192. Worcester Art Museum

Week 192   3/15/19

Worcester Art Museum   

This museum is always worth a trip. This visit our time was limited due to a misunderstanding of museum hours. We saw mostly the special exhibits including a beautiful display of glass with several Tiffany pieces.

Our favorite exhibit was a comparison of many Monet canvases of Waterloo Bridge. As it turns out, we had seen several of these before at the Wellesley Davis Museum, The Rochester art museum, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Denver Art Musuem.

This was Paul's favorite painting at the museum today:

And some fun furniture.

And we particularly enjoyed a large exhibit of Japanese prints called Travels with Hiroshige but we were hustled out of the museum at closing time and didn't get a chance to take a photo. Here is a stolen screenshot from the museum website.

189. Hawai'i Part 1

Week 189  2/23/19

Finally our long-awaited trip to Hawaii with Lucy and Lenny. They have been planning this trip to celebrate their 30th anniversary (actually last year) using a time-share trade on the big island and a B&B on Maui for the second week. They had two bedrooms at each place and asked us to come along! This year will be our 40th anniversary so it seemed well-timed and a great opportunity to spend some quality time with Lucy and Lenny.





Of course we have many more photos than I can put here. Many of these were taken by Lucy.

For our first week we stayed on the west side of Hawaii, "The Big Island." It's the dry side and most of the landscape looks like this - lava rubble. But there is a lot going on with the town of Kailua, national reserve and some national historic parks.

Pu'uhonua O Hōnaunau National Historical Park

Greenwell Farms coffee plantation. They also grow citrus and macadamia nuts. This enthusiastic tour guide was nearly hit by a dropping avocado right after this photo was taken.

Honoli'i Beach watching surfers. The water was pretty calm on this day, though.

Lucy and Becky took a lei making class with three other tourists on this woman's porch.

Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park

We drove up the coast to Kapaau and saw lots of humpback whales on the way. On the way back, we traveled across the hills from which we could see the coast better. The landscape was beautiful up there.

Lava Lava Beach Club was a fun place to visit. Beautiful beach, boat rentals and tours, nature walk and a very nice restaurant and club. We intended to go back for dinner but didn't make it.

Lenny and Paul played golf.

Akaka Falls State Park. We see rainbows everywhere we go (and did for the entire two weeks).

Volcanoes National Park

This is the crater rim early in the morning as the mist rose, revealing the crater as we watched.

There were many places to see evidence of the recent eruption and subsequent earthquakes.

People leave leis as offering to the goddess Pele.

We took an unforgettable hike into the main crater, a 400 foot elevation change. The entire trail was beautiful. This trail reopened only a few days ago.

Here we are in the crater and warned not to go past the ropes.

 

At Volcanoes NP is a large petroglyph area.

Waipi’o Valley. We didn't take the very steep walk down to this isolated off-grid community.

 

188. Craft Roots

Week 188.  2/14/19

On Valentines Day we decided to go to Craft Roots to see some live music and taste some local beer.

Just a singer and guitarist. This woman has a good voice. Someone in the crowd was encouraged to sing. He was -- OK.

A blurry photo of me at the front door. The woman who owns this place and brews all the beer also does the art and decor.

187. Blackstone River

Week 187  2/4/19


 We started out on a nice trail along the Blackstone River. The weather was fine.

The rising and falling of the river and the ice made some interesting sculptures.

At the end of the hike we ran into Earl, an old work colleague of Paul's who recently retired and is an avid canoe rider. He told us about a bike trail to visit farther along the river. This was so beautiful and we plan to go back here for a longer hike.

186. Finishing up the project and dreaming of paradise!

Week 186  1/25/19

And here they are all painted!

185. Art project - Part 1

Week 185  1/19/19

Well, this is different - our first craft project adventure. We are getting into the mood for our upcoming trip to Hawaii by making a couple of (cheap) ukuleles from kits. The instructions aren't so great but no parts seem to be missing or broken.

184. New England Wildlife Center

Week 184  1/11/19

I've been wanting to show Paul the New England Wildlife Center for some time. It's a non-profit wildlife hospital in South Weymouth. Dad and I brought an injured homing pigeon here years ago and we took a tour at that time. Paul and I did the same today. Many of the animals can't be photographed and apparently they have a smaller population in the winter, but we still got to see quite a bit. There are areas for quiet animals and those needing special care, rooms for surgery and education displays. Two young men showed us around.