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About this blog

I thought I'd add a different kind of blog than cars or weather, so here's one for my general personal activities. It will primarily be travel, but it could be about anything that I feel like sharing. 

Entries in this blog

Christmas Diorama

Christmas Diorama Part 15

12/11/23 - Update Ok, we back to the the present time, and all I really have to share are a few more updated pictures. The main changes were the addition of three cars, lamp post for the park, and more trees. I've also rearranged the people a little bit and added more snow. This pictures are from 2020 until present.      
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 14

01/23/18 Here are the latest updated images. More changes coming that include lamp post in the park area (LED like the street lights), probably 3 vehicles (like the vehicle in this image) that have working headlights and taillights, more trees for the background, and I may re-work the frozen pond.    Just wanted to give you an idea of the size of things.... click on any image for a larger view.   2023 Note - This was the last of the original post.
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Loop

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 13

I decided to combine October 27, 29, and 30 into one post. ----------------------------- 10/27/16 - More Changes I've decided to pull up the deciduous trees. I originally wanted to go for a late fall/early winter type of look, but that just isn't going to work with this winter layout. I have ordered new tree armatures so I can make 5 (5-7" tall) new deciduous trees with no leaves. It will be more fitting to the winter look of the diorama. I should have those early next week a
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Loop

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 12

10/23/16 - Well... is it done? Well, added the last coat of paint to the front of the base, glued down all the little people, added the skaters to the pond, finished the snow around the pond.... there really isn't much left to do. 🙂 I will go back and add more snow to the fall colored deciduous  trees and I'm still waiting on the rock wall to arrive so I can finish the left side of the park.  The night pictures don't really do it justice, I need a better camera to capture that. I may e
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 11

10/22/16 - Close now Today I painted the foam surround, or the sides of the base of the diorama. Now your eyes focus on the diorama because you're not distracted by the ugliness of the unfinished surfaced.  I added more white tint to the pond and I think I'm done with that feature. Once the water dries (tomorrow) I'll finish the landscaping and snow around the pond and add the skaters. In the end it will get a light dusting of snow, but that will wait until after the skaters are added.
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 10

10/21/16 - The Home Stretch Just a few items left to finish up before it's done.  The two main items to finish are the pond and park area, and the outside edge of the entire diorama. I have covered the front and part of the sides with 1/4" thick pieces of sheet foam as well as adding handles on the sides to help in carrying it around. The foam was glued tot he sides and hopefully today (Saturday) I will get it painted. I'm going with a dark forest green color, I think the dar
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 9

10/18/16 - Adding final touches I started putting foam sheeting around the outsides of the box holding the diorama, and I bought some dark green paint to cover it all up. More water was added to the pond, and I went out and bought a blue LED light to give the snow a moonlit glow... I think it works pretty well and matches the example in the previous group of pictures perfectly.   Next post:    
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 8

10/17/16 - Almost done I figure I'm about 90% done at this point. The park area needs more snow and the area around the pond needs more landscaping. I'm still adding the fake water to the pond and that may take another 5 or 6 days. By that time, the extra stone wall pieces and  4 trees, one that will be a Christmas tree, should be here.  I also have to add a little stack of wood that will be a bonfire. None of the little people are glued in place yet, and some not in the places t
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 7

10/16/16 - Working on The Park These images in this particular gallery don't necessarily appear in the proper order of assembly but you'll get the idea... Spent time today working on the Park feature. It's right in the front of the layout so I wanted it to look as good as I know how to make it, which at this point, probably isn't all that good. 🙂 I kept putting it off simply because I wasn't sure how I wanted it to look. I'm not sure why I have that fear... maybe it's just because this
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 6

10/13/16 - Construction Accident Started added Realistic Water today. I thought I would use E-Z Water until I heard some bad stories about it eating up foam, and changed my mind. So it's going to take more than a few layers to get it where I want it. The roads around the pond will not be in the position you see now, I'm just playing around with placement. Started adding snow to the all areas of the layout where there are shrubs and plants, and that required me to take the two left houses of
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 5

10/12/16 - Work continues... I painted the pond today, so that's going to dry for 24 hours before water goes in. I also added another layer of snow to the background hills, but I'm not sure how much I want to add.  With each layer, I spray Scenic Cement over what's already there, lay down the new snow, and then add another spray of Scenic Cement, so it takes some time to build it up.  Most of the stream has had it's last layer of water before the final "ice" layer. It's mostly the pond
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 4

10/11/16 - Yes, I will redo the pond.  Last night I started adding snow to the hills behind the houses. It's going to be a multi-layer process to get it just right. I want to make sure I pay attention to how the snow "falls" on things so that it really looks like fallen snow. It's almost ashamed to cover up all of the landscaping, but hey... that's winter.  If I had to do it over, I would also add more deciduous trees into the mix, and I would make it thicker. I may still add a few more tre
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 3

10/10/16 - Night Scenes I took some pictures with the lights off for the first time, just to see how things were going to look in the dark. The houses all use a C7 Christmas light bulb for light. I've replaced some of the incandescent bulbs with LED's, but I'm not happy with the light output. I have some new ones on the way and hopefully they will work out better. The "Just Plug" street lights look awesome and cast a light that makes them look like real street lights, I'm very
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 2

10/10/16 - Busy Weekend Much more accomplished this weekend. Most of the landscaping except for the park area is done, although I find myself going back and adding and enhancing what I thought I had already completed. Can't help myself. 🙂 I've started adding the realistic water to the layout but it has to be added in layers so it's a slow process. I should have used a different water product and I still may on certain sections. And while it may look like snow, I haven't added any of that ye
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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Christmas Diorama

Christmas Village Diorama - Part 1

I wrote a blog post on my old blog site back in 2016 about a Christmas Village Diorama that I was building, so I figured since we were coming up on Christmas, I would move the contents over here. Instead of one big post, I'll beak it up into several.  ------------------------------ I apparently have more hobbies than I thought I had. 🙂 My wife and I bought a bunch of Thomas Kinkade Hawthorne Christmas Village houses and buildings off of eBay to use as a Christmas display.  We put
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Christmas Diorama

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New England Trip

New England Trip 2019 - Day 7 - Boston Walking Tour

Another highly recommended adventure. What a historic town, and it's great to have someone that knows all about it to walk you though it, and they have multiple tours that take you through various parts of Boston. Great way to learn about the history of our country as well as the city. I don't have any videos, but I do have lots of pictures. New England - Boston - June 4, 2019 - Google Photos PHOTOS.APP.GOO.GL 178 new items · Album by Steve Brue
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in New England Trip

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New England Trip

New England Trip 2019 - Day 5 - Whale Watch Tour

This day was a lot of fun, and we saw lots of whales, seals, and other life out in the Atlantic. Again, I didn't write anything, so all I have are pictures and videos. IF you ever go up to the new England States, this is something you need to do. This particular tour left out of Barnstable, just north of where we were staying near Hyannis Port.    New England Trip - Whale Watch Cruise - June 5, 2019 - Google Photos PHOTOS.APP.GOO.GL 98 new
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in New England Trip

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New England Trip

New England Trip 2019 - Day 6 - Martha's Vineyard

I guess I quit writing, because I have nothing for day 6 except pictures and videos. I have some days after this, but this day or the previous day (whale watch tour). I guess I'll just have to make it up. :-) Martha's Vineyard was beautiful, even though the day wasn't so nice, but I got lots of pictures and some videos, so I'll share those. New England Trip - Martha's Vineyard - June 6, 2019 - Google Photos PHOTOS.APP.GOO.GL 270 new items · Album by
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in New England Trip

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New England Trip

New England Trip 2019 - Day 4 - Nantucket

This was our first big adventure (and our first blog post together!) after arriving in New England. Exploring Cape Cod on Sunday was nice and scenic and the National Seashore was very awesome, but our Monday Nantucket Island trip was even better.  This also happened to be our first ride on the high speed ferry. Because we were staying just a few miles from Hyannis, we were close to the Hy-Line ferry terminal. Hy-Line operates a fleet of high speed ferries to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in New England Trip

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New England Trip

New England Trip 2019 - Day 3 - Connecticut to West Yarmouth

We made it! We arrived in West Yarmouth about 4:30 pm on Saturday.  Along the way we stopped to visit two lighthouses in Rhode Island and eat a lobster roll. 🙂 I've added a few pictures and a couple of videos below. Most were taken at the two lighthouses or on the way to them. Oh... and my lobster roll. 🙂 You can't forget the lobster roll.  We're just getting started so I'll have lots more pictures and videos. Now is when it starts getting good! EDIT: Here's the link to the photos fo
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in New England Trip

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New England Trip

New England Trip 2019 - Day 2 - Another Long Ride

After the fiasco from yesterday, we have decided to skip the stop in Philly to see Independence Hall, and I think that decision proved to be a wise one. Also... if you travel and use Google Maps... just know that the drive times you see is probably not going to be the time you actually spend on the road. Obviously Google doesn't know how many times you're gonna stop, and it doesn't know how fast you'll travel among other things.    The bridge you see in the picture above is
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in New England Trip

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New England Trip

New England Trip 2019 - Day 1 - The Long Haul

Here we go! Up early this morning for one of our two longest continuous stretches of driving. Our destination today is the Hyatt Regency at the inner harbor area of Baltimore Maryland. Thanks to @mudrun for all of the great information about the Baltimore area! This leg of the trip is about 650 miles and Google is estimating about 11 hours on the road, so it's going to be a long day. The plan is to leave at 4 am in order to miss rush hour traffic in Charlotte and DC.  The original plan was
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in New England Trip

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New England Trip

New England Trip 2019

I found this old blog post on my old blog site, so I'm going to get it copied over here. I'd really like to get rid of the old site since I don't use it except to keep some old blog post.  ------------------------------------ This is going to be the story of our two week vacation through the New England states, complete with all of the places we will see, things we will learn, and memories that we will make.  Amy and I will include as many pictures,  videos, links to the places and thi
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in New England Trip

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Loop

2023 AGLCA Fall Rendezvous

We just got back from the looper gathering at Wheeler State Park over in Alabama, and what an amazing event. So much information, so many beautiful boats (all types), and some of the nicest people that you could ever meet. Many people that were there are in the planning stages, but others are in progress, and others are Gold and Platinum loopers (gold is twice, platinum is more than twice). There were numerous seminars about all aspects of doing the loop, from wind and weather, anchoring, buying
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Loop

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Loop

The Start of The Great Adventure

Ever since we were down in the Keys, I've had this desire to get back on the water. My fun on the water started when I was 7 years old and continued through high school. My dad had been a fighter pilot in the Air Force and weather was an important thing to know when flying. So when he put me in charge of keeping track of the weather, I handled that job until I left for college. We went through three boats before I went off to college and missed the rest of the fun, but during the time I was ther
NorthGeorgiaWX

NorthGeorgiaWX in Loop

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Various Links

These are links to various pages on my Daculaweather.com site

NWS Links

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