THE LAST OF MARTHA'S VINEYARD

I did not bike the next day, rain was predicted.  The weatherman and I were both wrong.  But riding the van gave me the opportunity of retaking some of the photos I had lost.

We caught up with the bikers at the West Chop Lighthouse built in 1817 and run by the Coast Guard.

Some of the bikers were taking a rest and enjoying the view.

I snapped this picture as they were starting off down the hill - and I wished I was with them.

But I had the time to appreciate the wind swept trees in front of the home across the street.

We next caught up with some of the group at the Chilmark Pottery in West Tisbury, a town that was officially incorporated in1892, the last town to do so.
so on Marth's Vineyard.  The Pottery was an active place where you could see a wide variety of hand
made pots, dishes, vases, etc. and observe the
owner throwing clay on his wheel

At the Martha's Vineyard Glassworks we were treated to a glass blowing demonstration, a beautiful
vase in this case that turned a lovely blue as it cooled.

I was fascinated by the display of glass pumpkins, a specialty for the season, and proceeded to buy one. It looks lovely on our dining room table for the Thanksgiving Holidays.

We stopped for lunch at the "7a" in West Tisbury, a small shop exuding the aroma of fresh baked pastries where one could purchase huge delicious sandwiches to share.

 Next door was Alley's General Store.  It  contained the most incredible array of  "stuff" I have
ever seen under one roof -

And it doubled as a post office with these boxes you can now see in antique stores.

Across the street at the town hall/library was the rest room which displayed the sign showing its special type of recycling.

The last stop of the day before retuning to our hotel for the farewell dinner was the Granery Gallery,
to allow me to re-take a couple of the pictures I had lost the night before.  I loved this fence made to resemble a cow.

And this 2 piece statue in the yard, one of many, took my eye.

The next and last day, before heading to the ferry we took a short bike ride to Katama Beach, a 3 mile stretch of barrier beach on one side and a protected salt pond on the other.  It reminded me of Surf City, NJ when I was a child.

Returning to Vineyard Haven for lunch at the Black Dog Tavern, we had the opportunity to see our Ferry arrive to return us to Cape Cod, the start of our way home.

SUMMER ON LONG BEACH ISLAND

Where has the summer gone?? Here it is November and we have had a beautiful, cool summer here in New Jersey - busy as usual, and I find I have taken very few photos. I just realized that my last post was our trip up Pikes Peak in Colorado, before we returned to our shore home. So here I am with a few memories of the past few months here in Surf City - as we here the wind howling outside with the first signs of the coming winter.

Thought there were many beautiful day this summer, my camera comes out most often when the storms are around and the ocean is most interesting.  A strong land breeze always makes nice waves.

Sitting on the dock at the end of our street on summer day waiting for the Laser sailboat race to get within range of my camera lens I was joined by a pair Laughing Gulls.  They have always been a favorite summer visitor of mine - except when they land in our yard to steal the cat food I put out.

I captures these 3 across the bay heading towards the next marker.

Having heard that the Humpback Whales were starting the annual migration south along the Jersey Coast I got up early several morning to sit on the beach at the end of our street with my camera - hoping to capture a shot of a mother and her calf.  The clouds were pretty -

The sunrise spectacular, but the water rough and IF there were any whales out there they were too hard to spot.

However I took the picture of a sailboat heading south on the distant horizon with a much closer gull
flying overhead.

Another calmer morning I sat and watched the waves roll onto shore, and the pelicans skim the surface as the color in the sky brightened - but again saw no whale spouts.

As luck would have it the very next day a humpback breached right off of the end of our street, but I wasn't there to see or record it.  - Maybe next year!

Walking the beach one day we spotted a pair of Long Billed Curlew, and I snapped this one before it flew away,

And of course the Herring Gulls, full time residents are always there, enjoying the shallow pools at low tide.

As the Kite Surfers and Kayakers enjoy the wind and waves.

GOING UP PIKES PEAK IN COLORADO

We are back at the New Jersey shore, and on the first cloudy day since our return I can't avoid remembering our last adventure in Colorado this summer.  Having heard my parents talk about their trip up Pikes Peak in 1923 in their model "T" Ford I have always wanted to go there (by railroad or car, not hike it as many of my younger friends have done).  Every time we have tried it has been closed due to high winds, but this time when a doctor's appointment took us back to Colorado Springs just before we left for NJ we tried again - successfully this time.

A bit of geology of Pikes Peak is, I think very interesting.  The pink granite rocks and stones on Pikes Peak may be well over 2.3 billion years old,  predating the 300 million year old Rocky Mountains.  About one billion years ago, an immense dome of hot molten rock, called magma pushed up from the earth’s core to form what geologists call a batholith. This formation never made it to the surface, but rather remained hidden in the earth’s crust for millions of years. The formation of the Rocky Mountains, and the subsequent appearance of Pikes Peak followed in three relatively recent stages.

The 1st stage was the creation of what geologists call the Ancestral Rockies. This is when the earth’s crust went through some rather intensive sea floor spreading at the mid-Atlantic Ridge. Unable to absorb the crust as fast as it was being created, the stresses on the North American plate were too high and the crust faulted along what is now the same area as the Rocky Mountains. It was at this time that the huge mass of Pikes Peak first surfaced. 

The 2nd stage - Ancestral Rockies and Pikes Peak experienced a period of great erosion which virtually leveled the mountains. The debris from this erosion survives in some of the red sedimentary rocks of the area.  After a period of time when the seawater and additional sedimentary rock covered the area, another up-thrust of the earth’s crust formed the present range of the Rocky Mountains and along with it, pushed up the sunken batholith of Pikes Peak, a massive mountain, made entirely of pink granite.

The 3rd Stage - In more modern days, only 3 million years ago, the erosion caused by glaciers and their runoff in the Pleistocene Ice age have carved many of the features of the mountain.  This erosion is greatly expedited by what many call “frost wedging.” The constant freezing, thawing and refreezing of the water is like driving little wedges into the rock and splitting them apart. At the lower elevations, the water seeps deeply into the microfine joints and cracks found in the pink granite. Then, as it freezes, the water expands and cracks the rock apart into large boulders. At the higher elevations, where the colder temperatures keep the water from seeping in as deeply as below, the rock is split into much smaller pieces.  This can be seen in some of my photos.

We  took the cog railroad to the top - a round trip of about 3 hours

.

Along the way I enjoyed the huge boulders among the Lodge-pole pines, and later as the altitude increased, silhouetted against the blue sky above the fine scree fields.

 At Windy Point, above 12,000 feet (about the same altitude as the top of Crested Butte) we stopped
temporarily at the stone structure that housed the railroad workers who laid the tracks that were completed in October of 1890.

At this point the conductor exited the train to reset the tracks for the train that was due to come down from the peak. 

The vegetation grew even at high

altitudes in the midst of some of

the scree fields. 

Above we could see the train

descending from the peak.             

Ay the summit I refrained from taking our photos in front of the tourist sign.

But thought Chuck looked better up in the clouds, and there were plenty of them!!               

                                    .

ON PIKE'S PEAK

Our time at the top was very limited and at first shrouded in clouds, but gradually they lifted and blue sky began to appear.

 Looking down you could see features and lakes far below.

In 1893, at the age of thirty-six, Katherine Lee Bates, an English professor at Wellesley College had taken a train trip to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to teach a short summer school session at Colorado College. Several of the sights on her trip inspired her, and they found their way into her poem, including the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, the "White City" with its promise of the future contained within its alabaster buildings; the wheat fields of America's heartland Kansas, through which her train was riding on July 16; and the majestic view of the Great Plains from high atop Pikes Peak.  The words came to her at the top of the mountain and she quickly wrote them down. Later, American The Beautiful became our favorite patriotic song.



 

From high above, the Red Rock of the mountains of Garden Of the Gods become visible the the City of Colorado Springs in the background,

Sitting on the edge of the world, one can "see forever",

 But our train awaited to take us back down the mountain.

On the way down, lakes began to appear in the valleys.

The cog railway track circled the mountain as we descended,

We passed one group of Big Horn Sheep, one shaggy one still in the process of losing its winter coat.

 At the Sidling we pulled over to allow the last train of the day to pass.

 At times the angle of descent reached 25%.  We hoped that the cogs and brakes would hold.

And at one point we passed rocks that had to be part of the original Pikes Peak Batholith, still relatively undisturbed.

Small streams and waterfalls followed us down the mountain.

Finally the red rock debris and the city spread out in front of us.