Baylands III

I know I promised my next blog would be the landscapes, but a holiday came up and it was one I had pics to share.

As we were getting ready to leave the duck pond for Rancho San Antonio, we saw a few red-winged blackbirds headed over towards the ranger's station. Since neither of us felt we successfully got one with the camera, we agreed to go there and check things out. I'm so glad we did, because instantly I saw a few landscape photo ops I had never envisioned. The lighting was just perfect. Dark moody skies, bright flowers in the foreground, and sunlight hitting the middle ground that was all golden grasses with scattered trees.




Neither of the two above showed that middle ground, but the brightness of the rockrose balanced the moody skies.

Looking east from the garden/picnic area behind the ranger's station.


Looking west back over the bay inlets.


Looking east again, but from a different position. I don't think this one is as good, but I do love the plant on the left.

Tatooine? - Sky Watch Friday

Geek alert!

I had no idea I was living on Tatooine* - especially with all that water. But look - a double sunset!!! It's a new hope ;)

(click to enlarge)

I didn't photoshop this... I didn't move the camera while taking the shot... I didn't double exposure it... it just happened! I didn't see it with the naked eye either. It is what the camera saw at Elkhorn Slough in Moss Landing, CA.

I hope someone can explain to me what it is... it doesn't look like a sundog.

For more Sky Watch Friday, click on the image below.


*For the non-geeks... that's a Star Wars reference... you know, where Luke is gazing at the sunset across the desert moisture farm? It's a classic image.

Day FourB - Birds & Mammals

Well, I've dragged this vacation slideshow on long enough... here's the last installment ;)



Once I hit Highway One, it seemed my wildflower spotting was over with. There was the occasional lupine show on a hillside, but no good places to pull over and set up for some picture taking. But it was a beautiful day, and with it being in the middle of the week, a lot less cars on the road. This was a Thursday. On my way down it was a Monday, and being the day after Easter, likely accounts for the additional traffic.

I would occasionally spot a vista point sign and decide to pull over. At one of them, I spotted a squirrel begging for food... and shortly thereafter, in a private moment with another right in plain sight. Of course, it is spring!

I then moved onto another spot and when I pulled in a crow just as haughty as can be, chose not to fly off no matter how close I was to it. (i only got 3 feet away - i didn't want to scare it off) There I also saw in the water, an egret doing it's thing.

After trying pretty hard for a while to wish some turkey vultures near me to try to practice a little more on flying pictures and my camera settings for that, I captured a decent one. I would so love to have one back again with it flying right towards me. But this is alright for now.

Well, I had taken enough shots there... I was also getting more than enough sun ;) So I got back in the car and headed north again. Just north of San Simeon, at Piedras Blancas, I saw the sign for the Elephant Seal Vista Point and I turned in there. A LOT of people were there, but the state built plenty of parking for all, so it wasn't too bad in the lot. The pathway to see them is a bit wall-to-wall, but really, who can blame people for wanting to see them. Heck, I was one too.
I took a LOT... and i mean a LOT of pictures of them. These were the weaners... meaning they were weaned from their mamas and their mamas had ditched them to live on their own. The weaners stick around on the beach honing their swimming skills until it's time for them to try the open waters.

These ones were silvery which means they've finished their molt and probably will be one of the first remaining on the beach to take off.

I also spotted this bird just hanging out with the elephant seals. It minded it's own business and so did the seals.
Bird identified: Young Western Seagull
Thanks to Charlie of 10,000 Birds who responded to my mom's inquiry. Thank you!

Day Four - Part One

Well, Day Four had so many photo-ops that I had to break it into 2 parts.


After quite an uncomfortable night trying to sleep, I awoke before dawn and just waited and waited for the sun to rise and put some nice colors on the Carrizo Plain. You see, I was camping in a canyon and I knew that the wind blows one way in the afternoon and the opposite in the morning. What I didn't know is that in the middle of the night the wind goes down the canyon and then it apparently comes back up the canyon an hour later and another hour later back down and so on. It was so annoying and in the 30s so I needed to keep making sure no wind was coming in my sleeping bag and I put my "beach towel-come-pillow" at the top of the bag, scrunched down and then put my jacket between me and the zipper to block that and somehow managed to tuck the top lip of the bag down under the bottom lip... of course as i move around while i sleep that gets loose and i have to start over again. It was best when the wind was moving from feet up. You may be asking, well why didn't she put her body 90 degrees to the wind? Good question... I was afraid of those little holes in the hillside which I imagined had rattle snakes in them and didn't want them getting any ideas that my sleeping back was another hole for them to come in. I'm sure that was a ridiculous fear, lol.

So anyway, in the morning the sun finally came up and I walked down to the Selby Rocks to get what I consider to be one of the best I took. The sunlight left a pinkish hue on the rocks... and there was just enough shadows to make it interesting.


The night before I talked with a couple who was also camping in Selby Campground and they let me know about Shell Creek Road going from Hwy 58 north. They had driven down that way and saw all kinds of people picnicking and taking pictures. I thank them so much for that tip because I had not seen mention of it before my trip when i googled california wildflowers. Without that tip I would not have seen this (goldenfields with oak)


or this! (baby blue eyes)


And i also would not have seen an antelope! First time ever for me.. and I was shocked as the valley was inhabited with ranchers and wineries.

Pronghorn Antelope


all this before noon!

Day Three - Carrizo Plain

I didn't end up camping out "last night" for two reasons... one, had to charge up my mp3 player and phone, and two, i didn't know of a campground nearby to Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. I didn't do a lot of preparation ahead of time. So I got a hotel in Lancaster... now THAT i should have checked out... it cost way to much, especially for the location. But I did have a good night's sleep and it was warm. The wind in that area was awful, so I probably would have been really uncomfortable anyway.

So after my complimentary breakfast I took off for Carrizo Plain a couple hours away.. 3 I think. It's a good thing I went by the south entrance on the way to Antelope Valley the day before. This gave me an extra chance to see the entrance sign which wasn't very visible from the eastern direction. It also looked simply like a ranch road, not one to some National Monument.

This is Soda Lake Road - dirt road in the middle of a drainage plain. Glad it hadn't rained in at least a couple weeks. I drove around a rattlesnake crossing the road at one point. I saw it's tongue flickering about sensing my car and hoped that it wouldn't get scared and strike at the tires. That might have killed it, and I didn't want to be responsible for that. I also hope no one else ran it over because there were about 4 vehicles I pulled over to let by periodically. I didn't like them right behind me when I wanted a nice casual drive watching the view...

For the birding folks who may pop by... Here's a Western Kingbird. He was sitting on a nearby fence at KCL Campground where I decided to pull in for lunch. There were a few shade trees there... well, kinda shady... they were pretty thin.

Here's a view of Soda Lake and it's boardwalk where surely the majority of visitors go. It's nice there was something there to encourage people NOT to walk on the "shoreline" and not on the lakebed either.

Down on the boardwalk I saw two quail, but didn't get my camera focused in time before they disappeared into the shadows of the rabbit brush. Overhead there were ravens flying and near the end of the boardwalk, I noticed a jackrabbit bounding through the brush. It was quite large... at least 24" from nose to tail. I managed to get a picture of it, but it's impossible to make out through all the brush, so it didn't make the cut. There weren't a lot of animals out and about, but it was at the heat of the day so I wouldn't expect too many.

And to close the day... a sunset picture from the road down below Selby Campground.

It was a pretty cold night with the wind constantly blowing and every hour changing directions from east to west back to east again. Wasn't comfortable, but it was dry at least.

Day Two - Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve

After freezing a bit overnight at Morro Strand due to the dew point being greater than the air temperature which was in the low 40s, I got a few hours sleep and then got up about 20 minutes after the sun rose. I then quickly packed up with no hope of drying out the sleeping bag and tarp before late afternoon and took off for Antelope Valley. I drove a little farther south on Highway 1 until about San Luis Obispo where I headed east on 166. This took me through some nice country and past the entrance to Carrizo Plain where I'd be going after Antelope Valley.

This was a cool site on Hwy 166

I didn't really map out the drive, but I discovered that I would end up being on I-5... no matter though, it would take me through Gorman where I would then hook up with 138. The hills in Gorman weren't quite popping with blooms yet, although the occasional bush type lupine was blooming.

I saw this peek of the Antelope Buttes from 138... about 20 minutes away I think. I was driving while I snapped this on my point and shoot.

Boy that was nothing compared to this...

The sunshine and air temps were wonderful, but it was super windy. I would guess sustained winds at 20-25 with gusts up to 35. It was very difficult to switch lenses and not get any dust in the camera. It also made it near impossible to get any poppy macro shots, but it did let me capture this one, lol. At least they look silky, that's pretty cool, i didn't notice that with my eye.

There are just too many pictures to choose from in my album, so I'll close with this one... a Joshua Tree with the San Bernardino Mountains behind.

Day One - San Jose to Morro Bay

I drove down Highway One as I've never done that before south of Monterey. It's a wonderful drive and I was fortunate to not hit too many pockets of fog.

I posted a slideshow because my highlights of the day alone were whittled down to only 29, lol, only ;)

But I have three total favorites... I'll post these too.

First, a location just south of Carmel Highlands. Great spot!

Next, an adorable and lucky pic of a bird... I'm 99% sure it's a Marbled Godwit.

And finally a great sunset picture... very cool cloud formation.

Day Six continuedThe Memorials

Lest I forget the rest of the trip, I had better finish up my vacation blog. Especially since my mom has finished already.
When last I posted, I said I'd get to the memorials... what was the second half of our day in DC. After we left the botanic gardens we were quite hungry, so we wandered off the mall in search of food. With all these large buildings around, surely there was a plethora of eateries nearby. I'm still confused as to where they all were, but we wound up at the nearest metro station and just outside of there was a sandwich shop. This was THE BEST sandwich I had ever had, and I thought nothing could top Togo's, but I found one that did! Potbelly Sandwich Works. I had their Italian and to my surprise it was toasted... yummm... Quizno's had toasted but it's gross in comparison. Potbelly's was just the right amount of meat, cheese, and bread and the sandwich was just the right size... not too big, but enough to satiate.

Since we were right by the metro, we decided to hop on and get off at the Smithsonian stop and head back down the mall through the memorials. We headed down the path, and I took a few shots of Washington Monument. Here's the best one... it was difficult timing the cars and getting a decent composition.

Some of the sites we saw when we arrived at Washington Monument are the Smithsonian Castle, the Reflecting Pool and Lincoln Memorial and WWII Memorial, and even a slight glimpse of the White House.

The skies let a cool glimpse of light through while we were there.

We next headed down to the WWII Memorial which we both wanted to see. The last time I was in DC was 1985 and my mom was there like the month before the WWII Memorial was dedicated.

While resting up there for the next bit of walking... I spied a duck on the waterfall of the WWII Memorial and couldn't resist taking it's picture.

Next we wandered down towards the Vietnam Memorial, our next stop and one I wanted to see a lot. I remembered it from my last trip, but I definitely had a different perspective then. On the way down, we noted the reflecting pool had waaayyyy too many geese. It also was past due for some cleaning as it wasn't all that reflective.

Here's the shots of the Vietnam Memorial and the Women's Memorial which I didn't remember at all.
  
We thought about going to the Lincoln Memorial next, but I was dead tired and didn't want to walk any farther. We then headed to the nearest bus stop to wait for a ride to the nearest Metro station. Ok, so we could have rested a few minutes and hoofed it to the Metro as it was only 1 more mile, but I really really didn't want to go any further, so we waited for the next bus which was 30 minutes later. We had just missed the last, but who knew they ran that spaced out and in rush hour no less!

Day SixWashington DC

Sadly, we spent only one day in Washington. There just wasn't time enough to see anywhere near what we wanted to see. On the plus side, although we were way far south in Alexandria, we were on an express bus route that would take us to the metro station which we could rely on for the day's sightseeing.
We got off the Metro at Capitol South which was practically right outside the Library of Congress. My mom had pushed to go there both before we left and right then, but I wasn't all that interested, but since we were right there, I said ok. I am glad we went in. I was blown away by it's opulence and grandeur. I also thought it was interesting that they had a display room of Bob Hope's career.
Here's a few pictures showing it's grandeur. It wasn't easy getting pictures, so I'm sorry for the poor quality, but if you haven't been before, I think you get the idea.


After a couple hours in there taking a tour, we went outside and decided to walk down the mall. I really didn't have any specific plans. I kind of like it that way.
Here's a picture of the capitol building. It appears that the statuary crowning the dome is surrounded by scaffolding. I guess it's under construction as well as the whole backside, like just about everything else in the DC area.

We then wandered down the pathway on the south side of the mall and ran across the botanic gardens. That was a great place to end up. As it should be, it was tremendously beautiful and so incredibly lush.
Here are several pics... I will post them small, but click on them and you'll see a larger one.
Row 1: Entrance landscaping, Bee on familiar yellow flower, Water Lily

Row 2: Water Lily, Ceramic Tile Wall from UC Davis, Glass Sculpture in pond

Row 3: Rio Grande Botanic Garden display, Sculpture pond view, Dinnerplate sized Hibiscus (i swear!)

Row 4: Rio Grande display with Am. Indian museum in background, interior display, same, unknown awesome flower spike.

The grounds were incredible and well taken care of. The only drawback was that more plants were not labeled. It was kind of random what was and what wasn't.
And for my crowning glory... well of that day... a quick slideshow. Enjoy! :)

Look for some pics coming soon on my Mom's blog too!
I will continue Day Six in the next post... the memorial section!