ecoTrain Discoveries - Six Scenic Stops This Week

This is a brand new ecoTrain activity. As we roll along through the platform, we decided it might make sense to look more closely at what's around us now that we've got our passengers on board and a good sense of direction from our driver @eco-alex. However, I must confess this was a much more difficult assignment than expected. I thought I would spend a few minutes here and there scrolling through some topics that seemed relevant to us, click on a couple that looked promising and "Voila!", the magic would practically find me.

Let's just say I was wrong. Very wrong. I spent hours over this past week. I live in the United States so this has been quite an eventful/depressing week for many of us here who believe in human values of decency, equality, justice and love, just to name a few. @clara-andriessen, we needed your beautiful posts about human values to rain down on all the hate here.
On the plus side I did just see this photo of a friend promoting some good stuff in North Carolina.

Maybe it wasn't a great week on Steemit, maybe when you're a little tiny minnow like me the feed is different, I don't know. There is a lot of uninteresting and redundant material on this platform and its very difficult to filter it. I know not everyone agrees with me, but any post that asks to be upvoted is usually out of the running. We all know the posts only exist for the sake of being noticed and upvoted. No need to beg. Anyway, moving on. After every half hour or more of disappointment at not finding the perfect stop, one thing became clear - ecoTrain is AWESOME! Our writers do a great job providing well thought out content that actually contributes something positive, something to think about, converse about. So we can all be very proud of what we have accomplished so far.

But - there is a but. We don't cover everything. There are talented and creative people out there. Funny ones as well. Searching through the haystack I did find a few Steemers who made me want to stop and check out the view.

I'll start with this guy. @skypilot - He falls under the categories of photography and nature. Plus, he's a pilot so the photos are from up above.
Take a look.
https://steemit.com/photography/@skypilot/posting-from-the-road-a-love-of-nature-how-i-do-what-i-do

Next I found a cute little post that made me giggle. I really needed a little giggle and I had just had a couple encounters with mushroom hunters here in the Colorado mountains. It is definitely mushroom season. Check out the mushroom cartoon. You don't come across many of those.
https://steemit.com/art/@fabulousfungi/why-i-like-mushrooms-comic-book

After photography and nature, I felt I was ready to find some nice music...or performance of some kind. With all the OpenMic posts and and competitions I thought there had to be something that would be the right vibe for ecoTrain followers.
Check out @acromott but don't try it at home.
https://steemit.com/stg/@acromott/steemits-got-talent-my-week-3-acro-music-flow-full-video-inside

Not sure how I found this social studies teacher @arnoldus-k from The Netherlands, but a couple things stood out. In one of his posts he included three old songs from 1967. I'm biased, but that was a good year for the part of the world where I entered the scene. Well, my parents thought so. Not so great for other reasons and in some other places, but that's not what this particular post is about.
I told him in a comment that we had something in common. Can you guess what it is?
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@arnoldus-k/here-we-go-finally-on-steemit

Last but not least, late last night I came across this creative Steemer @dreemit . The thing that excited me about her is that she was using another person as her inspiration (with proper attribution) and then writing about it. Occasionally I use photos from other social media friends and attempt to recreate them myself (usually in pastel). Then I show them the results. They have all been people I don't know and have all been super appreciative and supportive of my efforts and the neat way of connecting to a 'Stranger" through art. Few things get me as excited as collaboration, creativity and random strangers, although I don't know for sure if her inspiration was a stranger or not. They're both strangers to me anyway.
Tell me what you think. Better yet, tell her/them.
https://steemit.com/blog/@dreemit/collab-with-clayboyn-photography-and-philosophy

I hope you appreciated some of these. It took me longer than expected, so some of the posts are almost at the end of the 6 day upvote range, but if I made good choices, they'll have more good stuff soon.

And of course, here is the link to the most recent ecoTrain Highlights, should any of you be wondering what on earth an ecoTrain is.
https://steemit.com/blog/@eco-alex/ecotrain-highlights-of-the-week-12th-18th-august-more-amazing-posts-brought-together-for-you