13 Minutes to the Moon

 

Rain's prompt this week is "Moon Phases" - I can't really write a lot about that, but I do have a few moon pictures that I have taken over the years. The one above is a moon rise on Christmas Eve over the enchanted land of New Mexico. We were traveling on Interstate 25 from Santa Fe to Pueblo in Colorado when we saw this spectacle in the sky. Fortunately there was an off-ramp close by, so we could safely stop and take pictures of it. I loved the pink shade in the sky as well as on the moon. Only a few minutes later it looked very different.

One evening when the Geek and I walked the neighborhood we watched the full moon and noticed the wires as well. I decided to let it sit on this wire.

Or what about a pole dancing moon?

A few years back, when we returned from an event at the Pepperwood Natural Preserve we were lucky to see the moon rising from behind the trees.

This is another full moon seen over Pepperwood just a few months ago. Here, I didn't have my camera with me and had to make do with my Pixel phone.

I especially love the full moon when the sky is cloudy, it is so atmospheric.

Of course we shouldn't forget about the moon during a lunar eclipse. This is the Super Blue Blood Moon from January 31, 2018.

As a child I was fascinated by the Apollo program, especially the Apollo 11 moon landing. A few years ago I listened to "13 Minutes to the Moon", a BBC podcast about the Apollo 11 mission (later followed by a second season about Apollo 13). It was just as fascinating. 

Back when we traveled to Washington D.C. - a gift we gave to ourselves when Barack Obama was elected the first Black US president - we of course visited the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum where the Apollo 11 command module is on display. It was so tiny! How could three grown men fit in there? It must have been highly uncomfortable.

Now let's get back to Mother Earth and see what's for dinner. The weather has been so nice lately that we started to eat outside whenever possible. We recently got this beautiful picnic table from friends who wanted to get rid of it. It's beneath our big tree now - actually I'm sitting here while I'm writing this post.

That evening we had leftover spaghetti that I sautéed with zucchini, eggplant and red bell pepper. This is also the time to open up the rosé wine bottles - oh, lovely!

This, of course, I am sharing with Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date.

Cherry Blossoms

During Spring Break the Geek, Kaefer and I went up to Oregon and Washington. March is NOT the best time to go there since it rains an awful lot, but we wanted to look at two universities that Kaefer got accepted in - the University of Oregon in Eugene and the University of Washington in Seattle.

While it was raining in Eugene we were lucky to have kind of a dry day in Seattle. When we arrived at the campus I had no idea what to expect. Kaefer had mentioned something about cherry blossoms - but I hadn't thought that it would be like this!

The trees were covered with cherry blossoms - it was amazing. There are about a dozen of them, and they make such a difference.

The campus itself is one of the most beautiful university campus I've seen so far in the US. It reminded me a lot of England - with the slight difference that the buildings in England are several hundred years older!

But the cherry blossoms definitely were the stars that day!

And here are my two sweethearts, so decorative in front of the cherry blossoms!

Camping

During our summer break we went up the coast through Oregon and Washington, stopping where we loved it to camp (some nights we spent in hotels as well, especially when we were in need of a refreshing shower). We love camping, I love sleeping in a tent with just nature around me. That's why we tend to go to more primitive campgrounds and avoid the big RV places.

This time was different than all the other times we went camping - Kaefer wasn't with us. She had left for Germany where she spent a bit more than two weeks with friends of us, going to school and generally enjoying life. It was a very new experience going on vacation without her. While we missed her goofiness, it also had its perks - for example we could photograph as long and much as we wanted without her getting bored.

We always have our special morning latte with foam on top!

I usually started the day writing morning pages and enjoying the fresh morning air.

While the rest of Oregon and Washington was pretty warm and even hot, it was way cooler at the coast. We had some pretty heavy winds and all the light clothes stayed in the bag - it was jeans and sweaters.

We cuddled around the campfire in the morning and the evening, often wrapped in blankets which still smell of smoke even though they had their turn in the washing machine.

I even enjoyed doing the dishes!

We cooked on our tiny camping cooker and I always sent the Geek to fetch more water in our Nalgene bottles. We needed it for everything - cooking, making coffee in the morning and hot chocolate in the evening, doing the dishes, brushing our teeth...

In our campsite in the Oregon Dunes we had very special visitors who were extremely interested in our food - no, we didn't give them anything.

Camping is the way to go for me. I hope we still do it when we're much older - perhaps not in a tent anymore, but a VW camping van. That's my dream.

The Faces of Washington

Don't worry, this is NOT a rant about the government shutdown!

It's time for my contribution to Inspiration Avenue's weekly challenge, and this week's theme is "faces". Since I haven't painted faces for a very long time, I can't show you anything here. So I had to think of a different approach to this challenge - and I came up with this.

Abraham Lincoln is probably one of the most famous faces in Washington, one of the most visited (not at the moment, though - but we didn't want to go there, right?). But there are also other faces on display - faces full of pain, sorrow, terror and heroism.

Like the men fighting in the Korean War.

The men of Iwo Jima

Not even faces anymore - just names, ten thousands of names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

The guards who honor the fallen soldiers who don't have faces and no names either - the unknown soldier.

And the woman who helped finding missing soldiers, giving a face to a name.

After all this gloom, there are also other faces. Faces of hope, but where the gloom is still visible. This dad who with his two sons makes music on buckets in the streets of Washington. Despite the rain they attracted big crowds with their rhythms that were so different from their environment at the National Mall.

August Break #20 - A Little Boat

I saw this boat in La Plush, WA, close to First Beach.

To those of you who read "Twilight", this location might sound familiar.

However, I was totally clueless, never having read "Twilight".

We went through Forks - clueless, as I said - and I was wondering why every store in that little town had the term "twilight" in their name. Until it 'dawned' on me...

I did read the book by now, out of mere curiosity. Well, I actually can't say, I read it, because I stopped on page 178. I simply couldn't stand it anymore - so poorly written, not a single character I liked, I was bored beyond reason... please, don't tell me that it starts getting really really good on page 179...

Anyway, without any "Twilight" thoughts on my mind I just enjoyed La Plush. We saw bald eagles and lots of brown pelicans. In the parking lot, the seagulls and crows were fighting over a dead salmon. Flying fish were jumping out of the water and diving in again with a low "blub". A Quileute fisherman came out in his boat and dropped the nets in the water. We sat on some driftwood and took everything in.

This boat reminds me of that day - restful and peaceful.

I wish all of you an entire weekend like that.

Back from the Sunset Coast

We just returned form our two weeks trip up North on Highway 101 along the Oregon and Washington coast. It was a very relaxing, quiet trip - we didn't have any special plans or destinations that we wanted to reach. When we liked a place we stayed there for a while. There was lots of time for reading, writing and even sketching and painting. It was one of the most beautiful trips I ever had.

We explored fisher ports like this one in Brookings,

saw many lighthouses - this one is Heceta Head,

watched seagulls eating their breakfast,

had super fresh seafood ourselves,

ran at the beach,

sat around the campfire,

explored tide pools and learned that this is an ochre sea star (pisaster ochraceus),

didn't mind the often misty weather of the Pacific Northwest,

visited the rainforest in Olympic National Park and got eaten alive by mosquitoes while camping there,

watched young elk,

got very muddy boots on our hikes and walks,

found treasures on the beach,

flew kites,

discovered the lost whale in the Klamath River on our way back home,

and fell deeply in love with the Pacific Northwest.

Did you go somewhere and fell in love with the place?

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