Today, to celebrated Labor Day, I headed to Sylvester Park in Olympia, Wash., for the annual Thurston County Labor Day celebration. When I arrived, the park was empty.
Surprised, I headed to the Brotherhood Tavern, thinking the staff there might know where this year's event was happening. No luck.
I went next door to the Thurston County Labor Temple.
A sign on the door said the Thurston-Lewis-Mason Central Labor Council picnic was being held in Stan Hedwall Park in Chehalis, a community a half an hour away, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. I was out of luck. It was 4 p.m.
So I began taking photos of Labor Day in Olympia.
A furniture store was offering a big sale.
A bank was closed.
The City of Olympia put up flags for the holiday.
Another city flag.
This is the fountain on the Capital Grounds by Capitol Way with the Washington State Legislative Building in the background.
Flags fly in the breeze in front of the Legislative Building.
A home in the South Capital Neighborhood decorates for Labor Day.
Another home flies the flag.
I hope you had a great Labor Day today, whether you had to work or were able to celebrate with friends or do something fun. Maybe you were luckier than I was and were able to attend your community's Labor Day event.
See my article "Top 10 Labor Day Quotes" for some thoughts on Labor Day.
All these photos could generate a huge amount of search engine traffic for your website…
See if your blogging service has a function for optimizing your images for search engines?
Also consider Flickr… Or some other kind of ancillary web traffic generator for images!
I guess next time, prepare by asking a local what exactly a town’s Labor Day party means. Then check with another native and see what matches. Any time I assume something, it comes back as true, almost true or nothing close to what’s expected. Sometimes I’m pleasantly surprised and learn from going in the roundabout way. I liked when the first plans went awry, photos about town became your focus. It’s a living journal of what happens when you procrastinate and have to play catch-up.
Hi Deane,
Thanks for the advice on optimizing my photos.
I have considered putting them on Flickr, in fact Seth Godin suggests it. However, I’m not sure about giving a lot of people rights to use my photos.
Rita
Thanks for the tips on how to find out about community celebrations. I’ll start earlier next time finding out about what the timing is.
Rita