One of P’town’s lighthouses – there are two that look pretty much identical, along the very narrow long strip that encloses P’town harbor and marks the true tail end of the long arm of Cape Cod, as seen from the breakwater as the tide slowly returned after a very low tide. If anyone’s confused by the way I’m switching around in country and continent with these posts, my apologies – after a slow winter where I didn’t get out too much after my last US visit (remember all those shots?), and even nearly ran out of legit shots for my Coasting, Islands, and Villages series…well, I’ve been out and about quite a lot since mid-July, and for the past week, I’ve been in Provincetown. Today I’m off to Star Island again — so you can search past entries which would be labeled New Hampshire, and very possibly tagged as Star Island, to get a sense of the sort of lovely views I hope to be adding to the mix in the weeks ahead. 🙂
I’ve spent the past week visiting Provincetown, at the tip end of Cape Cod, for the first time in more’n a decade. In the early 1900’s, Provincetown decided it was tired of Plymouth getting all Pilgrim credit, since apparently the Mayflower landed here first before traveling on and finally deciding upon Plymouth as their first village in this new colony. What you see above is nighttime P’town with the Pilgrim Monument – built to remind everyone of that fact – standing proud and tall on the right. 🙂
My friend Jean is one of my most loyal and longest-standing readers of the blog and me since I started this whole journey more than 18 years ago. A few months back, she shared photos she’d been inspired to take during a weekend in Galveston (TX) to visit a friend. She offered this explanation for these lovely photos that I’m sharing here (with her agreement) in our first ever guest post: “The island is big on ghosts, and we took one of the several ghost tours. They didn’t convince me of the existence of ghosts, but as we stood outside some of the mansions, I thought of your Urban Entrances. I’m not the photographer you are, but thought I’d share some of the highlights. Note the fruit and corn on one gate and the fencepost. And coreopsis makes a magnificent display in a cemetery–as spectacular as bluebonnets, in my opinion.”
Last photos from the airplane when I left SF after my last US visit in early April, all three in order in which they were taken as our plane flew north along the central valley not long after take-off from SFO. I’m reasonably confident that’s Lake Beryessa in the first photo, and then more of the Snow Mountain Wilderness area.
Looking west from California’s central valley towards Snow Mountain Wilderness & the various reservoirs and natural lakes on the eastern slopes and foothills of that range of mountains, not long after my last take-off from SF in early April.
Sticking with our theme of (snow-capped) mountains, you’ll note that some of those white things in the distance are the snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountains, which run along the western edge of California & at the California Nevada border. Given the time of the photo, this was over the central valley north and east of SF, not too terribly long after our take-off in April. 🙂
Yes, the wharves by SF’s ferry building can count as “coast” on my own blog if I decide they do. And yes, this means I’ve an urgent need to get to some “real” coastline again asap, or we may run dry on images for this series even sooner than the previously-noted country canals. Second to last post from that March – April US swing, already two months ago, goodness me but time flies when you’re chasing postable images. 🙂
Last Pacific coastal shots for a while…though I might have something left from Hong Kong that I could drag out if I had to, but not a very high-quality shot, for sure :-). Bodega head, looking south toward Point Reyes peninsula in the shots below.