Category: North America

New York in May, Madison Square Park. Warm afternoons bring out stylish spring clothing.

David Farragut oversees some serious discussions and study

Martin Puryear sculpture being installed at Madison Square Park.

After a rooftop dinner at Science House  in Murray Hill, Manhattan. Chrysler Building in background. Wooden water storage tanks are common in New York.

The Chrysler Building, built in 1930. 1,046 feet high, it is currently the sixth highest building in New York. It is considered one of the finest examples of Art Deco design.

The Empire State Building, another Art Deco design, built in 1931. The first building with more than 100 stories. Currently the fifth highest building in New York.

Friday nights from 7pm to 9pm are free at the Morgan Library and Museum at 36th and Madison. There is a cafe and live chamber music. Worth a visit for the historic rooms and the ambiance.

From the Andy Warhol exhibition.

Morning in NYC

The elevator down to the Brooklyn Bridge subway station is a relic from the past

The New York City Municipal Building

Grand Central Terminal in a quiet moment on Sunday evening

One World Trade Center building, observation level $32  for 0 to 1200 feet high in one minute

 

Mount St. Helens still has lots of snow on May 4th. From the hills above Chelachie Prairie, near Amboy, Washington, my childhood home.

Atop Mount St. Helens in 1969, before the cataclysmic eruption that blew the top off. Spirit Lake is in the foreground, Mount Rainier in the distance.

Visiting Malinowski Dam some years ago, near Aberdeen, Washington, named after Uncle Joe.

A pond on our farm down near Cedar Creek.

Wild iris now line the pond.

Cedar Creek, which is a salmon spawning ground upstream from the Lewis and Columbia rivers. It runs through our family property. 60 years ago it was thick with spawning salmon every year. Then, as more people settled along the creek and ‘cleaned it up’ for swimming, it lost the protected gravel bar areas best for spawning, and the salmon numbers declined severely. Due to conservation projects re-establishing the habitat needed, the salmon numbers are beginning to recover.

These are not kids.

Moultin Falls on the Lewis River, our summer swimming spot.

 

A detail from a totem pole by artist Les Brosius.

The Portland Hills have stairways cross-connecting some streets, like Berkeley, California and San Francisco. This brick structure houses water valves.

Hillside homes perched high above the Willamette River.

Steel house supports are common on the steep hillside.

A starter castle?

Ample rain yields lush hillside trees, shrubs and flowers.

Iris

A word play on ‘The Portland Zoo’?  Free toilets in the park area near Portland State University. Free public toilets mean cleaner parks, an idea other cities should consider.

Tasty Pacific Northwest water from a classic fountain.

Kind of says it all, right?

A sculpture at Wall of the Heroines at Portland State U.

Forsake all sloth, ye who enter through these portals.

And exercise the mind. Portland State Chess.

Visiting our friends’ ranch south of Salinas, California.

Chimney of lime kiln built in 1893. Small lime kilns were common then.

Buckeye tree  (horse chestnut).

83 miles of hiking, biking and riding trails near the California coast.

Sunny and Ivy are ready for the trail.

Oak forest. Had to duck low under some branches or get knocked off!

Mel and Ivy in the oak forest.

In Northern California, north of San Francisco, and west of the city of Novato in Marin County is an area called ‘West Marin’. It is an area of great natural beauty.

Superlatives are overused these days. Yet the rolling grassy hillsides of West Marin call for them, as they are breathtakingly beautiful in the spring, one of the most evocative vistas I have ever seen in the world.

Rolling green pastureland is punctuated with rocky outcroppings, and groves of trees fill the gullies and some hilltops.

Wildflower grow in abundance in the Spring.

Barinaga Ranch is located in West Marin along Marshal-Petaluma Road.

It was founded by a woman of Basque heritage who wanted to raise sheep and make cheese in the traditional ways.

It comprises 800 acres near Marshall, California and Tomales Bay.

Marcia Barinaga makes it her business to know all her sheep and lambs.

Milking time, ten at a time. Happy sheep make good cheese.

I want to be next to be milked, please.

Sheep are individuals, some bigger, some smaller, with their own personalities and big, dark eyes.

This is Edie, the founding ewe of Barinaga Ranch.

These lambs were born in March 2016, and were weaned recently. Fleece as white as snow?

One of the younger lambs still nursing from mom.

Great Pyrenees dogs watch over the sheep and lambs and protect them from predators.

Bred over many years to guard sheep, they work in teams and are fiercely protective.

Would you want to challenge this big dog? Even mountain lions avoid them.

Notice the two lambs up atop the rock outcropping.

The Barinaga cheeses have won many awards.

Click to learn more about Barinaga Ranch

 

 

Fare thee well, West Marin and Barinaga Ranch…