Views of Sequim, the Olympic Peninsula. . .and beyond
Since we traveled last month through the east coast we included a train trip to Washington D.C. before we headed back to the Pacific North West. We spent a few days visiting some of that city’s best places: the Smithsonian Museums. I have an assortment of photos from that stop that I plan to put up. For now I’m fighting a bug that’s been winning. I hope to be posting consistently again soon.
I wish I’d gotten closer here. My trusty everyday zoom isn’t doing well. I need to have a chat with Santa.
Here’s one of a couple pictures from home before I launch into the last leg of my travels from last month.
The most enduring images I have of Terceira Island are of the long, long rock walls and green fields. They’re beautiful, functional, and old. Agriculture thrives on the island.
This wraps up my trip to Terceira Island. But our travels didn’t stop there. Stay tuned for where we headed next.
We explored the city of Angra on foot our last day on Terceira Island. Eye candy! This was the view in one direction.
Here was a view nearby in another direction.
The characters in the windows and doors reminded me of the 1960s painters, Walter and Margaret Keane. This building is apparently empty and for sale.
There was color everywhere, narrow cobblestone streets, and sidewalks were often cramped or nonexistent. This is a city that grew up long before modern cars.
People share the streets with cars. Locals are accustomed to it. Tourists? Not so much. Driving on Terceira Island was my least favorite thing to do.
We ended our second day’s tour with Gui and Azores 38 N with some striking panoramic views of Angra do Heroismo, the small UNESCO World Heritage city on Terceira Island where we stayed.
Old buildings are protected. They can be extensively remodeled on the inside but the exterior must be preserved. I’m not sure how far this preservation extends.
There is a beautiful mixture of old and new in the city. And lest you think all the churches are traditional, here’s one that breaks the mold.
There’s evidence of Terceira’s volcanic origins all over the island if you know where to look. On our Azores 38N tour, our guide Gui took us to see fumaroles — a volcano “breathing” — at Terceira National Park. You can see the steam lightly rising on two sides of the photo above.
One of the geologic highlights of Terceira is a dormant volcano that visitors can enter. It sounded great until I read accounts that estimated access required walking about 700 stairs in and out. No doubt interesting but my knees wouldn’t have survived the effort.
From various high spots on the island it’s possible to see multiple volcanic calderas, wide basins of land that remain after a volcano goes extinct.
We traveled a lot of back roads with Gui. Here we were caught in a Terceira traffic jam. I was told there are more cows than people on Terceira.
Yesterday I told you that there are a lot of rock walls on Terceira. Most are used to corral livestock. These above are different. This is a vineyard moving into its winter dormancy and it’s unlike any vineyard I’ve seen before.
While it has a mild Mediterranean climate, Terceira’s address in the Atlantic Ocean means it doesn’t attain the warmth needed to ripen wine grapes. So the vineyard is divided into small rock enclosures. These enclosures absorb solar warmth and then release it to the grapes.
Did I have wine on Terceira? Yes. Was it from the island? {Head slap.} I forgot to ask.