When you don't have time, or money, for a full vacation, try a micro adventure. Mostly its finding something new, to you. Keep it simple, uncomplicated, not requiring a lot of planning. I've seen a lot of good ideas for little, local adventures. You can even combine ideas into one, as they suit you.

Your Own Old Neighbourhood

Explore a new or different neighbourhood. Walk down a street you haven't walked down before. Take a new route home from work. Try a new place for coffee. Look for a high point to see more of the area you live in and find other new places to walk another day. Look for historical/ ghost walking tours in your town or city, go on them. Go to a place you see everyday, at night. Look for houses with Little Libraries and exchange books you've read for those you haven't yet. Find festivals, events, workshops in your community - start looking at the library. Photograph an old cemetery.

The Great Outdoors

Start a new outdoor activity: fly a kite, plant a garden, have a picnic, go to the park, build a sandcastle, go swimming, or skating. Spend an afternoon blowing bubbles outdoors. Try geocaching or orienteering. Stargazing or moon bathing. Go out at night or very early in the morning. Make a campfire in your own backyard - bring marshmallows. Go beachcombing, rockhounding, or mudlarking. Walk barefoot. Forage for wild food.

Arts, Crafts, and Skills

Try something artsy or crafty. Never tried sewing, embroidery, crochet? How about painting, or drawing? Sculpture with paper, rock, clay, or something more unusual. Try cooking or baking with a recipe you saved but haven't tried yet. Learn to tie sailor knots. Practice your penmanship. Rearrange your furniture, be your own interior decorator. Play a game with just paper and pens, like retro Dungeons and Dragons. Go to an art tour, studio or gallery tours.

Get Active

Explore sports. Try tennis, hockey, ping pong, something you feel fit enough to tackle and haven't already done.

Another Time and Place...

Explore another culture or time period. Make a meal of authentic dishes. Add some fashion flair from another culture or vintage clothes, if you can find them. Learn another language, or enough of it to greet people and get directions. Follow and read a weblog from another country. Listen to a new style of music.

Sort out your sock drawer, really, don't keep socks without a pair.

Look for more ideas online if you haven't found one to start yet.

I can remember a farm house here in Ontario with a tall light post covering most of the house, sheds, and barn area - still working. Somehow, long after the rest of the property was far into decay and ruin. Were lightbulbs just made so much better long ago? I'd be surprised if the power were still on, but it must have been. I don't think of it as some ghost story, just vestigial architecture. I thought it was a good phrase to remember.

Vestigial architecture works better than Thomassons.

I was fascinated by this recent podcast and article over at 99% Invisible about “Thomassons,” architectural elements on structures or properties that no longer have a function and yet are maintained. These architectural leftovers–stairways leading to nowhere, boarded-up or bricked-up windows, telephone poles that no longer carry lines–are named after Gary Thomasson, an American baseball player who played for the Yomiuri Giants in Tokyo, Japan in the early 1980s. Thomasson was paid exorbitant amount of money for a two year contract, but lost his game in Tokyo and was benched for much of his contract (i.e. he had no function, but was maintained…ouch).

via Rustbelt Anthro. Thomassons: Vestigial Architecture

I was asked how I came to volunteer with Ontario Barn Preservation. This is what I wrote.

Ironically, I am allergic to almost everything inside a barn: hay, animals, and mold/fungus. But, I really like history, particularly finding out about how things were done/ made and worked. My Dad was an electrical engineer who always wanted (and tried several times) to be a dairy farmer. But, he did not want to get his hands dirty. Anyway, that's why I mostly grew up in the suburbs, mainly a town called Port Union in the east end of Scarborough, Toronto, now.

I've loved writing and tried drawing since I was a kid. I became a photographer as I grew up, not professionally at all. I took photos of my Mom's garden for her. I took photos of family and my cats and family trips, my own trips. Always interested in old buildings and places too. In college Photography was one of the courses I took as part of Corporate Communications. When I got my first digital camera I was finally able to take all the photos I wanted without thinking about the cost of developing them. At first I only had to make sure I had enough storage and battery power. My first camera didn't have much for storage.

One of the first places I photographed was an abandoned farm house near Bradford. The house was demolished since then. But, that was the start of photographing old farm houses around Ontario. The next camera I bought was an investment with more memory and a memory card for storage. It also had zoom so I could see details of buildings farther away or get a close look at a house I couldn't access. I started a group for rural exploration photographers in Ontario on Flickr. Its still there along with a few others. I met other people through my photo group and got together to meet a few in person too. I was still in my 30's and 40's then.

By my 50's I wasn't doing as much. But, I still like seeing other photos of old places in Ontario. I often search for history related groups/ organizations in Ontario. I keep a list of links from those I find. Most of them I added to the ODP site. I maintain the category for Urban Exploration there. Anyway, from looking for Ontario history this and that I found Ontario Barn Preservation. They were looking for volunteers. I knew I could not be someone who goes into barns, or help with knowing how to fix them up. But, I sent in my name anyway, just to see what would come from it.

That was about 3 years ago I think. I've been checking the emails, replying to them or directing them to the right people here. I write the newsletter every two months (not strictly on schedule), I post blurbs to social media accounts. Also helping out with memberships, posts to the website, running the site, finding possible contractors to add to the list, dozens of this and that as needed. Officially, I'm the administrative assistant.

When I was photographing the old farm houses I didn't really pay much attention to the barns. There were there and I got some photos, but it was the houses, the abandoned gardens, the structure and the weathering that I especially photographed. Since joining OBP I've learned more about barns and have a greater appreciation for them. Sometimes they call them cathedrals of the field and I think its a good name for them.

I read a post about mudlarking. What to Know About Mudlarking. From Archaeology Now, London, England.

"Mudlarking is the romantic name for scavenging on the riverbank (also called the foreshore) when the tide is out."

Things I learned about mudlarking in England: you need a license (even just to poke around), there are places you are not allowed to go, and you must report your finds. The writer, Jill Brown, suggests a catch and release plan where you don't keep what you find, just put it back. Take photos, leave it where you found it. I can understand, those are the general rules for urban exploration too.

But, what if I want to keep it? I don't know if we have rules about beachcombing or mudlarking here in Canada, or Ontario. Maybe they do in Toronto, the city itself. I'm not sure if the same urban exploration rules apply for finding something washed up on a beach or forgotten under the dirt in a forest, etc.

I like the name mudlarking, but I would think of it as beachcombing. I wondered if they were two words meaning the same thing or is there a difference between the two. Reading the description from the post, they sound very similar. Unless you're some kind of elite purist and insist beachcombing can only be considered beachcombing if it takes place on an actual beach. I've never heard of forestcombing (as far as I can remember) and I know there is mud in a forest.

This is a history of mudlarking, quoted from the same post as above:

"Many 19th-century mudlarks were poor, desperate children. They made their miserable livings selling pieces of coal, bits of rope, and anything else they could find. Two hundred years on, the mud is still dirty, the water is still cold, and the extraordinary treasures are still few and unpredictable, but mudlarking has become amateur archaeology."

I don't think beachcombing started that way. It seems it has always been a hobby, finding little things to collect and ponder about.