Looking Back at 2015

As I said in my last post, it's hard to believe that another year has passed.  It seems like it was just yesterday that I was writing a similar post for 2014.  Within a few hours, 2015 will be in the books and 2016 will be beginning.

 I was still doing basketball at the beginning of the year.  With the start of EMU's season, I was expecting them to make waves in the MAC.  It turns out that they didn't make waves in the MAC regular season but they almost made waves in the tournament.  Sadly, the tournament isn't set up for a Cinderella story and they didn't make enough waves.  With that said, they had another 20 win season.  As I am writing this post, I'm going to make a guess that they will have another 20 win season this year.

 The shipping season ended with another season of thick ice.  I was able to witness the efforts to try and free the Herbert C. Jackson from the ice.  It was pretty neat.

 I went to the Auto Show again.  I enjoyed it but you really need to get there fairly early so that you can get shots without people in them.

 It was a particularly nasty winter this year.  We ended up getting a ton of snow.  But I was able to wander a bit.  I got some nice shots of Marblehead.

 Of course I had to make the trek over to the western side of the state to catch lighthouses in the ice.

 The MAC tournament brought me to Cleveland again.

 I decided that I wanted to see something different this year.  yes, I know that I post several pictures of trains on this blog but I've never seen a street running train.  This particular one was in LaGrange, KY.

 Since I was in the neighborhood, I decided to stop in Louisville as well.  I ended up discovering a new canal which means that I might need to find my way back to Louisville.

 Then on the next week, I decided to take a not so well planned trip to Washington DC to see the cherry blossoms.  I did manage to catch a few but I didn't see the bulk of them.

 It was my annual train trip to Chicago.  It was pretty cold though but I got some nice shots of Chicago in the fog.

 One of my trips to the Soo.

 I ended up heading to Muskegon to catch a ship entering the harbor.  I didn't realize it was so foggy but I like the pictures.

 This year found me in another new place.  Ever since I took pictures of the covered bridges in Michigan, I wanted to find a place where I could get more pictures of them.  One of those places was Parke County in Indiana.  It is about 50 miles west of Indianapolis.  I thought it was pretty neat but I wasn't sure of the authenticity of some of them.

 No year would be complete without Engineer's Day at the Soo.

 I found out that the Nickel Plate would be making a move across northern Ohio in order to get to her excursion places for the summer, so I decided to chase her.  I ended up finding some nice train watching places that I need to check out again.

 The Boatnerd cruise was pretty cool and we got pizza delivered by the Westcott.

 The Willow Run Air Show brought us a flying B-29 and this was pretty impressive.

 Of course I did football again.  Eastern's football season sucked to be honest.  They were 1 and 11 but they showed some improvement on offense.  However, defense regressed.

 I also went down to the Cleveland Air Show.  I was able to get a bifecta for a picture.

 While I was researching covered bridges, I also found out that there was a large number of them in Ashtabula County in Ohio.  I decided to head over there and I managed to catch the Blough as she entered Conneaut.

 A recent catch of the Sykes entering Grand Haven.

And the year kind of ended with what will become the annual chasing of the Pere Marquette.  There again, I found some different places for pictures.

Despite not making any major trips, I would say that I ended up doing alot of travelling this year.  I'm not sure what next year will bring but I suspect there is going to be a large train trip in my future.