Monterey to Sequoias – Day 2

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

We got out of the Los Angeles area early for the drive up the coast over Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo before reaching the Elephant Seal Colony north of San Simeon. By this time, I’ve lost count of how many previous visits we’ve made to this exact spot on the coast. I’m certain I’ve seen some of these seals on other stops, but there’s no way I’m going to identify one by name or markings.

Off in the distance is the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse, while in the foreground are more Elephant Seals.

Thistle sounds menacing, and those giant pokey thorns don’t help its image, but the sheer beauty of the neon pink, lavender, and purples in the flower certainly make it a visually appealing plant. This type is of the Silybum group, commonly known as milk thistle, which has health benefits for our livers.

We are on a slow drive north, showing Mark some of the places we’ve fallen in love with over the years and many visits that have brought us up and down the California coast. In the years Mark has been living in the Los Angeles area working for the film industry, he’s an animator and hasn’t taken much time to explore the world around him, so we are trying to get him off his treadmill.

If you get the idea from the indiscriminate photos of more coast that we have a broad sense of what constitutes a favorite place, well, you’d be right. We love the whole thing, well, except those parts that draw sunbathers to open beaches for tanning.

This is the common morning glory flower, and it is the seeds of this plant that some will seek to get a cheap high. The problem is that the person needs to eat hundreds for the psychedelic effects to work; I’m sure there must be easier ways to reach a psychedelic state.

I think this is part of the mint family, but I’m no botanist, so sue me if I’m wrong.

McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park in Big Sur.

This intimidating-looking creature is the yellow-spotted millipede, also known as the cyanide millipede, for its ability to secrete cyanide. Should you pick one up (they don’t bite or sting), it will likely curl up, and if you smell almond, then you know that this millipede is trying to defend itself. While it is not typically toxic to adults, it is usually fatal to birds and rodents. So, while you might be creeped out finding these in the California forest, you need not worry about them sending you to the hospital.

A bed of redwood sorrel.

Look into the treetops when in a redwood forest as these trees grow tall and straight. Now imagine that there have been people in our fairly recent history who would have had no problem harvesting every last one of these trees to trade them in for money. Our perspective of what’s important is myopic, while our thirst for what will allow us to imbibe group stupidity is unquenchable.

Groomed footpaths to idyllic settings are a luxury we all share, but few seem to find time to grace their path. For all who maintain these trails to the exquisite places, I thank every one of you.

This is Mark Shimer, our traveling companion for a couple of days. A long time ago, I gave him his first graphic design job following his graduation from a Phoenix design school. Today he is a pro and only getting better as he’s been tackling larger and larger projects in Hollywood. We are taking this photo at Garrapata Beach, which may forever be our favorite beach of all time.

Leaving Garrapata Beach, where every corner is a masterpiece of beauty.

That’s Caroline mesmerized by the jellyfish exhibit here at Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Not a great photo due to the poor lighting, but it’s a sea turtle, and in the background is a dolphinfish, also known as Mahi-Mahi. What’s not seen is the school of blue-fin tuna cruising around the tank.

This octopus has been one of the most difficult mollusks to photograph as not only does it frequently squeeze itself into some dark corner, but anything that moves with some speed wreaks havoc on my attempts to snap a photo in near darkness. Maybe it remembers my previous attempts, and it has finally given in to allowing me a perfect pic of perfect beauty.

Whoever said these lowly shrimps were cockroaches of the sea was only partly right. While they are detritivores in that they will eat any dead or decaying organic matter, they do likely taste a lot better than the common cockroach, but how would I know?

My hypocrisy works like this: I don’t like zoos as the animals are in no way living in anything that resembles their natural habitat. For the most part, I don’t like aquariums either, but when David Packard helped create this gift to humanity that opened back on October 20, 1984, he was well aware of the importance of the ecosystem that would be on display. With that in mind, he worked on the architecture and functionality of how this place would operate and its symbiotic relationship with the ocean at its front door. The water in these tanks comes directly from the ocean and is recirculated at the temperature that best sustains the life that is on display here. While certain fish and animals are not very well suited for the confines of an enclosure, I’d say that the Monterey Bay Aquarium is doing the world a tremendous favor in bringing our attention to the health, sustainability, and responsibility we all have for our oceans.

Our up-close view of shorebirds is one we never get to have in the wild as they flutter away as quickly as we approach unless they are seagulls and you are holding out food, and then the closest hundred will flock to you in a moment squawking in their ear-piercing shrill voices of utter annoyance.

This fish is known as the artichoke fish and is another member of the mollusk family. If you look closely, you can see its spikey protrusions; they are a kind of rasping tongue called a radula, and it is what these particular creatures use to eat. Maybe you aren’t buying this? Fine, this artichoke is not actually in an aquarium or living in the ocean; it is in Castroville, California, also known as the Artichoke Capital of the World, and grows in a field.

Moss Beach to Yosemite – Day 2

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

The decision was made last night to deviate from our route home. Had we decided to try to make Bakersfield, we’d be home on Sunday by about 2:00 p.m., so let’s go somewhere else and use our time doing other stuff. With that, we looked at the map and drove to Jamestown, California. By 8:00 this morning, we were in Yosemite National Park for our second visit since we came through with my mother-in-law Jutta on our first visit back in the 20th century.

A beautiful start to the day with the weather on our side. Our point-and-shoot Sony Cyber-Shot is not capable of taking a photo of El Capitan at this range and getting it all in the frame, so we took three portrait images and stitched them together in Photoshop for the image you are looking at. You might see some smudging and focus differences if you look closely, such is the problem of the lenses and automatic shooting that accompanies digital cameras. At least we’re no longer shooting 1MP images.

Maybe it’s because we are here so early, or maybe in April, not as many people are on vacation, but this visit is shaping up to be much better than our previous encounter, where throngs of people were choking off the environment and creating a noise that made visiting a bit of a bummer.

Serenity should be experienced just like this.

It’s been nice moving through Yosemite Valley at a reasonable pace without feeling pressured to try to avoid heavy crowds. I can only imagine what people like Ansel Adams and John Muir found in these locations far removed from busy cities and not easily accessible back during their early explorations. I’m a bit melancholic with this idea that our National Parks can only get busier, more littered, and harmed as time goes on. Sadly, there is no season pass for entry where someone has to prove their trustworthiness when visiting these treasures.

How does one ever tire of gazing upon waterfalls?

Beaches, tide pools, sea life, a great movie, expansive nature, and a beautiful wife who loves being out here as much as I do. I am lucky.

Not a cloud in the sky nor a care in the world.

Always remember to turn over rocks, look on the underside of things, and be certain to see what others might have missed because it’s not just the extravagant landscapes that hold oodles of amazement, but it is often in the cracks and crevices that we can find things never seen before.

After nearly five hours here in Yosemite we have to take our leave. Five hours after that, we stopped in Valencia, California for dinner with our old friend Mark Shimer, and then at 7:30 p.m., we were back on the road for what will now be a late night. We made it to Starbucks in Banning three minutes before they closed and hit Blythe just before 11:00 p.m. with about 150 miles to go. All this to see a movie? Absolutely. While some people thought we were crazy for driving 1,500 miles to see a cartoon, they can easily sit on a couch watching TV for 10 hours on Saturday – who’s crazy?

Moss Beach to Yosemite – Day 1

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

This is one of our crazier trips, no doubt. We are going to the movies. But there’s an ocean in this photo you say? Well, the movie is not playing in the Phoenix area yet. Yesterday, we left Scottsdale at 2:15 p.m., and by 10:30, we were getting a room for the night in Bakersfield. By 7:00 a.m., we were on the road again, and now here we are at Pomponio State Beach, about 80 miles north of Monterey. Sadly, there won’t be time on this trip to stop at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

A little further up the road, we stop at Moss Beach as we can see that low tide is occurring, and going out to explore the tide pools is one of the things this stretch of coast is famous for.

While we love seeing sealife, and this anemone is certainly a great specimen, it is not the reason we’ve come up here; we didn’t even know when we left that we’d have the chance. The movie we are going to see is Spirited Away, and we are heading for San Francisco. I’m telling you this now because, for some reason, beyond my ability to explain it, I never took one photo in San Francisco to capture the moment.

Unlike this gastropod stuck in a place, we went from here at Moss Beach directly to the Castro Theatre, and following the screening, we bolted for the exit of San Francisco. We were the first in line at 3:30 for a showing that wasn’t scheduled until 6:30 p.m. The screening is being shown in Japanese with English subtitles and is the first time the movie is being seen in America, three months ahead of a wider release of a dubbed version.

This long-spined bullhead was trapped in a small pool and had nowhere to go, which allowed me to check out this peculiar-looking fish for a good long time. We’re only about 45 minutes from the Castro, so instead of wandering around the city for a bit, we’ve opted to take our time and leisurely hang out here at Moss Beach.

After finishing watching Spirited Away, we left San Francisco right away. The traffic in and out of the city is often horrendous, and we were intent on getting home Sunday night, so we needed to get as far south as we could. And in any case, we only took off on this 1,600-mile (2,600 km), 23 hours of driving trip to see this one particular movie. Yes, we love Hayao Miyazaki’s films that much!

So, try to understand our perspective. We get to be two of the first 1,400 people in the United States to see this movie. The Castro seats 1,400 for a sellout show. While there’s a Sunday screening, too, we snagged tickets for the first showing on Saturday – score! Either we were going to have a few hours in San Francisco to goof off, or as luck had it, we got to spend nearly three hours on the coast exploring sea life. The alternative would have been staying at home and conforming to our routine, which is far too simple and easy.

Matter of fact I happen to see most of my fellow citizens of Arizona as being like this lichen that is even more firmly attached to this rock than the snail I referenced as being stuck in place. While we may move slowly from time to time, we do get up and go. And who wouldn’t trade a few hours in front of a television to being blown away by the patterns and colors we are finding in the shallow waters of the Pacific Ocean here just south of San Francisco?

I already know the answer to my question and the answer is very few. We are creatures of habit, and when intellectual stagnation, habituation to the comforts of home, a tradition of passively watching others play some sport or other, combined with a generalized fear of what bad experience might be had when venturing outside of our norm and over and over we see a general lack of participation while we are out on the road. So, in light of that, we feel quite lucky and privileged that we have the wherewithal to go out and do such crazy things.

If I had to guess, I’d say this is a fragment of abalone shell, a well-worn old piece that has seen its fair share of tumbling through the ocean until it reached Caroline and me here on the shore, ready to be discovered.

And then there was this rock loaded with fossils of sea life locked into stone now. So this is going to be pure speculation, but I’m thinking that somewhere long ago, there was a mudslide that scooped up a bunch of mollusks, and as it rolled along with its river rocks (well, that’s what they look like to me) it all came to settle down for a very long time until the whole thing turned to a petrified chunk of stuff we are seeing here this afternoon.

I’m obviously not an expert or even an amateur paleontologist, but these look like shells to me.

I’d swear I saw more than one of those tentacles wave goodbye to us, thus prompting Caroline and me to return to our car so we’d not be late to see the movie we’d been traveling so far to see. As for our impressions of Spirited Away, we can let you know that in our book, it is another Miyazaki classic and was well worth our investment of time and effort to be some of the first people on Earth outside of Japan to see this beautiful heartfelt story.

California via Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon – Day 5

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

It was only 5:30 in the morning when we bolted out of Willows and just kept going and going down the road.

We race across the landscape in our attempt to cover 840 miles as fast as possible (1,361 km). No time for ice cream or celebrating the resurrection as we figured we needed about 14 hours to get home from the point we left this morning, but we did need a photo of the sign. We pulled into Phoenix just after 9:00 p.m., which is an hour later than California, so it took us 14.5 hours to get home. I wonder where we’ll go next.