Wanderings of the old sloat

Big Island Views

2009-11-04T20:38:00.000-08:00

I'm back home in Monterey, but here are a few more views from the Big Island. This is Rainbow Falls, right in the city of Hilo. It was pouring rain the morning we visited...a not uncommon weather phenomenon in Hilo, which receives 130 inches of rain a year. The rain made the falls strong and muddy.

This is the house where we stayed my second week on the Big Island, called Orchid Elua. It's new...built in 2007...and has four bedrooms, each with private bath...perfect for a group. The pond in the foreground is a swimming hole shared with the neighboring house, which was vacant the whole week, so we had the pond to ourselves. It's heated to about 85-88 degrees by the volcano...sweet!

Onemanu Bay, on the coast north of Hilo. A quintessential tropical cove.

Whilst trekking in the jungle, a sighting was made of the Jungle Conster, a denizen of the rainforest only viewed on rare occasions. 'Tis a privilege to spot such a robust specimen of the species!

Highway 137

2009-10-29T19:58:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite drives anywhere is highway 137 thru the coastal Puna district on the Big Island. The road is totally rural, back in time about 50 years through very quiet countryside of spectacular beauty. Life moves at a slow, relaxed pace here. There is some activity; there are a couple of beach parks and a number of attractions that draw a few tourists, but it's still very peaceful here. The road is very unusual in that some parts of it are lush, quintessential tropical forest, but other areas are stark and barren thanks to recent lava flows. For all the tranquillity here, it could end at any place at any time, if madam Pele feels obnoxious and spreads a band of lava through the region.

There are graves by the side of the road in several places. They lie in the jungle, a reminder of times past. They're not in any organized cemetery. Are they eerie or nostalgic? I can't decide. These have been there for about 50-80 years.

The road passes through jungle, bare lava flows, and stunning coastal vistas where the sea meets the lava and the rainforest. The swells come straight from Antarctica; the ocean is almost always very rough. It's grand and wild here.

The road is canopied by trees in many places; the sun dapples shadows across the pavement, adding to the mystical scene.

This lava flow occurred in 1955, creating a black sand beach nearby. Part of the beach disappeared in the mid 1970s, when an earthquake dropped the coastline three feet. Other flows buried parts of the area in 1960 and again in 1990. 137 was probably a little busier years ago

as it used to go into Hawaii Volcanoes National Park: you could make a loop drive from 137 to Kilauea Crater and on to Hilo. But lava cut the road in the late 1980s and has continued to flow ever since, so the road deadends in the village of Kalapana. At roads end is a fast food place that serves yummy milkshakes! The restaurant has a somewhat precarious existence; the flowing lava I blogged recently is only a couple miles away. Fortunately, it's not moving toward the restaurant-now.

This is my last day in Puna; I'm moving across the island tomorrow. Though I've been here for two weeks, I'd like to stay longer. But I'll be back in a year or two.

Lava on Da Big Island

2009-10-27T00:11:00.001-07:00

Yesterday I found out that the lava was flowing much closer to the end of the road than usual, so we went to check it out. We found molten lava just 50-60 yards away, oozing slowly toward us. Blow the pic up and you can see the pahoehoe on the right.

The lava advances thru forests, occasionally setting a tree alight. This flow is moving on top of a 1990 flow that buried much of the historic village of Kalapana. This is the closest I've gotten to molten lava out of over half a dozen visits to the Big Island.

Here The Conster is posing on the slopes of Pu'u Huluhulu, a volcanic cone about 500 years old that is now covered with lush rain forest. In the background is Mauna Ulu, a much newer crater that spit out massive amounts of lava from 1969 to 1974 that went over the cliffs clear to the ocean a good 10 miles beyond.

Hangin' in Kapoho

2009-10-21T22:59:00.000-07:00

Still kickin' in my house in Kapoho. My friends Connie and Sandy have joined me and we're all enjoying the tropical weather and the nautical ambiance.

The Conster had a long journey from the middle of the continent but made it here OK. She is now engaged in an arduous struggle for survival in the Hawaiian wilderness.

We have here a serendipitous meeting of The Feet. The one with the green toenails is The Conster...the pink Nails belong to The Sandster.

Volcanoes Still Firin' Up

2009-10-19T12:04:00.000-07:00

As usual, the volcanic scene on the Big Island is dynamic. Halema'uma'u, quiet for a few decades, erupted early last year. A crater within the main crater has formed and vents steam most of the time, and occasionally rocks and ash. A new lava lake is sometimes visible in the bottom of the crater and comes across as a glow from this vantage point at the Jaggar museum. Can't get closer to it as the eruption is venting massive quantities of sulfur dioxide to the southwest (right side of the pic), which has forced the closure of part of the Crater Rim road and several trails.

Well to the east, the Pu'u O'o eruption that started in 1983 is still going strong...such a long eruption is unprecedented in the past two centuries. This is the steam plume of lava entering the ocean a couple miles to the west of Kalapana. The lava I'm standing on is vintage 1990...before then this spot was several hundred yards out to sea.

This black sand beach was created by the 1990 lava flow. That flow obliterated much of the village of Kalapana and an older black sand beach which was a major tourist attraction. I was in the area watching that flow creep down the mountainside (from a distance) only a couple weeks before it reached Kalapana. Black sand is surrealistic...you can get good chiaroscuro pix with just the sand and the sea foam.

This is a Honu, a Hawaiian sea turtle. He's hangin' at Punaluu black sand beach, on the southeast side of the island. The sea bottom here is covered with limu...seaweed that the honu love to munch on. So they hang out here in large numbers.

Makalawena Panorama

2009-10-15T20:37:00.000-07:00

Here's a nice panorama of Makalawena Beach, one of my favorite spots on the Kona coast. If only they improved the access road! Of course, in that event it would be much more crowded...maybe it's better the road stays bad. At any rate, the beach is awesome.

Hangin' in Kona

2009-10-15T20:16:00.001-07:00

I'm visiting Kona for the first time in over 3 years. Weather's perfect, pace moderate...not really slow, but not bad. As usual, I patrol the beaches north of town when here. This was my first visit to this one. It used to be called Kua Bay, and as late as 2006 it was accessible only by a rough dirt road. Now it's part of a state park, the access road has been paved, and the beach is called Manini'owali. It's much busier than it used to be, but it's certainly a beautiful spot.

I'm staying at the Kona Bali Kai, a moderately priced condo complex right smack on the water.

This is my fourth or fifth time here...great location. The surf is only about 50 feet from my lanai! The sunsets are gorgeous and you can watch the surfies. It's a fine place.

The morning light here is also beautiful.

This pic shows Makalawena Beach. Though it's only about 3 miles north of the airport, the access to it is still dicey...a very bad 2 wheel drive road, then a trail over jagged a'a lava, or an even worse 4 wheel drive road. This, it's still rather uncrowded. I set up at my usual slotation spot under an ironwood tree and lazed the day away, reading a fine travel book by Paul Theroux...good literature for such a locale.

This pond is just a few yards mauka from Makalawena. It's a Hawaiian phenomenon! Fresh water flows for miles down the mountain, thru the lava field, and surfaces and merges with seawater a very short distance from the ocean...only about 100 yards in this case. The water is about 75 degrees...very refreshing on a hot day! There are little fishes swimming about. It's a grand place to sloat in and cool off after a day at the beach.

Headin' Home

2009-09-07T07:29:00.000-07:00

On the way home from my northwest trip, I crossed the Sierra and did some hiking. Here is one of the Virginia Lakes on the east side of the range, viewed from a talus slope crossed by the trail. This is a gorgeous area where you can hike to several fine lakes easily...just right for the Venerable Pinniped.

Cub Lake, in Yosemite near Tuolumne Meadows. This lake is only about 1.3 miles up the trail, but there's an elevation gain of about 700 feet, almost all in the middle half of the hike. Serious huff puff! I had not been planning to return this way when I left home a month earlier, so did not have a topo map...quadruple P! But, as you can see it's a beautiful lake, so was worth the effort.

Tenaya Lake, one of my favorite spots anywhere. Gorgeous lake, plenty of granitic slotation opportunities, rather warm water in the summer...there are even sandy beaches! 8100 feet up in the High Sierra. I camped here back in 1977 and have loved it ever since. The campground is long gone, but it remains a fine spot to picnic, relax, and simply enjoy!

Whoops! This is a large fire in Yosemite that was burning on Thursday, Aug 27, and as of now, Sep 7, is still going, resulting in road closures. It was a prescribed burn that got out of hand and has burned thousands of acres instead of a few dozen as originally planned.

These trees are near San Luis Reservoir between Hollister and Los Banos. Guess which way the wind usually blows? On this day, amazingly, there was no wind, presaging a warm day on the coast. Sure enough, it was 93 degrees in Marina, usually notorious as the place Where the Fog Goes to Die.

Basin Ramblings

2009-08-30T18:03:00.000-07:00

I came home from Sunriver last week via the Great Basin and the Sierra. I picked that route because of the wide open spaces and peace of the Basin, and the spectacular mountain scenery of the Sierra. I rambled thru Southeastern Oregon and visited Pete French's long barn near Frenchglen for the second time. French was a rancher who built a vast land empire in SE Oregon from 1872 to 1897. This barn was built in the 1880s. He used some dubious methods, like buying up land surrounding a farmer's plot and then denying that farmer access to his own land. One such homesteader, Ed Oliver, shot French to death in 1897 after a scuffle. The jury, made up of homesteaders, acquitted Oliver in short order.

Here's the inside of the long barn. Local juniper logs were used in the construction, and they were only minimally shaped, giving the interior a natural appearance. Both times I've been here I disturbed deer who were hanging out in the barn. French also built a round barn some miles northeast of here, designed for breaking horses during the cold winter months. Didn't visit that as it's well off the highway, but I've been there before and it's quite interesting.

An easterner would probably not recognize this scene as Oregon! In reality, at least a third of the state is arid or semiarid, full of sagebrush. They call this area Oregon's outback, and having been to the original outback in Australia, I can say there are close resemblances. You can really stretch your legs in this country. This shot is taken in Harney county, which has about 7600 people in a 10 thousand square mile area, larger than Maryland. Anytime you're in an area with less than one person per square mile, it's fair to say you're Out Bush!

The mighty Humboldt River in Nevada near Lovelock. The Humboldt is not this wide in most places...this part of the river is actually a reservoir. The river is about 300 miles long, but being in the Great Basin, it doesn't empty into the ocean; it just peters out in the Humboldt Sink, southwest of here.

This is Walker Lake, in western Nevada. The lake is the outlet for the Walker River, but in most years water from the river never reaches the lake; unless the adjacent Sierra snowpack is at least 120 percent of normal, the river's water is entirely siphoned off for irrigation. As a result, the level of Walker Lake has dropped 130 feet in the past century! With a maximum remaining depth of only 80 feet, the lake appears doomed to disappear well before the end of this century unless some conservation program for it is developed, as has been done at nearby Mono Lake. Unfortunately, as far as I know no such program exists for Walker.

Central Oregon Scenes...plus one

2009-08-25T21:14:00.001-07:00

On my way south out of Cle Elum last week, I bypassed Interstate 82 and drove through the Yakima River Canyon on the old highway. It was delightful! Steep walls of basalt and sage; the river running robustly; majestic ponderosas. I found this swinging bridge across the river at a rec site...there are about half a dozen places where you can camp, fish, and picnic in the canyon, which is a little less than 30 miles long.

I probably blogged this last year, but the shot of the South Sister looming over Sparks Lake in central Oregon is too good to pass up. This is on the Ray Atkeson Trail, named in honor of Oregon's premier scenery photographer. I would guess that at some time during his long career

he took a similar pic from close to this spot.

I found this red columbine near Lava Lake, on Century Drive maybe 15 miles past Sparks Lake.

As always, when I stay at Sunriver (near Bend) I visit Crater Lake. On this occasion I had the pleasure of playing tour guide for three folks who had either never seen it at all or had only glimpsed it from the air. They were blown away when they saw it up close for the first time! And why not...it's one of the world's power spots. The deep blue of the lake is mesmerizing. The lake's setting, on top of a mountain surrounded by jagged volcanic rock and gnarly trees, is surreal.

This is a little different look at the lake, along a shoreline adjacent to Mount Hoffman, at about 8150 feet the highest point on the lake rim. I love the jagged, multicolored rock formations here. What you're actually looking at is a bit of the innards of Mount Mazama, exposed when it collapsed about 6800 years ago. The big cliff on the right side of the pic is Llao Rock.

Tracking the Ice Age Floods...again

2009-08-19T20:12:00.000-07:00

On Monday I traveled south thru Central Washington, following the Ice Age Floods. This massive glacial erratic lies in a field 30-40 miles southwest of Grand Coulee Dam. It was deposited by a huge ice sheet, thousands of feet thick, that dammed the Columbia River and diverted it from its historic (and present) course past Wenatchee. Instead, the river flowed through the Grand Coulee, dozens of miles...and over 500 feet higher! to the east. The ice sheet created Glacial Lake Columbia, which lasted for a couple thousand years and was occasionally inundated itself by the Missoula Floods.

The diverted Columbia flowed over Dry Falls, at the southern end of Grand Coulee. During normal river flow, the river would have cruised over the cliffs on a front perhaps a mile wide and maybe 50 feet deep...impressive enough, probably about like Iguazu Falls in Brazil and Argentina today. But during the Missoula Floods...the scene was tremendous! Imagine a torrent of water at least 300 feet deep, roaring at 60 mph, dropping over the 400 foot precipice with such speed and volume to render the falls a megarapids rather than a cataract! Nothing like it has been seen anywhere in the world since. Between the ordinary flow of the diverted Columbia and several dozen Missoula Floods, each lasting several days, the basalt cliffs in the coulee were eroded about 20 miles back in just a couple thousand years!

On this trip I acquired a new book titled "On the Trail of the Ice Age Floods" One of the highlights of the book was this area called the West Bar, on the Columbia River near Quincy Washington. What this picture shows, incredibly, are flood current ripples. You can see ripples like these in any creek with a sandy bottom...I see them at the beach in Monterey during the winter when little streams...mostly rainfall drainage...run into the ocean. Of course, such ripples are maybe an inch high and a few inches apart. These ripples in the picture average 24 FEET high and 360 feet apart! The flow of water that created these ripples is estimated to have been as much as 650 feet deep. Interestingly, the book theorizes that the ripple flood was not one of those associated with the emptying of Glacial Lake Missoula, but was probably the result of a huge flood on the Columbia River when the Cordilleran Ice Sheet broke and Glacial Lake Columbia emptied at the end of the Ice Age. Blow up the pic for more ripple detail.

These are basalt columns in Potholes Coulee, a few miles south of the West Bar. Water from the Missoula Floods roared westward across the prairie around present day Ephrata and Quincy, and then flowed over a cliff down almost a thousand feet to the Columbia River basin. With the huge volumes of water and the speeds of flow involved, the floodwaters carved the basalt back from the cliffs a good mile in this area. The waterfalls involved, while not as spectacular as at Dry Falls, must have been really massive for a few days during each flood. Just south of this locale is the Gorge Amphitheatre, a famous concert venue located in an area where the highest floods eroded a small canyon in which the Amphitheatre sits. I'd love to go to a show there sometime...Coldplay was there last month just before I saw them near Sacramento.

Hangin' in the YVR

2009-08-15T21:34:00.001-07:00

I did a full day of exploration in Vancouver today. Went for three long walks...the old flippers are draggin' but not too much...I think I'm getting just a bit of conditioning going after hiking almost every day for a week! I started by going into Stanley Park and visiting the Aquarium, which is world class. There are a vast variety of marine critters, from piranhas to belugas to sea otters. Among the more photogenic are the jellyfish.

Here's one of the belugas. I think this is the first time I've ever seen one! One of the whales just had a baby...and yes, you can buy a furry baby beluga in the gift shop. So cute. No, I didn't get one. But it's cool that a baby was born at the aquarium.

I came back to the hotel and rested the flippers for an hour, then walked across the Burrard Bridge to the Kitsilano district, where a street fair commemorating the 40th anniversary of Woodstock was underway. This band was doing a good cover of many of the Doors' hits. The lead singer couldn't quite scream at as high a pitch as Jim Morrison, but sounded like him otherwise; and the lead guitarist was great! Up the street a few blocks another band was covering Neil Young in even better fashion. We all sang along to Rockin' in the Free World...cool!

After an excellent Indian dinner...there are three Indian restaurants on the block across the street from the hotel, all with takeaway...I headed down to English Bay for the sunset. It's kind of a ritual...there are musicians, drummers, and lots of people of all ages chillin' out. The dawgs like it too.

Twilight lingers for a long time at this northern latitude...just south of the 50th parallel. By setting my camera on my balcony railing I got this sunset shot a full half hour after the sun actually dropped below the horizon. Y'know, I have thought for many decades that Vancouver would be an excellent place to spend the summer! The city hums with cosmopolitan energy; the arts thrive here; grazing is superb. And the hinterland...up toward Whistler, east to the Okanagan, west to Vancouver Island...has unlimited outdoor recreation. And it's all gorgeous! It would sure be neat to get a fine apartment in the West End...or in Kitsilano...for a month or two in summer some year. Don't be surprised if I do it sometime!

Green Water, Black Bears

2009-08-14T20:16:00.000-07:00

After traveling mostly in wild areas of Canada for a week, I finally got a good look at a bear today...less than a mile from the chic shops, restaurants, and condos of Whistler Village! There is a large park..actually untouched forest...in the middle of the village with many trails for hiking, biking, and jogging in summer, and cross country skiing and snowshoeing in winter. Right next to one of the most heavily traveled paths, I and a bunch of other folks found this bloke grazing in the berries. We had to move slowly and quietly past him, only about 25 feet away, to continue on the path. He snorted a bit when I took this pic but continued grazing. The bear and the rest of Whistler is stoked for the Winter Olympics, which begin in just six months!

A mountain lake northeast of Whistler, with fireweed.

The previous shot is a typical British Columbia scene, but this pic shows standard terrain in the southern interior of the province. Yes, sagebrush and ponderosa pines north of the 50th parallel! This is the Fraser River near Lillooet.

This is Nairn Falls, just north of Whistler. It cuts thru volcanic rock, sending milky light green water racing down a forest canyon.

Dawson Falls...Kayaking Anyone?

2009-08-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

This is Dawson Falls, in Wells Gray Provincial Park in British Columbia. Cowabunga!!

Wells Gray Waterfalls

2009-08-12T20:41:00.000-07:00

I just spent three days in Well Gray Provincial Park, about 100 miles north of Kamloops in central BC. I have seen this huge park...bigger than Holland...on maps for many years and was always curious about it. Now that I'm retired, I tend to go check out these kinds of spots. Turns out Wells Gray is a vast area of pristine wilderness specializing in waterfalls. This is Spahats Falls. It has cut deeply through a weak seam of basalt since the land was freed from glacial ice about ten thousand years ago. Compare this pic with those of Palouse Falls...two posts back...to see a comparison of erosion solely from a rather small stream versus the effects of the humongous Missoula Floods!

Dawson Falls, on the Murtle River, roars over a slab of basalt instead of down through a seam. This cascade is about 60 feet high, and on its south side...nearest the camera...it drops over several steps. I'd be surprised if some expert kayakers haven't run it!

But...any kayaker who makes it over Dawson Falls can't make it all the way to the Clearwater River. Because...Helmcken Falls is in the way! This cascade drops 450 feet. It has a tall main falls, then a little stream run, then a smaller, wider lower falls...similar to Multnomah Falls in the Columbia Gorge.

Helmcken Falls also drops over a thick layer of basalt, layed down over millions of years during many eruptions, just likein much of Oregon and Washington. Just downstream from Helmcken, the layers from different eruptions are especially distinct.

Smoky return to Halcyon

2009-08-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

I'm up in Beautiful British Columbia. The license plates don't lie...it's gorgeous up here! Towering mountains, pristine lakes. This is the SS Moyie in Kaslo, on Kootenay Lake, one of the province's most spectacular bodies of water. The Moyie cruised the lake as a working boat from the 1890s til 1958. It's now a museum, moored next to a beach in the funky town of Kaslo. You could travel months in BC and see glorious, interesting country every day.

You might think this pic was taken in coastal BC, perhaps among the Gulf Islands or along the Inside Passage south of Prince Rupert. But this is Kootenay Lake, about 300 miles inland! The lake is as gorgeous as Tahoe, with about one quarter the development. When I shot this pic, I was on BC ferries, which runs a 35 minute free ferry as a part of route 3A across the lake. This is one of the best travel bargains anywhere! You get a fine cruise on a world class beautiful lake for nada! At times in the summer, as when I rode the boat, you have to wait over an hour to board. But, there's a beach and restaurant right next to the ferry landing, so no problem.

I returned to Halcyon Hot Springs, a plush resort on Arrow Lake with four pools ranging in temperature from 55 to 104 F. I stayed here two years ago. You hang out in the pools, soak up the rays, kick back in comfy cabins with views of the lake, and dine at a gourmet restaurant. Not bad!

However, just two ridges over from the springs a rather large forest fire was burning. The previous weekend the resort had been briefly evacuated, but this weekend the wind was light westerly, blowing the fire away from us. But...not the smoke, which settled over the region bigtime on Saturday Aug 8. Go to the posts from June 07 and you'll find a pic with a similar view to this one, but under much different meteorological conditions.

The next day I was taking another ferry across Arrow Lake...actually a wide spot in the Columbia River. Blow this pic up and you can see several smoke plumes drifting up the mountain. And check out the lenticular clouds, products of an increasingly strong, moist jet stream that would change the weather from warm and dry to cool and showery.

An Ice Age Relic

2009-08-06T07:42:00.000-07:00

Palouse Falls in southeastern Washington is a lovely cascade 198 feet high. However, it appears rather insignificant in its huge basin, which is over twice as deep as the falls and far wider than the falls would be capable of eroding, even over millions of years. The secret is that the basin in the picture was carved 13 to 15 thousand years ago by our old buddies the Missoula Floods. The remnants of glacial Lake Missoula swept across this area again and again, every time an ice jam impounding the lake in northwestern Montana broke. An incredible volume of water roared through here, filling and even overflowing the basin, gouging out the basalt in a torrent of rapids of almost unimaginable power.

Just above and to the left of the falls are these towers of columnar basalt. They somehow survived the torrents, but all the rock around them was swept away. The towers seem vaguely Tolkienesque to me.

Palouse Canyon extends south from the falls. The little river in the big gorge wasn't always so insignificant. It completely filled the canyon...and then some...during the largest of the floods. The Palouse used to flow into the Columbia via the Washtucna Coulee to the northwest, but the floods overtopped that coulee and diverted the river southward, over the falls into the Snake.

The basalt cliffs in the canyon are majestic. They formed about 15 million years ago when vast quantities of lava flowed out of the ground again and again, covering much of Oregon and Washington thousands of feet deep. Each eruption produced a layer of basalt...you may be able to see some of the layers if you blow up this pic. The same type of cliffs can be seen in the Columbia Gorge, Grand Coulee, and near John Day Oregon. For that matter, they also make up Devils Postpile in the Cali Sierra.

A good shot of the falls and their basin...also a faint rainbow at the base of the cascade.

Fabulous Mount Rainier

2009-08-03T21:53:00.001-07:00

Today we drove up to Mount Rainier. Rainier is the most massive single mountain in the continental US. A few peaks in Colorado and California are a few feet higher, but none stands alone like Rainier. And none has the massive glaciers. And the wildflower display at Rainier in the first week of August is absolutely fabulous!! It is difficult for an old, fat sloat to hike the steep trails on the lower slopes of the mountain, even if I am relatively nimble for my age and girth. But it's worth it, to be in one of the most glorious scenes anywhere in the world!! The pic above is Narada Falls, which flows over a lava bench and leaves a perpetual rainbow on sunny days.

Wildflowers abound in the meadows around timberline.

Here, paintbrushes and lupine thrive under the mountain. The trees are mostly gnarly spruces.

The mountain looms over the landscape. Not only here, but clear to Tacoma, almost 50 miles away!

After a lot of huff puff, and plenty of stops to admire the scenery, we've reached an elevation of 6300 feet, almost a thousand feet above Paradise (which, by the way, holds the world record for most snowfall in a season, almost 100 feet!!) Blow up the pic and you'll see a substantial waterfall just left of center, sending snowmelt under the Nisqually glacier.

Seattle Sojourn

2009-08-03T21:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I spent the afternoon in Seattle. I'm staying with friends in Puyallup, and they have friends who live in the Capitol Hill district in Seattle. They have a cool old house with a fine green yard and two neat dogs, and own and operate a bar right across the street from their house. Talk about a nice commute! I and my ol' college roommate Dick did a street hike thru the 'hood and found this sequoia a few blocks away.

There's a great variety of trees in the neighborhood. A few yards from the sequoia I found...a palm tree! It certainly wasn't having any trouble on this day...it was about 90 degrees.

The homes in Capitol Hill are mostly nice, and very eclectic. They were mostly constructed in the 1920s, and come in all styles from Tudor to Queen Anne. I love the places like this one with a large wraparound porch.

This is a repeat of a picture I took almost 40 years ago while I was in college at the University of Washington. It remains cool to check out the Space Needle thru the donut sculpture. By the way, while we were street hiking we were treated to frequent flyovers by the Blue Angels, who were in town for Seafair. After the hike we retired to our friends' bar and sampled beers while watching the hydroplane races on TV. It was a really nice afternoon all round. I have somewhat neglected Seattle since graduating in 1973. I get there every five years or so, but that is not nearly enough. I need to visit every year!!

The Fabulous Oregon Coast

2009-07-28T21:24:00.003-07:00

The southern Oregon coast is underrated. It doesn't have many resorts like the shore farther north. Its beauty is not as famous as Big Sur; there's not much of a surfing culture like Southern California. But this is a spectacular stretch of shoreline, and its remoteness and solitude make it even better. This is a typical scene between Brookings and Gold Beach.

I stayed at a motel right on the ocean in Gold Beach, where I'd stayed a couple of times before. It was sunny up until just before sunset: then the fog rolled in fast. Actually, it just kind of developed, moving from south to north. Fog always makes for cool pix, if your timing is right; a few minutes after I took this shot, the scene was socked in.

I moved north today to Newport. Stayed in a Best Western that also has a fabulous view. The beach in front of the resort is normally windswept, and it's just a sea of dunes. This is accentuated late in the day when the lowering sun highlights the beachscape.

Sunset from my room, at the end of a superb, top down day cruisin' the Oregon coast.

Crusin' the North Coast

2009-07-28T21:09:00.001-07:00

Haven't been blogging much lately, but I'm back on the road so will resume. Currently I'm ambling up the coast, dodging a fierce inland heat wave. Temps near the ocean are in the 60s and 70s, then it warms up about a degree for every 40 miles you go inland. 106 today in Portland, one degree off their alltime record!! The 107 was first hit on July 30, 1965; I was 13 and spent the day sitting in the sprinkler at home. Here, in the primeval forest at Humboldt Redwoods SP, the temperature was mild and the atmosphere was fabulous. I'm not religous in the traditional sense, but I do attend church from time to time. This day, in the towering old growth redwoods, I was in church. I'm also in church when I go to Crater Lake; Yosemite; Sequoia; the beach; and the Arizona desert in spring bloom.

Yesterday I took a hike in Redwood NP, along Prairie Creek. In addition to the big trees, the forest is a kaleidoscope of green. Ferns, sorrel, and other ground cover plants abound. The world of light and shadows is forever fascinating.

This pic is blurry if you blow it up...you really need a tripod in the deep woods to take good photos and I didn't have one. But I thought it was cool that the park folks had carved a bench into a quintessential nurse log, complete with masses of growing things all around the seat.

Doin' the Blues!

2009-06-29T19:04:00.000-07:00

Last weekend a bunch of friends and I went to the Monterey Blues Festival...conveniently located within walking distance of my place. We spent the entire afternoon and into the evening on Saturday groovin' to a lot of cool, extremely well played music. Here Johnny Rawls and his band are playin' some fine Mississippi delta blues. Johnny's bass player, Donny, is a friend of mine; he's just to the right of the sax player. Donny's your quintessential bass player...cool and solid! They put on a great show.

Johnny's great at gettin' the audience involved. Here he's singing to an elderly lady who was previously confined to a walker. Johnny said he'd get her out of her chair, and she wound up dancing! I realized the whole vibe at the festival was great...fun loving but not disorderly. That can be a hard condition to achieve, but I reckon the blues gets it done!

Elvin Bishop played a couple of gigs at the festival. He's 66 and still going strong! A role model for me. Y'know, I liked Elvin's overalls-and Johnny's hat. Maybe I should get some gear like dat!

Here Elvin is jammin' with his band and Terry Hanck, master of the alto sax. Terry played his gig just before Bishop's band, and Elvin came on and played with Terry and his band for a while. All good stuff! It occurred to me that if we got those uptight mullahs in Iran, and the dicey folks in North Korea, and, well, everyone to get into the blues, this ol' world would probably have fewer problems! Why I haven't been to the festival before now is beyond me, but I'll be back next year!

Bodie

2009-06-19T21:26:00.001-07:00

Last week I visited Bodie for the first time. It's a ghost town that is now a state park. Bodie was founded in 1859, and a few people lived here as late as the early 1940s. The town's heyday was around 1880, when 10 thousand people lived here and gold mining was at its peak. Fires in 1892 and 1932 burned many buildings, but there are still about a hundred structures preserved in a state of "arrested decay"...the condition in which they existed when the park was founded in 1972. Here's one of the main drags.

Life was harsh here. The town is 8300 feet above sea level, and the weather's cold most of the year. Last winter the temperature bottomed out at 28 below zero F, which is apparently a rather mild extreme. There was virtually no indoor plumbing in the town. It would not be pleasant to use the outhouse when it's 20 below or so.

Since the town had a few inhabitants well into the 20th century, some semi-modern trappings exist. Here's the gas station on the main drag.

The vehicle in the previous pic is authentic but obviously restored and maintained. The cars that have been parked in Bodie for over half a century are in a somewhat different state of repair.

This is a classroom in the school. As a history buff I found this pic interesting; blow it up and you'll see that the map of Europe has the national boundaries of the period between the world wars...1918-1939. The school, church, and several other buildings were not finally abandoned until the 1930s, though the town's prime years were a half century earlier. The stamp mill used in gold mining operations was closed in 1938.

More Sequoias

2009-06-19T21:15:00.003-07:00

These are young sequoias, just sprouted a few years ago. The fire in this area of the park killed several large old trees, a rare occurrence. But, it cleared ground cover and provided heat for cones to open their seeds, and now there are many young trees sprouting up.

In a couple thousand years, one of the seedlings above may look like this. This is the General Sherman Tree, the largest sequoia in bulk and thus the earth's largest living thing. It's actually about 3000 years old.

There are several fine meadows in Giant Forest. They're marshy areas with slow moving streams in the wet season. It's fun to walk out into the middle of a meadow on a giant fallen sequoia log and take in the beauty and peace of the scene.

Return to Sequoia

2009-06-19T20:53:00.000-07:00

I visited Sequoia National Park last week for the first time in three years. I usually go annually but had not been to the park since I retired...bad oversight. The trees are still majestic as always.

I was messing around with my camera on a gray, foggy day trying to photograph the trees, and discovered that the sunset mode gave me a much more accurate image of the reddish color of sequoia bark. Am I the last person to realize this?

This is what's left of the Washington Tree. It used to be one of the six largest sequoias in the park, but an unusually hot fire 3 or 4 years ago burned the area and destroyed most of the tree. However, it's still alive; a few branches are still growing on the left side of it. Blow up the pic and you'll not only get a better view of the branches, but you will notice that someone renamed the tree, at least on the log in the left foreground...possibly a national park employee with a spray paint can? Perhaps they were comparing the remnants of the Washington Tree with the remnants of US environmental policy after the last eight years.

The lizards got into the sequoias so much that they endeavored to climb one of the big trees. They soon discovered it was a really massive undertaking and gave up the idea, content to admire the trees' grandeur from the forest floor.