Another Cemetery

We live near a very large, very old Victorian cemetery. It is, in fact, the first municipal Victorian cemetery in the country. On Friday, the kids and I decided to venture through it. We drive past often, but had never been in and were quite surprised by the amount of relief in the natural landscape of the place. The cemetery we went to last week was relatively flat and very landscaped. The contrast between the two is simply amazing!
The first several pictures in this post were taken with my Minolta x-700 film camera. I have been afraid of film since using a digital point and shoot for the last 7 or 8 years. I finally broke down and dug it out about a year ago, but only took a handful of pictures. The film then sat in the camera for over a year when I took it out on Friday and finished out the roll. Here are the recent results...













This was in a very shady spot and silly me, didn't think I needed the flash.













To say there was a gentle breeze on Friday would be a gross understatement, so I was impressed that these are as in focus as they are.


























I have a zoom lens for the camera which I am still trying to figure out.


























There were stairs like these all throughout the cemetery. Very old and very interesting!













You can see a little bit from these pictures that the landscape is very natural and has a ton of relief. Some of the roads that we drove on were marked as seasonal roads and I totally understand why. There is NO way I would venture down them in snow and ice. One attempting to would be likely to end up off the road and in some headstones.
I was impressed that 1) I can in fact take pictures with film, 2) the film was okay after sitting in the camera for over a year, 3) when I got them developed they gave me prints and a CD. Now how cool is that?
The pictures that remain were taken with the kids Fuji cameras.














Most of these pictures the kids took with their own cameras, but this one I took because I really like the epitaph.














I didn't pay really close attention to what the kids were photographing, so I was surprised when I loaded their pictures onto my computer. Sarah took this one, which I thought was pretty neat.














Because the cemetery is so old and so large, many of the oldest headstones are badly in need of repair. We did see several that were in various states of repair, but their were many others that had not been gotten to yet.














Sarah was apparently inspired by some of the symbolism on the headstones...
























































As we were walking back to the car, very overheated and ready to go, one of the kids said "wait" and then the others giggled. Thinking they had found something funny, I stopped and turned around. They were still walking towards me, so I wasn't sure what was so funny, so I kept walking. Then they said it again, and again. Getting annoyed (remember I was way overheated at this point) I turned to grumble at them and they pointed to the headstone below. We all had a good laugh.














I am not sure why, now that I think about it, but I was expecting something different; her headstone looks just like the stones of the other members of her family. Nothing fancy, just a simple, unassuming headstone.














Sarah did not take these fungus pictures, I did. I really like fungus for some reason. I don't eat mushrooms if I can avoid them, but I really like looking at fungus. Do you think I have a problem?
I couldn't resist this one with the little berry hanging there in front of the way cool fungus!














I really like the way this one came out. Hmm, maybe I could get a job photographing stuff for science books...hmmm....