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| West Coast Wanderings - August 2021Pictorial record of an expedition to the Pacific Northwest in August 2021, with numerous sojourns along the way - the Bay Area, Stockton, and Angwin in California; Bend, Oregon; the Seattle area and Pasco, Washington. |
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Angwin, California
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On August 6 we arrived in Angwin, where Sandie's younger son Lief lives with his lovely wife Janeta, and sons Liam and Jensen, not to mention their golden Lab, Leila. Angwin is located high in the hills above Napa Valley; it's a most picturesque and pleasant area, although in recent years the terrible California wildfires have taken their toll. We sojourned in Angwin for several days, staying gratis in a pleasant apartment, as arranged by Lief with his stepsister Michelle and his dad and stepmom, Arnold and Bethel, who most graciously made the place available. While Sandie spent most of her time visiting with Lief, Janeta and the kids in their little house on Toyon Street, I took the opportunity to wander around Napa Valley and shoot pictures. I also accompanied them to visit the palatial estate on Crestmont Drive owned by Lief's deceased grandfather, Yacob Nashed, which is now in escrow pending its sale. This was a very fortuitous opportunity - although I had visited the house on previous occasions, I had never taken any pictures of it, and this was the last chance I ever would have to make a pictorial record of this extraordinary property for posterity.
61 files, last one added on Sep 16, 2021 Album viewed 26 times
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Rees Residence - Stockton, California
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Sandie and I visit the residence of two of our favorite people in the world, JoAnn and Doug Rees, in Stockton, California. The visit was arranged by our treasured friend of many years, Diana Howell, who happens to be JoAnn's sister. JoAnn and Doug are longtime litterateurs, and a few years back they purchased an old but venerable house in a pleasant Stockton neighborhood, which house they then proceeded to renew and remodel into a veritable Utopia. They graciously let me shoot a myriad of photos of their property, and I have assembled the best of them here, with the only qualification that the SD card where photos originally resided somehow became partially corrupt, so that I lost most of those shot in the back yard; fortunately the cream of those I shot inside the house have survived.
28 files, last one added on Sep 17, 2021 Album viewed 14 times
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Bend, Oregon - High Desert Museum
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Sadly, our schedule only allowed us one day in Bend, but at least we were able to fulfill my long-cherished ambition to visit the Bend High Desert Museum, which I had never managed to do during all of my previous visits. The Museum had cosponsored (with Oregon State University) the venue where we viewed the Great American Eclipse of 2017, and our hosts Chuck and Elouise Mattox, who are members, highly recommended it and even furnished the passes for our visit, one of the privileges associated with their membership, in addition to providing us with the benefit of their company (always a delight) on our tour of the Museum. We were not disappointed. We only had one complaint - the Museum is so extensive that we wore ourselves out long before we could see even a large fraction of what it had to offer, so we'll have to go back again...and again...
48 files, last one added on Sep 18, 2021 Album viewed 14 times
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An Afternoon in Edmonds, Washington
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On the second day of our stay in the Seattle area, Sandie and I, together with Sandie's elder son Nick, visited Chuck and Elouise Mattox's daughter Sarah and her husband Mike at their fairytale house on the shore of Lake Ballinger in Edmonds, Washington, which turned out to be only a few short blocks from our B&B. Although Sandie and I had been to Sarah and Mike's wedding celebration in Bend (2001), we hadn't seen them together since then and we were anxious to renew our acquaintance. Sarah performs as a mezzo-soprano with the Seattle Opera, and Mike is a senior software developer formerly with Microsoft, now with Electronic Arts, Inc., a leading publisher of video games, and they tend to be rather busy people, so I was uncertain that they would have room in their schedules to meet with us. As it turned out, I need not have worried; they most graciously hosted us on the patio of their lakeside residence on a Saturday afternoon, and we spent several hours engaged in civilized conversation of a kind we can only experience with a very few people of our acquaintance (although, to be sure, we visited several of the others on this trip). And the ambience of the setting was amazing. We had a fabulous time, and we're most grateful to Sarah and Mike for their hospitality and their company.
39 files, last one added on Sep 21, 2021 Album viewed 18 times
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Fremont District, Seattle
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On Sunday, August 15, 2021 Sandie, Nick, Jane and I hopped into Red Sonja and headed for the Fremont District of Seattle. I was bent on visiting two sites in particular: the Fremont Troll and the Statue of Lenin, located close together on North 36th Street. After that, I thought, we could go wherever our fancies took us (that turned out to be the Gas Works Park, to which I've devoted a separate album). In the captions to the pictures presented here I could record only a small fraction of the essential facts available on these famous (or notorious?) attractions; for more adequate information on the Troll, see for example the Wikipedia article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fremont_Troll, and for the Lenin statue, a good account may be found at https://seattle.curbed.com/2019/8/27/20830552/seattle-fremont-vladimir-lenin-statue-history.
31 files, last one added on Sep 23, 2021 Album viewed 11 times
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| Death ValleyDeath Valley National Park is an awesome place and second only to Joshua Tree NP in ease of access for us. Sandie and I are fortunate in having friends who are quite knowledgeable and very enthusiastic about visiting it themselves and in our company. We chronicle our visits with many photos, with a separate subsection of this category devoted to each trip. |
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| | | Death Valley, October 2019We arrived on Wednesday, October 23 and left on Monday, October 28. As in November 2016, we stayed at the Atomic Inn in Beatty, Nevada, which served as a very satisfactory base of operations for our forays into DVNP itself. We were fortunate in enjoying the company of JoAnn Rees, who organized the expedition, and her sister Diana Howell, among others. We went on excursions to Titus Canyon, Marble Canyon, Monarch Canyon and Keane Wonder Mine. And, coincidentally, we had the unexpected good fortune to be in town for the Beatty Days festival on Saturday, October 26, with a parade and fair-cum-flea market. Fun times! |
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| Southwestern SortieA road trip to New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, including a ride on a scenic train from New Mexico to Colorado, October 22. |
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Random files - Domestic Diversions |
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Dallas, October 20220 viewsDallas, October 2022
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Meteor Crater, October 5, 20220 viewsMeteor Crater, October 5, 2022
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Meteor Crater, October 5, 20221 viewsMeteor Crater, October 5, 2022
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Cumbres & Toltec RR, Oct. 7, 20220 viewsCumbres & Toltec RR, Oct. 7, 2022
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CIA2 viewsThis used to be the Christian Brothers Winery.
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A marvel of colorful light4 viewsThe chandelier came as a kit, but no little skill was required to assemble the pieces and hang the completed menagerie safely.
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Cumbres & Toltec RR, Oct. 7, 20220 viewsCumbres & Toltec RR, Oct. 7, 2022
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Cumbres & Toltec RR, Oct. 7, 20220 viewsCumbres & Toltec RR, Oct. 7, 2022
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Last additions - Domestic Diversions |
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Meteor Crater, October 5, 20220 viewsMeteor Crater, October 5, 2022Jan 05, 2023
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Meteor Crater, October 5, 20220 viewsMeteor Crater, October 5, 2022Jan 05, 2023
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Meteor Crater, October 5, 20220 viewsMeteor Crater, October 5, 2022Jan 05, 2023
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Meteor Crater, October 5, 20221 viewsMeteor Crater, October 5, 2022Jan 05, 2023
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Meteor Crater, October 5, 20220 viewsMeteor Crater, October 5, 2022Jan 05, 2023
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Meteor Crater, October 5, 20220 viewsMeteor Crater, October 5, 2022Jan 05, 2023
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Meteor Crater, October 5, 20222 viewsMeteor Crater, October 5, 2022Jan 05, 2023
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Meteor Crater, October 5, 20220 viewsMeteor Crater, October 5, 2022Jan 05, 2023
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