During Spring Break this year, the family ventured out to the sandy shores of Lake Michigan. One of our stops was Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore on a beautiful April day. While there we stopped at the popular Dune climb to take our chance at the steep, sandy climb to the top. While at the top I began experiencing problems with my camera. An error message would pop onto a black screen no longer able to take pictures. Messing around with it – removing the lens and reconnecting it, turning the camera on and off, and removing the battery – I eventually got it to work again. This turned out to be temporary though. A short time later the error message again popped up. This time I wouldn’t be able to get it back working.

Later that day I researched possible problems and came up with the likely issue being the shutter. The cost to fix it would be at least a third of the cost of a new camera. There had been some other problems starting to plague the camera such as a sticky shutter button causing the camera to be unresponsive as the button would keep the autofocus locked on preventing further use until the button became unstuck and released the focus. This was fairly intermittent so I dealt with it as much as possible. With at least 100,000 photos being taken with the camera and the shutter issues, I decided it is probably time to replace it. Besides, there are activities and adventures planned this year that I want to have a reliable camera available to avoid missing some pictures that will only be possible once.

With that decision, my camera had taken its last photo. Looking through them on the computer, this was the last one taken. It’s of my daughter and I running down the dune as the approaching rain continued to move towards us. If there has to be a last picture, I like this one to mark that event!