Almost down to the wire with this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge. The lovely Ana has the lead on this week’s prompt: Postcards.

I would like to encourage you to participate, in any way you want. You can show us some of your pictures that you would send as postcards to someone you love. Or you can simply share with us images of your favorite places.

If you have a garden full of flowers, show us a beautiful and colorful collection of floral postcards. It doesn’t need to be your garden, It can also be your neighbour’s. 😉

If you have some real postcards it would be great if you would like to share them with us, I’m sure they have a nice story behind them.

I love postcards. Even today with my iPhone as a camera and the ability to share photos in real time, I still look for the best postcards when I travel. Some I keep for myself, some I send to others. Here’s a few I kept from our trip to Bridgeport, California where we married on August 21, 1989.

First, you need to know that back in the late 80s, we were living in San Francisco. In August 1988, I and my not-yet husband went on a car-camping trip through Nevada, returning to San Francisco via Bridgeport and Mono Lake. I fell in love with Mono Lake and its surreal tufa, or limestone, formations. We found a place for the night, and the next morning had breakfast in Bridgeport across from the county courthouse. Fast forward to the summer of 1989 where we are discussing where to go for our August vacation.

“Let’s get married,” he said in his matter-of-fact way. (I admit, we had been talking about getting married, but the plan was to wait until December.)

“Okay,” I said, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as he did. “Where?”

“In Bridgeport, at the county courthouse. It’s a beautiful building.”

Swoon. Unbeknownst to him, my soon-to-be husband was revealing his romantic side. So we did, we married in Bridgeport and went car-camping in the White Mountains for our honeymoon. Here are some postcards from our trip. You can tell that I took photos of my postcards. They are pretty much stuck in the photo album we were given as a wedding gift.

The county courthouse is at the right in the uppermost postcard above and at the bottom in the postcard below. Some of these postcards also have photos of the tufa formations at Mono Lake.

Since it was a warm, sunny day, we chose to be married outside.

This last postcard is my favorite and captures well what Mono Lake looks like on an overcast day.

One of the things I had to do on our trip was “swim” in Mono Lake. I had read that because of the lake’s salinity, one would simply float on the water. I waded in only as far as my calves and couldn’t get out of the water fast enough. I had made the critical mistake of shaving my legs that morning. Talk about putting salt on wounds! Ha! I’ve never attempted it again although we’ve visited Mono Lake several times since.

I hope you enjoyed this little excursion into the past. If you want to participate in this photography prompt (and there’s still time), please remember to link Ana’s post and use the Lens Artists tag. On Saturday, August 7, Patti will host LAPC #160 Your inspiration, which can be a place, a subject, a person, a book–just about anything that inspires you.

Ciao for now!