Welcome aboard! Used to live close to your neck of the woods....would be nice to see some of the pics. You can upload a photo directly to the site, but many of us use the image button to show our pictures from smugmug, flickr or another site. For example, if I right click one of my pics, it'll show me the link to that pic;
http://smac.smugmug.com/photos/685383370_zcgWh-L.jpg
If I was to take that link, select the "insert image" button and post it into the box that pops up, it'll show the picture in my post.
There are much more detailed explanations in the help articles on the site.
Cheers!