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| Wednesday, 14-Jul-2004 00:00 |
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The Long & Winding Road
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A view looking over the road
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A view of the freeway from the road
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Another view of the freeway
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Looking up at the moon from just off the road
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I am back! Thanks for all the great comments while I was gone. I look forward to seeing what you all have been posting while I was gone 
Today, if you wish to drive north from Los Angeles towards the San Joaquin Valley, you can comfortably speed along the eight-lane Interstate 5. This was not always so. From 1915 to 1933, motorists navigated 48 miles of torturous hairpin curves and steep grades along the Old Ridge Route between Castaic and the Grapevine. The exhausting trip (speed limit: 15 mph for cars, 12 mph for trucks) easily took an entire day. The route was replaced in 1933 by the much straighter, wider and less harrowing Highway 99, also known as the Alternate Ridge Route. Interstate 5 opened to motorists in 1960. These photos were taken on an outing along what is left of the Old Ridge Route a couple of weeks ago.
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| Monday, 14-Jun-2004 00:00 |
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There's Not Much To Be Said, It's The Top Of The End
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Rock Formations in Charleston, OR
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I will be offline for a little while. I will see you all when I get back. Enjoy yourselves while I am gone!
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| Saturday, 12-Jun-2004 00:00 |
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Life Is A Rock But The Radio Rolled Me
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Rock formation within Tick Canyon
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Ancient debris flow within the canyon
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Ancient stream channel within the canyon
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"Life is a rock but the radio rolled me
Gotta turn it up louder, so my DJ told me
Life is a rock but the radio rolled me
At the end of my rainbow lies a golden oldie"
Tick Canyon lies in the Soledad Basin in southern California, and represents a tributary of the Santa Clara River channel. Tick Canyon lies between Mint Canyon to the west and Tapie and Spring Canyons to the east. The area has been a well known mineral collecting area for Southern Californians for many years, being most famous for its high quality howlite nodules. Among specialists it is also known as the type locality, and perhaps the only accessible locality, for the very rare strontium borate veatchite. Micro mineral collectors also know it as a source for nice sharp natrolite and analcime crystals, and in earlier times it was known for agates on the nearby hills.
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| Wednesday, 2-Jun-2004 00:00 |
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Anakin
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A child born of prophecy, possibly conceived by the will of the Force itself, Anakin Skywalker has left an indelible mark on the history of the galaxy, leading it through periods of lightness and dark. This is the name we gave our Himalayan cat. It was the obvious choice, as his mother was Princess Leia (in the future Star Wars realm, Han and Leia have three children: Jaina, Jacene, and Anakin). Also, like the Anakin who grows up to be Darth Vader, our Anakin has a bit of an attitude at times. As a kitten he was referred to as "Anakin the anarchist" and still shows some of those same traits even now at 2 1/2.
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| Tuesday, 1-Jun-2004 00:00 |
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Our Journey Is Hard And The Lake Is Far
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"Run across the seas, find the brightness in the mist
Following the lane, you will reach the Silver Lake
Our journey is hard and the lake is far
We will never fall, in the strength we hold"
These photos are of old lake bed sediments near the Salton Sea in California. They are very thick (look at the photos with humans in them for scale) and have been uplifted by the San Andreas Fault.
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| Monday, 31-May-2004 00:00 |
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Santa Monica
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Along Santa Monica Boulevard
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They line up on Santa Monica Boulevard
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Santa Monica rocks...
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"Theres a place off Ocean Avenue
Where I used to sit and talk with you
We were both 16 and it felt so right
Sleepin' all day stayin' up all night
Stayin' up all night"
Santa Monica, California is a city rich in tradition and diversity. The city grew from Spanish roots in the 1600â??s into a Victorian era playground in the late 1800s and blossomed with movie star glamour in the 1920â??s and beyond. Today Santa Monica mixes all these eras and influences with a striking contemporary style and attitude that is unique among its rivals.
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| Sunday, 30-May-2004 00:00 |
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Desert Dance
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"Piercing thorns in flesh grown tough from blowing dust
Unquenchable thirst, endless yearning, engulfing silence, complete darkness
Has driven me to crave stronger flavors, brighter colors, bolder patterns
To cut through drifting dust
This lonely land, where the more you love someone the further you dance apart"
- By Charlotte Wachtel
These photos are from a 1999 trip to Death Valley with friends. In the first image we had stopped at a spring to look for pup fish and instead found crayfish. These are not native to the area, so we took it upon ourselves to try and catch them to make the spring safe again for the native species. Needless to say, we failed miserably in our quest to catch them, probably since we were using a paper cup, chopsticks, and a scarf as our net.
The second image is my friend Billy standing in the middle of Devil's Golf Course in sandals, a field of evaporates which are very sharp to the touch. Next is Badwater, the lowest point in the Northern Hemisphere. The fouth image is Ubehebe crater, one of my personal spots in Death Valley. I have climbed up and down this crater on every trip there and still find something new every time.
On the way home (which at that time was Oregon for me) on this particular trip, which was taken at the end of March, we ran into snow. Naturally a snowball fight broke out when we stopped for lunch. The fifth photo was taken just before I got hit dead on with a series of snowballs from every direction. You can actually see one of them in mid-flight in the photo.
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| Saturday, 29-May-2004 00:00 |
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Death Valley Is Hotter Than Hell
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The charcoal kilns in Wildrose Canyon
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The sand dunes of Death Valley
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Sliding down Mosaic Canyon
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The Devil wanted a place on earth
Sort of a summer home
A place to spend his vacation
Whenever he wanted to roam
So he picked out Death Valley
A place both wretched and rough
Here the climate was to his liking
And the cowboys were hardened and tough
He dried up the streams in the canyons
And ordered no rain to fall
He dried up the lakes in the valleys
Then baked and scorched it all
Then over his barren desert
He transplanted shrubs from Hell
The cactus, thistle, and prickly pear
The climate suited them well
Now, the home was much to his liking
But animal life, he had none
So he created crawling creatures
That all manking would shun
First he made the rattlesnake
With its forked poisonous tongue
Taught it to strike and rattle
And how to swallow its young
Then he made Scorpions and Lizards
And the ugly old Horned Toad
He placed spiders of every description
Under rocks by the side of the road
Then he ordered the sun to shine hotter
Hotter and hotter still
Until even the cactus wilted
And the old Horned Toad looked ill
Then he gazed on his earthly kingdom
As any creator would
He chuckled a little up his sleeve
And admitted that it was good
'Twas summer now and Satan lay
By a prickly pear to rest
The sweat rolled off his swarthy brow
So he took off his coat and vest
"By Golly," he finally panted
"I did my job too well
I'm going back where I came from
Death Valley is hotter than Hell"
- Author Unknown
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| Friday, 28-May-2004 00:00 |
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Death Valley Days, Part II
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The uplifted, tilted beds of Death Valley
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Looking across the formations
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A friendly little cactus says "hi"
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Death Valley National Park, established on February 11, 1933, covers almost 3,000 square miles and is a vast natural museum, larger than the Yellowstone National Park. The floor of the Valley is almost 300 feet below sea level (at Badwater basin) and it is recognized as the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere as well as one of the hottest places on earth. 134F degrees was recorded in 1913, second only to the 136F degrees registered in Libya in 1936. From the top of the 11,049 foot Telescope Peak in the Panamint Range Mountains, the floor of the Valley spreads out almost 2 miles below. It bears the grim name Death Valley.
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| Tuesday, 25-May-2004 00:00 |
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I'm Lost In A Painted Desert
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Rock formation in the CA desert
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More desert rocks
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The entire formation, with people on top for scale
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The Mojave Desert is an arid region of southeastern California and portions of Nevada, Arizona and Utah that occupies more than 25,000 square miles. On the northwestern boundary it extends from the Sierra Nevada range to the Colorado Plateau in the east; it abuts the San Gabriel-San Bernardino mountains in the southwest. Near the Great Basin-Mojave border lies Death Valley, the lowest point in North America and a national park.
The Mojave's desert climate is characterized by extreme variation in daily temperature and an average annual precipitation of less than 5 inches. Almost all the precipitation arrives in winter. Freezing temperatures occur in winter, while summers are hot, dry and windy. The Mojave has a typical mountain-and-basin topography with sparse vegetation. Sand and gravel basins drain to central salt flats from which borax, potash and salt are extracted. Silver, tungsten, gold and iron deposits are worked.
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