Memorial Day, Remember?

Is it too late to put up some pics from Memorial Day?



This 7 day time delay for posting is evidence of a long running disturbing shift in free blogging time over here at 'in the valley'. I can make excuses for that with the best of them: The care and feeding of the bloggerette... long hours with fewer people to do much more work over at the day job... facebook and twitter dissolving the will to put more than a 140 characters into posting... a subtle growing senility...

Yes, back in the day we were pumping out 5 or so blog posts a week over here. Now......ehhh, not so much. We've been about a week back-logged and things seem to have leveled out at about 2 posts a week. But fear not oh, faithful readers. The fervor is still there, just not the blogging time lately. At any rate, free time and busyness are always subject to change without notice so we'll see how things play out. One thing is for sure, 'in the valley' will press on...

But back to Memorial Day. Here in Ludlow the parade route runs close to home, and the thumping of drums had me and the little girl hustling out for a look while giving Kelly a well deserved bit of sleep-in time. We got to the parade a little past midway and just in time to see some traditional Portuguese dancers go by.



For the uninitiated, the Portuguese element is very, very strong in this town. Not to take away from the long standing French, Polish and Irish influences here but the Portuguese, well, come down here sometime, you'll see.



This works out well for the town in food and entertainment; as the Portuguese are very fond of both.





After the parade, I broke the surly bonds of home life, handed a refreshed Kelly the conn, and escaped on the motortbike for a holiday look around the valley.

Before long, the newly planted fields of Whately were whirring by my peripherals.





Then into the thick spring greenery of Deerfield and Montague...



...were a pit stop was in order for a closer look at a storm torn tree, which was miraculously rent asunder without breaking any of the delicate tombstones of this ancient graveyard.



Just as last spring and summer were probably the rainiest in recent memory; this year is shaping up to be the windiest and stormiest. They've sure been coming strong, fast and frequently. I can't remember ever seeing so many trees go down.

Moving on, the Connecticut river was low and slow below as I zoomed by and into Montague.



An hour or so left, There was time for a hurried dash up route 2 as far as Erving, where a cool roadside antiques/craft store/deli served as the turn-around point on my cruise.





A quick break, a few more pics, and alas the holiday weekend was complete.



Time to set a return course...