Got to read about the "Pirate Queen" when I get back home. The remains of one of her castles was behind our B&B on an island in Maam, County Galway. Evidently, she was quite a character. Wonder why I didn't know about her.
More typical Irish weather lately. As one pub keeper put it, "It only rains three hundred days a year." But even when it's raining sideways, sometimes filtered sunshine peeks through and illuminates up a mountainside far off, lending a mystic aura to the landscape.
Some visitors describe Galway as "melancholic" and one can see why. Others praise the solitude and stark beauty. I wonder what it's like living day-to-day in that white cottage in all that lonely countryside.
I pick out routes with remote mountain passes as we make our way north to Crossmolina. We pass lochs with centuries-old sporting lodges built and maintained by British aristocrats and off-limits to Irish tenant-farmers in the old days.
As I mentioned last year, memories of the Great Famine permeate the country. If you've forgotten about it for a day, there'll be a memorial beside a lonely road in the middle of nowhere to remind you. In Westport, Country Mayo, is the national memorial - the bronze sculpture "Coffin Ship" with skeletons strung about as rigging.
It's eerie, but poignant. Makes me appreciate the Irish breakfast I ate this morning.
Just got an email from my daughter, Annie. Our next grandchild is a little girl! We'll see her in September.
Life goes on.
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Something about that shade of red I like and I try to capture it every November.
Took a day to wander over the line in New Hampshire with a friend while there were still some leaves to see. Have always liked this view of Mount Chocorua behind the lake of the same name.
The sugar maples hadn't dropped all their yellow leaves yet, as this one displays before a November mist on Kezar Lake back across the line in Maine.
There's something about sunlight in November. Can't quite describe it, but it brings similar feelings every year at this time. Here it is coming into my kitchen from the west in late afternoon.
This is up on Smart's Hill where my wife and I like to sit as daylight dissipates. The mountains were shrouded as rainclouds broke up after the deluge. It all made for a tranquil blue mood. Seems like the road to winter, but we're not quite there yet.
It's not far away though as I see in this early dawn shot of Mount Washington from my back porch.
