Return to Castelluccio

Alexandra wanted to return to the flowers of Castelluccio and convinced me to accompany her today. The drive was absolutely as beautiful as she had promised, with changing terrain that gave the impression of several different mountainous areas in the U.S. Unfortunately for you, no photography does justice to landscape like this and you are going to have to visit it in person.




You could do like these bicyclists enjoying the fruit of their labor as they start down from the last pass into the high valley.




I pay attention to economics, and until I saw the valley I couldn't understand why anyone would grow flowers instead of a cash crop. Surely Italian churches and municipalities don't pay huge sums for dried flowers used in a one-day festival. The answer came when I saw the land. It is really most similar to an Alpine meadow, and little more then grass was ever going to grow there. The result of local growing conditions and Italian demand for wildflowers is wonderful to behold.




The town of Castelluccio is on a small hill in the valley.




Here I was amused by the long line of warning signs for a flat, straight road across a meadow of flowers. Control your speed, have snow chains, watch out for deer, cattle, bumps, slick conditions, rain, snow, two other things that are obscured from this angle, and last, an exclamation point that covers all other potential hazards not explicitly marked.




This is the hill opposite our lunch spot, seen as we drove away two delicious and friendly hours later.




Last view of Castelluccio, seen from the far end of the valley from where we entered.




Michael