The Realm

Finally have time to post more pics. I'm still busy with gaming so this will be very slow to get finished. Day 4 I was really sick and probably shouldn't have gone anywhere but I did. We drove to a park and the best thing about it was the bird show. This park was called Monestario de Piedra. The stone monastery.



There were several neat castles on the way there.



One thing I really enjoyed was seeing all the sunflower farms. This one there is a castle on a hill in the distance.





I love the windmills on the way. They are huge and I was happy to see them.



There were a few of these bull billboards on the way. From the way I remember the story these used to be the symbol of a wine but the government made everyone take all billboards down because it was distracting drivers. But people grew up counting the bulls and protested. So they allowed just the bulls to be put back so long as there was no text on them. I think the whole story is a load of bull. Billboards don't distract drivers. That's a stupid excuse. We have tons of them in the US and they make long trips interesting. That or Americans are over all better drivers. And to put them up with no text is also dumb because unless a local tells you what these are visitors will find them amusing but confusing. Well at least they are there but yeah just another lack of freedom really.



More lovely sunflowers and windmills.



I really enjoyed the drive because the day was sunny and bright but mostly because of the landscape. I was impressed with how much this area looks like parts of the California desert though something was still not right that would keep me from being fooled that it was.



A tunnel in the mountain. I am a mused by things like this because we have no mountains in Florida.



Though this came out blurry I really like it because it looks like we're going really fast. Also these kinds of tunnels remind me of the old roadrunner/coyote cartoons.



So at the park they had a birds of prey flight show. This is a common buzzard. This was a good place to practice flying bird photography because I kind of knew where they would land. Also when I got here I got to hold a Great Horned Owl. I posed for the pic and was really surprised how they encouraged me to get so close to the point I had my cheek on his face. He was so soft! I'm also amused that I flew all those thousands of miles to hold an American species haha. I didn't have a choice though. That was the bird that was out for that day for people to hold. It was a very cool experience.



This is a Caracara. These are native to south Florida. I have seen one once in the wild.



The rest are of a griffin vulture. This was my fave because I got to see such a large bird flying. I took lots of pics. I also got to see this bird in the wild and add it to my lift list which just rocked. I love how huge this was. Bigger than me as far as wing span. I like this because the guy is there for scale.







This is one of my faves. In this up stroke he looks huge and menacing. It's wicked and I love it. I don't usually like people in my pics but these really help for a sense of scale and how low they flew.







These two were in a cage and preening each other so sweetly. I love vultures. I want to hug one.

So yes very cool show. But I felt terrible and the next day I stayed home and took it easy because my cold was worse. So no Day 5. I think this was when hurricane Irma was hitting Florida too so I was also worried about that and keeping an eye on traffic and weather for Chris since I had access to it and the radar.

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