Windmills

We made a side trip today to visit a UNESCO site in Holland. We got a guided tour of a set of windmills, some of which have been working since the 15th century. We got to go inside and see the actual workings. No photos of the inside, but here are some landscapes.


























A windmill in action.

And the modern version of a windmill--an Archimedes screw.



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Location:Kinderhijk

Three Days in Amsterdam

We are now nearing the end of our third day in Amsterdam. It's a nice city, but in August it's pretty crowded. Right now Sail Amsterdam is going on--a visit from tall ships from all over. In addition to tourists, everyone here owns two bicycles. It's a challenge to keep from getting run over. Traffic laws apparently don't apply to bicycles. Although there are bike lanes, they ride them on the sidewalks as well.

We had a nice tour our first day, taking in a lot of the historical sights. Since then we've been on our own. Yesterday we went to the Rembrandt Museum, mainly to see the Night Watch and some ver Meers. The former is very impressive, but the museum didn't have as many ver Meers as we expected. Frankly, the museum was kind of disappointing.

We tried to get into the van Gogh museum, but the line was unacceptably long. We bought ticket tickets online for today instead. That's the way to go--you pick a time and get to go in via a special line. The van Gogh museum was very impressive. It's maybe the best organized museum I've ever visited. We really enjoyed it.

We've done a lot of walking--7.5 miles both of the first two days. But today we used the tram a lot. It's very easy to use and one-on-one and two-day passes are a real bargain.

Here are a few photos.


























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Test blog

Puppy pictures













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Western Journey continued III

Visalia is very close to Sequoia NP, which was our next destination. We spent a good part of the day driving through the park and looking at big trees. We took a hike down to the General Sherman tree. Sequoias are weird trees. General Sherman is dead at the top, but keeps on growing around. According to the park, the General adds the equivalent of a whole tree every year. I wondered--what kind and size of tree, but there was no one to ask. Afterwards we drove to Yosemite and toured from the south entrance to the valley. We spent the night at an inferior lodge associated with the NP. Worst room of our trip.













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Western Journey Continued II

The third day was driving with no sights--from St. George Utah to Visalia CA on the outskirts of Sequoia NP. Ugly country. We did stop at an urgent care in Bakersfield to get Susan's eye looked at. She abraded her eye with one of her eye droppers. The clinic didn't see anything serious, but prescribed an antibiotic for safety's sake. She's much better now.


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Western Journey Continued

My posts have to be shorter because the app I'm using can't handle very may pictures even when I reduce their size.

From Grand Canyon, we headed north to Zion National Park. Very red. Much more personal than GCNP. You're a lot closer to the scenery. We got lucky as we entered the park--we saw a herd of sheep. We took a walk through the park as the canyon narrowed just as the sun set.
















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Western Journey

We're now half way through our trip. It's Susan's birthday. We will celebrate tonight at a nice restaurant in Ashland (where my sister Becky lives). Then tomorrow we'll take a tour of Oregon wineries. Becky has arranged for a driver so we won't have to worry about our consumption. There are an amazing number of wineries close by. We have tried to pick some good ones.

So far our trip has taken us from Georgetown through Clovis, NM to Flagstaff and our first NP stop at the Grand Canyon. That has been our only bad weather day. It rained and drizzled on and off so the pictures the first day aren't very good. The weather was better the second day as we left the park.















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Test blog

Testing.




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Be back soon--Getting ready for a trip out west. Pictures to follow soon. I may also try to get some of the pictures from France up now that I have BlogSpot working again (I hope).

Belated post from France

Testing to see if I can post some of my pictures from the Seine cruise.










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