I have now missed two months of posting on the blog. It has been a while since I even missed a month. Many things have happened in life. We bought a house. We sold a house. We are working on getting the new house ready to move in to.
I do have some pictures from over the Christmas holidays to share. I will try to get them up before January end.
In September, 2006, at St. Monica’s final Octoberfair parish fair, we won a goldfish in the classic parish fair ping-pong ball in the fish bowl game. Last weekend, 18 years later, that fish, known as Fish-Fish or just Fish for short, crossed the rainbow bridge. This hearty fish lived his 18 years in a cubic foot of water on our kitchen counter.
Fish was small when he started his time with us. Here he is in December, 2007, just over a year old.
Fish had quite a personality. For a fish. He would great us each morning and evening at feeding time. Once, when I was travelling and my wife had forgotten to feed him, he banged against the side of his tank to get her attention. Here is is in 2010.
As he grew, I had to reduce the number of plastic plants in his tank. By 2017 he was much larger and was down to one plant.
Perhaps you wonder what Fish did all day. He mostly moved the rocks around in his tank. He did sleep, hanging vertically in the water without moving. We knew his time was coming when he began to slowly move upside down when he was sleeping. Here is a short video of Fish enjoying tending his rocks.
I cleaned the tank about once every five weeks. I started taking pictures of Fish and his cleaned tank so I could keep track of when I had last cleaned it. Here is Fish last month, in his ultimate romp around a clean tank.
RIP Fish Fish, September 2006 – October 2024.
This past summer’s road trip took us north to Anacortes and back. On the way north we went up US-395 to Reno, then to Ontario, Oregon via US-95. From there we took US-95 and US-195 to Spokane. After a couple of nights in Spokane and a visit to Gonzaga University, we drove across Washington State to Sammamish for a couple of nights and a visit to Seattle University. Then it was on to Anacortes.
After a pleasant week with family, we set off for home. I-5 took us to our first night’s stop in Roseburg, Oregon. The next day we turned off I-5 in Grants Pass, taking US-199 to Crescent City, picking up US-101. This is where the scenic part of the drive started. The highway takes you down the coast and through groves of huge redwood trees. South of Humboldt Redwoods State Park, we turned onto CA-1 to go to that night’s stop in Fort Bragg, California.
Our next planned evening stop was in Monterey. We decided to stick with the coast route for most of the drive south from Fort Bragg. CA-1 in this stretch is a winding road that travels right along the coast. While the drive isn’t fast, the views are beautiful. Our first stop on the drive was at the Point Arena Lighthouse where we were treated to this view. Click on any picture for a full-sized view.
The privately-maintained lighthouse has a small museum, gift shop, and lodging. For an incremental fee you can tout the lighthouse itself. We did not take the tour.
Built in 1870 and destroyed by the 1906 earthquake, it was rebuilt two years later. It is a notable landmark along the coast.
Continue readingOur next stop in our tour of Death Valley National Park is the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes. Formed where the wind carrying sand from eroding mountains to the north is stopped by Tucki Mountain, this vast field of dunes is a beautiful stop. Named for the mesquite bushes that grow in the area, the highest dune is about 185 ft (65 m) high.
With no set trails on the dunes, people scurry everywhere.
Evidence of life is everywhere, with tracks of all sorts in the sand. They range from the small …
To larger tracks.
The light can be interesting. We weren’t there at sunrise or sunset, which is a recommended time to visit. Perhaps next time.
And now we say goodbye to Death Valley, with one final view looking south from Daylight Pass Road on the east side of the park toward Badwater Basin.
Moving to the next installment of this extended chronicle of our trip to Death Valley in April 2023, this post shares some photos from our drive along Artists Drive and our stop at Artists Palette.
Artists drive is a beautiful, one-way road north of Badwater Basin and The Devil’s Golf Course. This nine-mile (14.5 km) drive takes you past some amazing and colorful rock formations. I think the most common way to get to the drive, which goes from south to north, is to put it at the return from your visit to Badwater Basin. We went to Badwater Basin, stopped at The Devil’s Golf Course, and then drove Artists Drive. It was on to the Mesquite Sand Dunes after that, but that is for next month.
As you drive up from the valley floor, the view behind you can be amazing. Here is Telescope Peak looking west from Artists Drive. (Click on any picture for a full-sized view.)
The view looking up the hill was very nice too.
The Sun was just barely highlighting the edges of the rocks on top of the craggy peaks.
About half-way through the drive, you come to Artists Palette. The rich colors of these volcanic deposits are the highlight of the drive. Here they are in the distance as you approach Artists Palette.
This panorama shows the wide spread of this remarkable formation.
You may also enjoy this closer view of the colors.
As we finished the drive, we noted that even the more subtle colors can be beautiful.
Wow, here is it more than a year since our trip to Death Valley National Park and I am still able to get photo posts out of our journey. This post chronicles our visit to The Devil’s Golf Course.
This expanse of eroded rock salt is quite a sight. You reach the area, located just a few miles north of Badwater Basin, via a quarter mile dirt road that was well maintained when we visited. You find yourself in the midst of cracked and craggy salt chunks.
The formation itself really is just salt. You can clearly see the crystals that have formed from ages of evaporation.
Our view around the valley was amazing, with snow-covered Telescope Peak to the west. This panorama shows the breadth of the view. Click on the picture for a bigger view.
After a few months off, I am back with the next post in my series of posts from our trip to Death Valley National Park last April. Prior posts include Ubehebe Crater, Zabriske Point, Dante’s View, and the Father Crowley Overlook. This post covers our visit to Badwater Basin.
Sitting 282 ft (86m) below sea level, Badwater Basin is the lowest point in North America. Just 84 miles (136 km) to the northwest, Mt. Whitney rises 14,505 feet (4,421 m) as the highest point in the contiguous US states. Eastern California is a place of amazing geography.
Wikipedia tells us that Badwater Basin is an endorheic basin — a basin that has no drainage to other bodies of water. Over the centuries it has accumulated salt from the evaporating water. Normally very dry, this past year two rainstorms created Lake Manly, a rare ephemeral lake in Badwater Basin. For a while it was deep enough for kayaking. Sadly, I was unable to get there to see it and I believe it is mostly gone now. All of the accumulated salt makes what little water there is undrinkable, hence the name “Badwater.”
Badwater Basin is almost directly below Dante’s View. The Badwater Basin parking area is just out of sight in the lower right hand side of this picture. Click on any picture to get a full-sized view.
From the parking area, you can walk out onto the salt flats. The white line in the picture above is the white walkway in the picture below. Snow-covered Telescope Peak is in the background.
I have missed posting the last two months and I will only have this lame post this month. But I promise, the Badwater Basin post is coming next month.
We had a few days of very high surf at the end of December, so we set out to look at them and I took some pictures. I will pause the Death Valley series for a month to share them. I had a similar post last January, so this might become a tradition if Mother Nature cooperates.
We went to our usual location at Dockweiler beach, parking in the lot across from the Hyperion treatment plant. Looking down the coast you could see the haze from the spray kicked up by the large breakers.
There was an offshore breeze and the wave tops look great as the wind blew the water back as they broke.
Catalina Island was visible in the distance, the notch in the island on the left is the Isthmus.
When a big wave would close out — breaks all along a wide front at one time — the air it trapped would burst out in a big plume of spray. Here is gif showing some of the action.
Here is the peak of the splash.
More photos and the rest of the sequence as single frames below the fold.
Continue readingHaving earlier written about our visits to Dante’s View and Zabriske Point in Death Valley National Park, we move on to Ubehebe Crater. Located at the north end of the park, Ubehebe Crater is a formation of 13 overlapping volcanic craters that created in an eruption 2,100 years ago. The largest of the craters and the one really carrying the name “Ubehebe Crater” is half a mile across (800 meters) and 600 feet (183 meters) deep.
The 55-mile (89 kilometer) drive from Furnace Creek to Ubehebe Crater takes about 90 minutes. You turn off of CA-190 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Furnace Creek onto Scotty’s Castle Road, also known as the North Highway. The scenery along the way is beautiful. You see alluvial fans, rock formations, and the stark beauty that characterizes Death Valley. The turn off to Ubehebe Crater is right where the road heads into the mountains to Scotty’s Castle.
As a side note, the road to Scotty’s Castle closed in 2015 after a major rainstorm caused significant damage. It was expected to re-open in 2023, but the remnants of Hurricane Hillary dumped 2.2 inches of rain on the park in a day. That compares to an annual rainfall of 2.15 inches. Roads were damaged across the park and the park closed for several months. The damage done to Scotty’s Castle road delayed the reopening which is now not expected until 2025.
As you approach the craters, you enter a field of ash and lava. You pass the turn off to Racetrack Valley before arriving at the parking lot at the crater’s rim. Here is the view from just a short distance from the parking lot.
The craters formed in a steam and gas explosion triggered when rising magma came into contact with groundwater. The exploding gas threw rock in the air leaving deposits of both basaltic lava and fragments of sandstone. It is quite an impressive sight. Click on any image to see a full-sized version.
Snow-covered Tin Mountain loomed over the crater’s rim. Tin Mountain is a 8,953-foot (2,729 meter) mounting in the Cottonwood Mountains, part of the Panamint Range. Off to the left is Dry Mountain in the Last Chance Range.
The colors and patterns of the crater rocks and the Grapevine Mountains of the Amargosa Range are striking.
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