac Island – I’m cheating…

The Mrs posted a nice blog posting at her site this morning about our last day on Mackinaw Island (in September). I am giving you the link to it so you can check it out. There is nothing more I can say!

Last Day on Mackinac

Bumbling into Utica

The 19th of September (2016) was the second day of our anniversary week mini-vacation. We had stayed overnight in a rental cabin at Starved Rock State Park. This Monday morning we awoke a bit groggy, having been awake for what seemed to be half the night killing mosquitoes… seems the damper of the wood-burning fireplace was open, and three of the screens had bends in their frames big enough for a Fiat to drive through. I had smashed 4 or 5 midnight marauders in the dark after closing off all the portals of entry, and another 14 in the morning light…

We had coffee, tea, and a light breakfast, and by the crack of 11:00, we were on the trail to St. Louis Canyon for a wake-up hike to see the beautiful 80-foot waterfall there. Leaving from our cabin, it was a short walk on a dirt trail before we got to a wooden walkway…

came to a set of stairs…

 

and then the canyon…

We took a few photos and enjoyed the quiet, then headed back to the cabin. We had visited  Starved Rock earlier this year, and The Mrs has much more information and several photos of that trip on her blog-site, Graceuncensored. After returning from our hike and having a bite to eat, we decided to do some touristy stuff and go driving to explore the area.  Just about 1 mile north of the park is the little village of North Utica, although, since probably the 1850’s,  it is commonly just called Utica.  Wondering why? Read here !

It took us only a couple of minutes to drive through the heart of the village when we got there, but I saw some interesting doors that I told The Mrs I wanted to photograph for future Thursday Doors postings. I turned down a side street and we parked right near a gorgeous B&B called Landers House.

There is a house two doors away from LH that caught my eye so I walked there and took a picture of that door first…

I had taken this picture of the door at 131 and was walking back towards LH visually framing my next picture in my head, when a white-haired guy about my age who was cleaning screens at LH asked if he could help us. I went into a long, wordy, disjointed soliloquy about visiting Starved Rock, and blogging, and Thursday Doors, and taking pictures, and being an historian, and do you think the owner of 131 would mind if I was taking pictures of his front door….

Turns out, the gentleman I was talking to (John Pappas) WAS the owner of 131. He was the “handi-man” in the hire of Landers House B&B, and had recently bought 131, with maybe the intent to open his own B&B, or maybe he and his wife will open a catering business there. And, “no”, he had no objection whatsoever about me photographing his door. Not only did he like the idea of people taking pictures of doors, he COLLECTS old doors! Actually, it is probably closer to the truth to say he rescues old doors from destruction when old buildings are torn down. What a fascinating person! We chatted for at least 15 minutes, and he gave us a quick tour of the LH grounds. I look forward to a stay at LH sometime in the future (to The Mrs: hint, hint…).

We then wandered through the two block long downtown of Utica, coming across this little pub…

The owner of the pub, Andy Skoog, is of Swedish ancestry, so that must make it a Swedish bar, right? Well, just down the block at the corner is the local Irish pub (Duffy’s Tavern), of course!

When we were chatting with John earlier, he had asked us if we had been to Matthiessen Park . We had seen the signs, but had not been there. He strongly suggested we make a stop and at least visit the waterfall. Soooo, having completed our tour of “the Utica strip”, we climbed back into the van and headed back south to go visit Matthiessen Park. I will discuss that in a future posting…

Thursday Doors – Starved Rock

I did not post a Thursday Doors last week because The Mrs & I were on a mini-vacation in northern Illinois and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, while my computer was still at home relaxing. My camera, on the other hand, was busy, busy, busy…

We drove to Starved Rock State Park in LaSalle County on Tuesday last week. The Park is located on the banks of the Illinois River near Utica and Oglesby, Illinois. The main draw for most people is the hiking… there are approximately 13 miles of hiking trails throughout the park. The architectural centerpiece is what the DNR website describes as, “… the 1930s-era stone and log Starved Rock Lodge offers luxury lodging, cabin rooms, and fine dining .” The Lodge was constructed by the CCC (Civilian Conservaton Corps) during the Great Depression. My first door this week is the main entrance.

On the other side of the building, almost directly opposite the main door, is the outside entry to the Back Door Lounge, a small indoor/outdoor bar and grill.

We stayed in one of the cabins near the main lodge for two nights. Although the doors to the cabins are not overwhelmingly intriguing, the housekeeping staff do an incredible job of keeping the glass clean!!!

My final door this week is of a door that I assume is an emergency exit from the Lodge, as there in no door knob… or maybe it is a Jedi Only entrance…

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources estimates that well over 2.5 million people will visit Starved Rock in 2016…

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. It is courtesy of Norm 2.0…

Impending Bloom!!!

Last week, while taking my morning coffee down at the dock, I noticed 2 things (actually, maybe more than 2, but only 2 that are noteworthy). One of the purple lilac bushes was just starting to re-bloom (for the third time this year!). And the chrysanthemum bush closest to the water was just about to bloom… see, Impending Bloom!

 

This past week, The Mrs and I took a mini-vacation to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. We spent 2 nights and 3 days at Starved Rock State Park  outside Oglesby,  Illinois. We hiked, and we ate, and we drove a bit, and hiked some more. And ate more… Then we drove to St. Ignace, Michigan and took the ferry to Mackinac Island, MI. We stayed at a B&B on the island for 3 nights and 4 days. We hiked, and we ate, and we rode bikes a bit, and hiked some more. And ate MORE…Then we drove back home to Springfield, Illinois in 2 days, getting back about 3-ish yesterday afternoon.

The really exciting parts about all this? Firstly, I got lots of pictures of some really great doors that I will be posting for Thursday Doors!! And secondly, I will make three different postings this week to cover the three phases of our trip… In between these postings this week I may hike a bit, and eat a bit… you know the routine  🙂

Thursday Doors – Wales

Just over 1 year ago, The Mrs & I took a walking holiday along a portion of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path in Wales, UK. At the time, I primarily took pictures of the incredible landscape and scenery, but did actually capture a couple of doors. This first was a gorgeous little house in Marloes.

A couple days later, we walked to St. Bride’s and saw this little archway that faces the bay…

This is the front door to the lovely B&B/pub we stayed at in Solva, The Cambrian Inn.  Our room was on the top (3rd) floor behind the little 6 panel window you can see to the left in the photo…

The last door is actually the gate of the main entry to the Flying Boat Centre Museum in Pembroke. We spent a couple hours in the museum talking to various highly knowledgeable and friendly staff members, and had scones and coffee and tea in their little refreshment area.

 

Thursday Doors is a weekly feature allowing door lovers to come together to admire and share their favorite door photos from around the world. It is courtesy of Norm 2.0…