People – Page 10 – Sequim Daily Photo

Volcanoes and vineyards

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.

Getting around with Gui

We’re accustomed to traveling independently but without a great guide book or a lot of study it’s easy to miss a lot, even on a small island like Terceira. But a bus tour didn’t appeal. So…

We hired our first-ever private guide, Gui Bruges of Azores 38N, the very best thing we did during our stay. Gui was informative, upbeat, and a lot of fun. And most of the time he was at the other end of the van above, driving.

We could have driven ourselves but we’d never have found the overlooks and beautiful spots like this that Gui led us to. Not to mention that we’d probably still be wandering, lost, on the narrow, unsigned roads that lead to the best places.

We toured with Gui for two days, exploring the Terceira coast and its history and the volcanism that created the island. The farmlands above are notable in that the lines you see are rock walls that divide the fields. These walls cover the island, hundreds of miles of them.

The Azores were formed by underwater volcanoes sputtering to the surface of the Atlantic, spewing lava. As with other rock strewn lands, when the land is cleared the rocks have to go somewhere.

The island is dotted with small coastal villages that are surrounded by agricultural lands – a lot of dairy and beef farming.

Hometown heroes

Last Saturday we went to the Sequim Museum and Art Center. The museum is now located in a new facility that opened last July. It was a quick visit but I’ll share highlights. I’ll show photos of the facility in another post later.

In addition to information about local industries and other general Sequim history, the museum highlights a couple of our local heroes. One is Joe Rantz, shown in the center, above, with other members of his University of Washington crew team. Joe, a Sequim resident, was extensively profiled in The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown. Joe’s team, comprised of a group of gritty working class students, excelled against all odds to win a berth at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Then they won an Olympic gold medal. The museum has an interesting exhibit and information about Joe and his team, including a video showing their extraordinary victory. A rowing shell by the famous builder George Pocock is also on display. (Whether or not you’re interested in rowing The Boys in the Boat is well worth reading.)

Matt Dryke, a skeet shooter, is another Sequim resident with Olympic gold to his name (1984). He also has numerous golds and silvers from many championship competitions. A list next to Matt’s photos lists 20 competitions from 1979 to 1992 with top honors, including world records and a three trips to the Olympics. Matt and his family operate the local Sunnydell shooting range. Matt is honored locally by a bronze bust at Carrie Blake Park. I posted a photo in 2013 here.

I’ll share a unique piece of Sequim history from the museum tomorrow. Then I’ll get back to some of my November travels.

Theme Day: Rainbow

City Daily Photo’s last color Theme Day challenge for 2019 is “Rainbow.”

I chose this colorful Native American Blackfeet tribal dancer that I saw last month as part of a series of dance performances at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.

Her dance regalia was a rainbow in action as she participated in a mesmerizing performance.

Click here to see other City Daily Photo interpretations of today’s “Rainbow” challenge.

Home again

It’s nice to be home again. We did some traveling and covered many miles in November. But as is made clear in “The Wizard of Oz,” there’s no place like home. I’ll show you some of the highlights of our trip in coming days as I also catch up on this place I call “home.”

People watching

It’s fun to go to an event where people like to dress up. People in Port Townsend like to dress for an occasion and they do it with style. The 37th Annual Port Townsend Kinetic Skulpture Race was such an event.

You can’t fully see it in this shot but this woman is wearing a crown made of welded table cutlery. I didn’t catch the lineage but she’s royalty of some sort.

If you’re going to march in a parade don’t forget to bring your dragon along. And a chicken. Bring a chicken. Fashion note: Colored duct tape can double as jewelry.

Here is a small school of jellyfish getting ready for the parade. They were chanting something like “We are jellyfish, squish, squish, squish.”

There’s a bumper sticker that you can find on cars locally. “Port Townsend: We’re here because we’re not all there.” What fun is life if you can’t laugh at yourself?

Kinetic Skulpture Parade

After the parade of Kinetic Skulptures at the Kinetic Skulpture Race last Saturday in Port Townsend along came the “Art Parade.” It included the float, above, and a few other art pieces along with an assortment of costumed participants.