September 30 Thursday

 

The bad news today is I have few pictures. I saved some not used the other day so we will se how it goes. The weather was beautiful again today. I am starting to enjoy my early morning walks by myself. There are a lot of

regulars out and some say good morning or wave in passing just like being at home. Todat we headed down the coast again. It is the same but also always different. Sorry the pictures got out of order again  the big  flat slabs are dried cod fish the most famous food of Portugal. The little fish are sardines like I showed us eating several posts ago. The grape like looking clusters are live snails, if you can get them big enough you can see some trying to make a break for it. The pizza sauce we just found. A bit pricey though

Some days I just am more ambitious than others. We cruised home and ate. We had a couple of things that we had to do. We bought a new expensive mattress pad as our bed at times feels like it is made of the same rock as all the fences. We went to visit a member who is especially friendly to grandma. She is pretty sharp. Coming home we put the bd together. Grandma has dried the sheets so many times saying they still feel damp. I am afraid everything feels a little damp over here. I think it is why the people have so few wrinkles. I must admit the bed does feel better. I love you all.

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Wednesday September 29

 

Today is another gorgeous day. I did my little walk and then we headed down by the ocean. We were just out for a nice walk. Then we noticed this monster backhoe or excavator mounted on a barge digging the channel deeper leading to a new dock area being built. It was huge the pictures don’t do it justice it reached easy 60 feet and was always going as deep as it could reach and dumping the rocks and mud and junk on a long barge. Several times it came up with chains and once an old busted anchor.

I could have watched for hours and several people were, but grandma got me going again. When we walked down by the place we swim at the tide was rising the pool where the crabs were was completely under water. I guess the tides cycle through at different hours. Anyway fewer steps to get in the water and fewer swimmers.

We walked on down the coastline and saw the barge filled with the stuff dredged up go out to dump it in deep water. We later ate and headed back in the afternoon and visited a family but only found the daughter home it was so hot walking. The sign by the bank said it was 88 degrees. We had one family to visit with the elders and hen to the activity. These members are very competitive in their games. It was fun. Hot but good day . I love you all and  grandma showed me the video from the Wyoming temple with caleb whitney and little Ashley spinning around. Kind of miss them.

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September 28 Tuesday

 Today not being Monday the weather was great. When I go for my walk in the morning at 7:00 it is dark. The hours of daylight are slowly shrinking and soon will have a larger impact on when I can do things. This morning for our walk we decided to attempt to visit this old cemetery we can see from the highway off surrounded by cow pastures with tall rock walls.

I think all the walls were built to get the rocks cleaned out of the fields and they make great fencing. When I think about the effort needed to build all these miles and miles of  fences I can’t imagine it. But we need to remember that they have been building them for hundreds of years and once built remain needing few repairs. So back to the walk. We headed out walking up hill straight away from the ocean. We didn’t have to stop and rest but it is a long uphill walk. We finally reached the road we wanted and it soon turned into a dirt road. We had expected this so we continued on. Then the road headed away from where we wanted to go and sort of ended. There was an electric sub station close by

so there has to be another access road on the other side. We started back and found an open gate going through a tall pasture to the back wall. We went across the pasture and soon our shoes and socks were wet. Then the wall was too tall to see over. 

Not all my plans are good ones. We retreated and walked home and left for one weekly district meeting. When we left there we went shopping. Grandma thinks the bed is too hard and wants one of those memory foam mattress pads. While shopping I found these electric scooters and checked them out.

These babies go 16 miles an hour for 25 miles on a charge have brake, tail, and head lights.

We went out to visit families with the elders and it was dark again when we came home. I love you all.

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Rainy Days and Mondays

 

September 27 Monday. That old 70’s tune bt the Carpenters keeps going through my mind. “Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down”. During most of the week the weather is perfect but on p-day not so much. We went over shopping at 9:00 then the elders decided to stay in today giving us the car. With no real plan we set out. Since most of the people we want to visit live over by the chapel that is closed we decided to drive over to Ribeira Grande and just drive around and sort of get to know the area. We had been over there several times with the elders but it is different when I am doing the driving. It is 15 minutes over and it kept raining. We drove to the center of the city and started driving around without using the app for maps. They are proud of an opening in the ground that is an original crater and last erupted ln the 1500,$.

We left here and drove down towards the ocean. The wind was blowing hard and it was raining the waves were really running high. It was nice. We spent quite some time looking and listening this type of waves doesn’t happen all the time.

At first we had it all to ourselves, but cars driving by soon started stopping to see what we were looking at. We drove on and the road turned into a dirt road. And the water was now crashing into cliffs.

And now I get the pictures out of order so much for knowing how to run this stupid thing the last four should have been here. Note the fallen wall they really are just stacked rocks. We soon came to pavement and followed it back to town. Driving along we saw a sign sending us to see a garden. Not so nice but a couple of pictures.

Those leaves are huge larger than trash can lids. We turned out and made a turn to continue when I noticed in passing a sign for a view point and a signal point. Lots of points over here. I had to do a u turn but soon we werw headed out of town and up. We stopped to take a picture of a couple of girls out for a stroll.

We came to the view point an old whale lookout. The cliffs below are supposed to look like faces of someone.

Driving on the signal point turned out to be a lighthouse.

While driving up to see these sites we passed a sign about a lookout over a surfing site. You have to park and hike down a steep road. Grandma hesitated but I persuaded her to go and we started down it was steep and I agreed to turn back in five minutes. We came around the corner and started seeing neat stuff. There was some old bathrooms gone to rack and ruins some old rock rooms that were probably used in processing whales and an old winch for dragging the whales out up thos old rock ramp. Most of the ramp was cut down into the rock and then some was laid lava rock very old very cool.

Now wasn’t that worth the hike. It really started to rain hard on our wa out thank goodness for our north face rain jackets the wind was blowing us back up the slope but it was steep enough we had to stop several times to catch our breath. It needed a lot more time to climb up than it did to walk down. We started driving back and got a panoramic view the steam is from over where we ate lunch last week and where the geothermal power plant is.

 Now we could have found all these sites using google maps but we aren’t the best at knowing what to look for. When the elders came over for tacos and saw the pictures they started looking up on their phone and found the whale lookout and the lighthouse but the hike didn’t show up. Funny what you find when you just drive unafraid. Even on a rainy Monday we seem to find adventure. I love you all.

When I think about how few people actually follow this blog I sometimes want to cut back maybe once a week or once a month. But then I get the nice comments from Laura, Ashley, Jordan, Skye, Jim, and Denise, and I decide to continue for now. Thank you.

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