Musings

Gulls/Terns and surfers under the marine layer. Here on this SoCal beach, lifeguards use red pickups.

Police? Surveyors? close one side of a bridge (out of frame, right)…fortunately for us, not our direction. (Yay!)

Random rooftop critters. Extra points if you noticed the pigeon before this mention.

Note: lawn bowling is not bocce or pétanque.

This sample suggests that redwoods are not an urban species, or just a NoCal species that does not like SoCal.

Dramatic green lighting on this SoCal Episcopal church. So Cali.

Apologies: too fried to do more than extended captions. Luvya.

Posted at 12:31 AM | Comments Off on No rain today

I think this morning we drove under the last of the dense cloud layers that we’re likely to see in Cali. I enjoyed seeing the sun on the flanks of the hills…

…and ahead of us as we climbed into the visible humidity.

We even found at least two large herds of mechanical dragons.

Then, we crossed a pass, and, zip, no more clouds.

And into the city, the giant metro area. This species is the city flower. A showy choice as you’d expect for LA.

Here’s the City Hall tower; you’ve seen it in many movies and TV shows.

And, in the busy train station, a for-real shoeshine stand.

Here’s the busy corridor that crosses under the tracks, allowing access to each of the tracks above. Cops arrived in the golf cart; the fine is at least $1500 for going up to the tracks without a valid ticket, the sign said. We just didn’t get caught. Heh.

BTW, this city traffic, wow, exhausting. Sleepy-time for this blahger….

Posted at 11:00 PM | Comments Off on Change of perspective

More rain as we continued our drive. For a while, with vineyards.

With rain rain rain, comes swollen rivers, irrigation canals, and ditches.

Dry in this tunnel. Named to honor Robin Williams.

Wow! Big bridge! Clearing sky!

Little boxes. North of Daly City.

Computers! A whole museum of them! I give you just one: a 1951 Whirlwind rack, MIT (the label said; I assume it’s correct!).

The giant, new Apple doughnut-building, side view. No entrance for civilians.

Instead, we can visit the roof of this “visitor center” aka Apple Store +. Note that the fancy white stone flooring (manufactured, polished quartz?) around the VC under the wide overhang, which is good for controlling sunlight/sun-heat, that stone paving is slippery when wet. Like today. On the order of a dozen security/employees were stationed outdoors under the overhang to remind people to be careful. Since I took my daily 30-minute walk circling the building over and over, I was reminded several times, then took to walking on the pebbly surface (not slippery) under the shrubby trees, as the rain was slacking off…. [I think the shrubby trees are Russian olives….] I’m all about form, function, and aesthetics, and the VC building was lovely. But. Slippery flooring? Hrrrumph. Also, the glass sandwiches making the railing for the rooftop viewing area: made in Dubai, and whoops in the Cali weather they expanded and had to be heated/dried (!!!) before they could fit together and be assembled properly. Heh.

Fine sunset over strawberry fields. They fumigate (gas) under the plastic; not at all green or friendly to Ma Earth…a good reason to buy organic berries. We saw two rainbows today…no photos of one, lousy ones of the other. Imagine.

Posted at 11:49 PM | Comments Off on Rain, some broken clouds

Isn’t that the cutest low-profile lighthouse? Cali-cute!

And there’s the Mar Pacifico—today not terribly pacifico. You can’t see the wind and blowing rain. Elegant, enduring seastacks….

Love the marching swells cut below by the long shallow sea-edge profile.

NoCal tourism touts the elk herds. Here’s one. Grazing and resting. Classic elk-life, when carnivores are not threatening.

Coastal NoCal also hosts trees—not only the giant redwoods pictured here.

During the rainy season, the trees and clouds may merge. This shot is from a high-elevation meadow called in these parts a prairie. [Note: this use of “prairie” is not a Boontling term.]

We took our walk in a section of the 🎶redwood forest🎶 we had not walked in before. I remember almost always seeing lone trees, or perhaps pairs. Here’s a circle of relative newbie trees. I did not find out if they are clones of the dead stump in the center, or if the rotting stump provided a hospitable microenvironment for whatever seeds were at its base to germinate.

For contrast: lichen growth on twists of redwood bark at a tree base.

Post title refers to a Cali term we kept encountering on road signs…which seemed to have been a pet term by some transportation engineers, rather than a road situation of great distinction for drivers. The first we encountered had a small curb between the two lanes that otherwise seemed like a regular two-lane road; another had merely a marked off paved area about a foot wide between the two directions—no elevation change whatsoever—and two lanes each way. Diversity in them thar divided roads….

Posted at 10:33 PM | Comments Off on Divided road

We drove up-valley for quite a while—flat agricultural fields, some green, some brown. And in the sky above, many geese formations. This one was the largest.

Finally, we got to the upper valley, and the hills closed in on us. We speculated that on the east side of the pond, some of the shrubs on the slopes would be gorse; not here.

Climbing out of the valley, we saw gushing streams and the clouds that fed them. We drove through cloud, even. Lucky us!

Descending the Other Side, we found the tree-giants. Rain makes the trees happy, and low-light makes the camera work hard. Nice effect, however.

At some point, if you keep going west on this continent, you find the salt water of the Pacific, and perhaps a marina before dark. I heartily support the Spirit of America, with all minuscules or two inserted majuscules.

Posted at 10:05 PM | Comments Off on Changing landscapes

In the wee hours we heard serious wind; I was glad I was cozy indoors. When we ventured out on the road we found downed trees and many branches and so on. See the organic matter in our lane?

Farther along our trail, we found a rooftop water tower structure that lacked its tank. Absence is okay.

We picked a nearby place to eat, and whatta view! We watched the street become dark.

Best beet salad ever. All beets, no foliage.

And, as a timely capper, we reached the streetcar enclosure and started to figure out when the trolley would arrive, and presto the rain began. Lucky us, our stop was a mere 100 feet from the door to our hotel.

And now we are ensconced, warm and safe. Happy. Happy.

😀

Posted at 10:31 PM | Comments Off on Shine and rain

When I walked this morning, I caught a good glimpse of the mountains, all lined up on the skyline beneath the clouds.

I also found a pair of kissing bugs. Yellow ones.

Posted at 10:33 PM | Comments Off on Out comma about

Sometimes it’s fun to start with a tightly cropped view of a world you’re momentarily visiting…

…then zoom out a bit…

…and then a lot. In the lower left (at Dock 10, Salmon Bay) in this marina just upstream of the locks we visited the other day, is the good ship Loki, presenting the starboard side view in the shot above, and only its anchor chain/rope in the first photo…. Thank you, Droney and the Guru, for the third shot….

Posted at 8:09 PM | Comments Off on Harbor views

Lichen threatens survival of shrub.

Road to nowhere.

Tree in glass box*.

* in an Apple store—open to the sky, so not a closed box.

Posted at 8:36 PM | Comments Off on Caption exercise

We always enjoy our visit to the locks in the Ballard neighborhood, NW Seattle. The official name of this waterway is Salmon Bay; it’s the seaward link for the waters of Lake Washington, which flow into the Shilshole (say: shill-shoal) Bay of Puget Sound. The passage is also called the Lake Washington Ship Canal. When they’re migrating upriver, visitors can see salmon jumping in the fish ladder; not today.

However, we did visit these statues, which mimic wave curls. They’re by Paul Sorey, and called “Salmon Waves” (2001).

This is the Salmon Bay Railroad Bridge across the Bay/Ship Canal. It’s a bascule bridge; it is due to be replaced with a vertical-lift bridge very soon, which means today was probably our last chance to see it….

Posted at 7:41 PM | 2 Comments »