In July, we had another one of our all day excursions to the towns. Here is an impressive sight in the town of Lanaja. The building is an old wheat silo built to store and ration the wheat harvest. You can see more than a dozen stork nests, there are almost as many more on the other side. These nests can measure up to NINE FEET diameter and weigh several tons.

Spain is one of the world leaders in alternative energy. Here you see a field that used to grow crops now being used to "harvest" sunlight and turn it into energy. The governement subsidizes both solar and wind generated energy, and they are being a significant source of income for many of the outlying towns.

I have told you in the past that many of the towns are decreasing in population as the people move to the cities and larger villages. However, many of them do not forget their roots. They take the money they earn in the city, and use it to fix up houses in the towns, to be used as a vacation property, like the magnificent bulding to the left.

The province of Zaragoza is very dry, and the countryside very barren. Teruel, the province to the south, is mostly mountainous, with many springs and rivers and much more rain. You will find many of the houses in the villages there with wonderful flower gardens growing out front.

In the 1980s, a plague swept through the region, killing most of the elm trees in the area. In this particular town, the people have left the trunk standing of the last elm tree that grew here