Musings

How do you make your state capitol building, here a state house, look more impressive when it has only two stories: put it part way up a hill with a cascade of steps below the main entrance.

Complex tiling patterns in the entry of the public library, Randolph.

Dam and falls in Bethel; mill buildings are to the right.

Exposed interior structure, Howe Covered Bridge.

Orange County Court House, Chelsea.

Oddly, Chelsea has two commons separated by a rushing creek. I spotted this chicken on the bridge connecting the two commons, which of course provoked the question: why did the chicken cross the road? Data based on this chicken is null as it did not cross while I was watching.

We visited several covered bridges along this section of the White River, and this one, Moxley, had an actively used ford just below the bridge, while none of the others did. I figure it’s used by farmers and so on with large equipment.

Cilley Covered Bridge: although the bridge dates to 1883, these boards are from perhaps the last few months.

I’ll spare you any more covered bridge photos; how ’bout some ornamental, um, apples? Guessing…that’s way too dense a flowering pattern not to be an ornamental variety, and I think it’s apple, but I’m no botanist.

Posted at 10:05 PM | Comments Off on VT architecture miscellany and other miscellany

We strolled around the lake at Old Fourth Ward Park…

…and encountered a napping mallard family…

…and a pair of large-ish turtles…that may be a family, also…we couldn’t tell.

Posted at 7:49 PM | Comments Off on Nature narratives

This is maybe the third time we’ve seen a stand of these silver-barked trees. Dunno what they are…mystery arboles.

I’ve confirmed that this is Moncayo.

Wind turbine alignments. I’m trying to get my photographic fascination with them out of my system. Round hay bales can grab your eye this way, too.

We’ve seen plenty of large and small irrigation ditches, but rarely the valves. Here’s a split, where the flow is being directed two ways.

One of our goals today was to get a look at a large eroded area, or badlands, that is a park called Bardenas Reales.

We did find one place with a road we could safely try to get into (or towards) the heart of this sculpted landscape. You can see we didn’t get far, as farmed fields remain.

We partly circled Moncayo yesterday, and completed the loop today.

One more eroded landform.

I finally got a shot of the Ebro when we crossed it. I think this is normal spring elevated levels.

We cut through a “corner” of the lower slopes of the Moncayo massif, and found what must be a relatively warmer area, as many orchards flaunted blooming trees. My guess was peaches or apples, but I couldn’t parse the tree shapes and figure out the species.

We went through/by many little towns. Amazingly, most had parked cars and evidence of active residents. I cannot figure out the economic support for these scattered villages.

Later in the day, I became fascinated with the variations in soil color…this is rather brick red, and the trees are not yet blooming (February, remember…snow on elevations, remember?).

Castle ruins above larger small town…note the white lenses in the far distance behind the jagged walls…Moncayo massif, again.

I counted one man and one dog with this substantial sheep herd. As we continued up the road, it was evident that they’d come down it for at least a mile. Transhumance underway? Earlier in the day, we saw a smaller herd, controlled by a man with a loaded mule and four dogs. Spring is springing for shepherds.

This is the second fox we’ve spotted. Neither was much concerned with our presence.

I just encountered a description of wheeling clouds of birds as resembling the billowing robes of a genie. As shown….

Posted at 3:30 PM | Comments Off on Circumnavigation, etc.

Wind turbines on horizon. Strange color balance (through windshield).

Frost patterns…one shady place we saw frost as late as 11:30am.

Flags, bell tower.

Storks, backlit.

Horses, also backlit, with frost, tracks.

Medieval rock graves, Revenga.

Medieval rock graves, Regumiel. They antedate the 12th C church built partially atop them.

Medieval rock graves with ice skim, Duruelo. Some sources say this trend in this area, the Upper Arlanza Basin, say these graves are 7th/8th C. Others say 8th–10th C.

Stand-alone snow-capped mountain, perhaps Moncayo.

Wind turbine array, with Pyrennees in far distance and Ebro basin between.

Rioja territory grapevines.

This is the part of the Roman city of Graccurris, founded 179 BC, that has been “reconstructed.” I could make little architectural sense of what seemed to me to be mostly a wasteland. Of course, there was significant Medieval occupation here, too….

Largest church in Alfaro, essentially modern Graccurris.

Smaller Alfaro church.

Fuzzy moon out our hotel window, a few minutes ago.

Posted at 1:57 PM | 2 Comments »

What a first peek outside our window!

And there’s the sun! [Forty-four minutes later, but who’s counting??!!]

Off on our adventures, aha, there’s the first castle we’ve spotted, waaaay up high.

We enjoyed the last few meters before reaching an Iron Age village, along with munching cattle. [For the amount of dairy and pork we see on the table, we see remarkably few of those critters in the countryside.]

And there’s the settlement…with working archaeologists! Actually, looking at recent maps, that is the highest settlement area; more is “behind” us/me. But what’s exposed is ahead….

This rather large room produced multiple Greek and greek-style artifacts, including large ceramic vessels. This settlement was well-connected with Mediterranean coastal trading ports, undoubtedly Empúries, 12 miles away as the crow flies, so a day’s walk if you were in good shape and the path wasn’t muddy.

This area was built later, and some houses had even larger rooms.

Next stop: Lake Banyoles, the largest lake in Catalunya, and long renowned for its fishing.

Cormorants look like cormorants.

Early 20th C fishing (and bathing) “hut”—there’s more than a dozen spaced along this stretch of the shore.

However, people fished Lake Bangles even in the Neolithic. This hole is a below-the-water-level excavation that has now re-flooded. The water kept organic artifacts from rotting away, preserving wood, basketry, bones, seeds, and textile matter that’s usually totally absent. Archaeologists also found the remains of buildings, including structures on pilings.

Today’s Roman site is a farm called Vilauba. It began as a U-shaped building from the 1st–3rd C AD. Later, more rooms were added through the Visigothic period. This was the location of the press (represented by that interior rectangle of stone), probably for olives (I should have read the signs more closely, but: Catalan).

Speaking of Catalan, this room was a “rebost”, meaning pantry. The raft of pottery containers found here kept various foodstuffs and items (relatively) safe from critters and insects.

Back at our hotel, I took the trail down down down…

…to the beach. It’s pretty much high tide, I think.

Back up at the hotel, I spotted a gull taking a bath in the (closed for the season) pool. I shot a series of photos and discovered it turned its head to the right every time it ducked (is that term okay?) under. Here it’s fluffing its wings and tail.

Posted at 12:37 PM | 2 Comments »

It was still pretty dark this morning when this critter trundled purposefully past the back door and around the house, zoom: gone. I thought: “Silver Streak” and chuckled har har har.

Posted at 8:22 PM | Comments Off on Not-rat

When I was first walking on the beach this morning, this bunch took off and looped around and around, finally returning to this same spot. Feeding? Also, I don’t know what they are…white like gulls, but smaller.

In lieu of the many dawn shots I’ve been posting, here’s a just-after shot…as in just after moonrise and just after sunset. It’s a super-wide angle image, not a pano…obviously, the sun set further to the “right” relative to this framing.

Posted at 8:34 PM | Comments Off on Head’s up

I learned that the world’s longest lived vertebrate is the Greenland shark, Somniosus microcephalus. They can reach at least 400 years, and perhaps 500—that’s half a millennium! The latest research (thank you NYTimes Tuesday Science stories), discussed by Jonathan Moens, has discovered that this species has huge genomes, with about 6.5 billion DNA base pairs (humans have less than half that). This makes these sharks more genetically resilient (read the story for the details), and thus likely contributes to their longevity.

Still reeling about the (possibly) 500 year lifespans.

Posted at 9:40 PM | Comments Off on Not my photo

I spotted many of these webs today…this one’s inhabitant is left of center and fully in residence.

Posted at 9:08 PM | Comments Off on Arachnid abode and hunting ground

Our fawn visitors came by twice, with totally crepuscular timing: 6:30am and 6:30pm. This was the morning visit.

It seems like a quarter of the garage at the neighbors’ is for storing shoes. 🤣

I took a late-day walk and the light angle lined up with the creek that leads from the road into the swamp/lake.

Posted at 8:32 PM | Comments Off on Time and space