Category Archives: Travel

Mist Over The Water at Orcas

First thing in the morning on Orcas Island made from some beautiful conditions. We were staying in a place looking out over the water towards Shaw Island but, in the morning, we got some low fog and mist that could obscure our neighbor so close by. As the sun came up, the fog would burn off and then roll back in. It was a constantly changing view with the land and smaller islands appearing and disappearing frequently. You could sit and watch it for ages. Best done from inside the house, though, since it was rather chilly.

Cattle Point

Leave a Reply

We made a couple of visits to Cattle Point on San Juan Island during our visit there. It is a lovely spot for a stroll along the cliff tops. The lighthouse is not quite what you might hope for. It is functional but not elegant. However, the rest of the area is just lovely. Not only is it a great place to walk but the road running down to the point provides a beautiful overlook of the point with the water around it and the mountains in the background including Mt Baker looking imposing covered in snow. We had great weather both times were were there on this trip.

Orcas Hotel and Ferry Terminal

Leave a Reply

The ferry to Orcas Island comes in to the town of Orcas. (I think it counts as a town but it is pretty small!). Right across from the ferry terminal is the Orcas Hotel. It is an old style hotel and has a café as well. Restrictions meant eating in the café was out of the question but we did get take out food from there one night and it was great. The south facing harbor gets some nice evening light in the winter. The first time I was out walking there, I figured I would get a shot after I visited the local shop. That was a mistake. When I came out, the lovely light was gone and everything was in shadow. I didn’t make the same mistake again.

Narita Freighters

Leave a Reply

Every once in a while, I am looking for something in the catalog of images and it takes me on a journey to look through some other images. That can result in a blog post that doesn’t have a story. This is one of those posts. I have a bunch of shots from Narita while waiting for my flights home and that includes a bunch of freighters. I like freighters since they are often operators that you don’t normally see and they break up the flow of the familiar airlines. Here are some of those from my visits.

Oahu Arrivals Over the Coast

Leave a Reply

Our first visit to Hawaii included a few days on Oahu. We were staying out on the west coast of the island and our hotel was pretty close to the approach path for the jets coming across the Pacific. It was a serious hardship to sit on the shore in Hawaii watching planes fly overhead. The amount of traffic from Japan is significant and so we had some large jets coming in at that time. If we were there now, the 747s would be gone but ANA has taken A380s for this run. Not sure that they are flying right now but they are likely to be back given the traffic that should ultimately return.

Honolulu International

Leave a Reply

Another archive post today. When we flew through Honolulu, we had some time at the airport and, needless to say, I took some photos of the traffic. Sure, there were some familiar names but there were also some airlines I hadn’t seen before. Whether it was small props or larger jets, something a bit new and different is always appreciated. Here are some shots from our time waiting for our flights.

Bury St Edmunds

Leave a Reply

At the time of writing this post (not sure when it will actually get published yet) it is a year since we went to the UK for a couple of weeks. There are still quite a few topics from that trip that I have not got around to posting about. One of those was our visit to Bury St Edmunds. It was a pretty hot day when we were there as the second week of our trip turned in to quite a scorcher. I had been to Bury St Edmunds before but not for about 30 years.

As town names go, this one isn’t very imaginative. It is the town in which St Edmund is buried. I wonder how long they thought about that one. We didn’t have time to check out the whole town but just got to explore in the area around the cathedral of which more will come another time. There are ruins in the park area around the cathedral and more churches in close proximity. If you want to get your worship in, this is the place for you.

There are more modern buildings in the area too but more modern is a relative term. Still pretty old by the standards of our current home! The square looked like it was ready for a market to be held but clearly not the day we were there.

Vintage Japanese Rolling Stock

Leave a Reply

Here are some old Japanese rail vehicles. These are part of the SCMaglev museum in Nagoya that I visited when I was in Japan last summer. The museum has a great selection of Shinkansen equipment across the generations but it also has a lot of other rail vehicles from long ago. The vehicles clearly look old from the outside but the interiors are really an interesting comparison with what you see these days. The amount of wood in the paneling and the materials of the seating are definitely of their time. I was quite amused by the fans mounted on the ceiling. Obviously pre-air conditioning days with these cars and so a bit of air circulation was all you could hope for. Knowing how incredibly hot it gets in Japan during the summer, they would not have done much for the riders I would have thought. I wonder whether it was as crowded in those days as it is now. If it was even close, that would have been brutal.

Flatford Mill

Leave a Reply

Flatford Mill is a very well known tourist attraction. I last visited it about 30 years ago when a friend of mine was living there for her job. The mill is in an area known colloquially as Constable Country. The artist lived in the area and many of his paintings are of the local landscape. The mill itself is possibly best known for being the subject of the painting The Haywain. Originally we had intended to walk along the paths that line the river near the mill. However, even though we were there quite early in the day, it was already stupidly hot and the idea of walking far was not appealing. Instead we wandered around the mill, had an ice cream and some lunch and took a look at the buildings that Constable had painted – all while trying to visualize where the settings were and how much they had changed.

An Update to the Japanese Rail Photos

Leave a Reply

I have put some previous posts together of Japanese trains from my travels. This is an update to that (although a very late update given that these were taken nearly a year ago!). I got to see some different trains while I was in Nagoya for the day and then there is the variety of trains that you get around the Tokyo area. There was also a small line that ran through the Kamakura area which we crossed paths with as we were walking to the beach from the giant Buddha statue that I wrote about in this post. A few more photos to amuse those of you that like different trains.