Halibut Point State Park, Rockport, MA

After my exploration, I made it to Halibut Point State Park pretty much perfectly to take a bunch of pictures with good sunlight, and then with the beginnings of a sunset. There's really not much to say other than that this place is gorgeous, and along with Lake Willoughby, I'd put it in the same category as a place you definitely need to visit if you live in New England.

I got a few pictures of all the best things here, and there are a lot, so prepare yourself for lots of pictures.

Pretty much right when you get there, if you head left towards the visitor's center, and then turn right, this is your view. You're looking at a rock quarry with the ocean behind it. Incredible.

a seagull is in the middle of the quarry

same shot, more clouds

I walked around the whole quarry to get some different viewpoints. I liked this one a lot:

Even the visitor's center is gorgeous:

the sky sure helps though

I then skipped "lookout point" and headed down a hill to the "beach." I put this in quotations, because there isn't really a beach- just a lot of rocks. In fact, so many, that people have built up a bunch of mini stonehenge sculptures that are really neat:

Some of which were pretty big:

oh weird, I'm wearing that shirt again

Directly in front of me was ocean and rock slabs. Apparently, very, very long ago, this area supplied pretty much all of the cape with stone for building. I'm not surprised.

But directly past those rocks, lush fields. Yes, lush.

This is the view looking up the rocks. I thought about ignoring the signs saying not to climb up the slope, but decided it would probably be a pretty good idea to stay off them, since there were enormous cracks and caverns I could easily fall into. 

The sky started to reveal itself as being a photographer's dream, as clouds started to separate and spread across the sky for miles. The sun setting only added to it. I took lots of pictures. These 3 are all looking at lookout point from the "beach."

This is from the top of lookout point, looking left across the rock cliffs:

that's a ship in the distance

And this is the ocean from the farthest left viewing spot on lookout point. This place is amazing.

After taking more pictures than I could ever need of pretty much the same few views, I finally decided I had to leave, but nabbed a few more pics of the quarry on the way out. 

This one is probably my favorite from the whole trip, taken with my iPhone:

I love the seagull in the middle. Thanks for making my picture even better, pal. 

I then began driving home and had to pull over twice because the sky was so beautiful. This is a little down the road:

And this was some beach in Gloucester. It's odd how much the sky had changed in just 20 minutes or so:

And this was when I finally got on the highway. I rushed to Ipswich (my destination for some Dairy Queen) to try to get to a good stopping point, so I didn't have to keep taking pictures while driving (I'm deadly behind the wheel if it looks like this while I'm driving), but it was dark by the time I got there. 

Halibut Point State Park is truly a beautiful spot, but the real gold of going there that day was that I got to make two strangers' days just a little bit better. I was taking pictures from lookout point, and I noticed some commotion behind me. Someone said something like "Are you serious?! Congratulations!" and I saw two groups of people talking, shaking hands, taking pictures, etc. I instantly knew that the couple that was extra happy had just got engaged. I had seen a lot of couples, and had just been thinking what a romantic spot this was. I guess someone else was thinking the same thing.

A year ago, I wouldn't have done this, but because I have this blog and am somehow becoming a much better, friendlier person, I decided to go ask if they wanted me to take their picture with a real camera, since I thought they just had their phones. I decided to see if I could take a picture of them together first though, and actually got a pretty amazing one, which I then straightened and added some contrast and blue-ness to:

This picture was taken a few minutes after Ann and Duane decided to spend the rest of their lives together, and I'm ecstatic that I somehow managed to get a silhouette of them embracing, with a sun ray magically finding its way to them. This was not a posed picture- I just snuck it. I went over and introduced myself (they must have been horrified- remember, I had just biked 15 miles, eaten beef, and explored the woods for an hour- I was filthy and my legs were COVERED in dirt and surprising amounts of blood). I congratulated them and offered to take their picture. Duane said that he actually just had some taken with his camera, and I said "oh, well... I already took one of you." They were pretty psyched about it, so I got Ann's e-mail address, made a folksy joke about how she was giving some random dude her contact information already (rimshot), and left them to their moment. I took another one on the way out too, which also ended up being pretty beautiful. 

I sent the pictures out a few days later, and just received a reply the other day, saying how happy they were to have the pictures, and that I had given them their first gift as an engaged couple. I am pretty happy about the whole thing, but the feeling I got right when I met them and showed a crying Ann the picture I had just taken of them in their moment, and seeing how happy she was- and knowing that I had just made one of the best moments of these people's lives just a little bit better was pretty remarkable. I was smiling the whole way out. What a feeling! Maybe I should become a wedding photographer or something, I don't know. All I know is that it was great to be able to do this for them, and I know that 100%, I would probably have never done any of this if it weren't for this blog. I wouldn't have been so outgoing, I probably wouldn't have taken the picture at all, and I probably wouldn't have been there taking pictures at all in the first place. I probably wouldn't have even cared- I would have been scowling at their happiness. But because of my new attitude, my desire to make stories and have blog content turning into something along the lines of "oh, well, I HAVE to go meet these people and send them a picture," life was better for all three of us.

It's weird how something as simple as pushing something bad out of your life and embracing the good can noticeably change someone to the point where I'm absolutely noticing it and hopefully friends are too, but I guess it's not really all that weird- it's not hard to be a happier, more positive, outgoing person who wants to help out strangers or "pay it forward" (as a friend joked I was doing) when I'm happy- maybe it's perfectly natural. If I'm happy, why not spread it around? It's great to continue having moments reinforce the idea that quitting my life and creating this blog was the best thing I could do at this point in my life. Maybe I'll win the lottery and continuing living a life more awesome will finally become the obvious path I always needed to take in my life.

currently listening to- Volumes- Self titled EP