Grinwithoutacat.com

There won’t be much in the way of photography today – I’m going to meet my Aunt for breakfast, go see one of the wineries she works at, and then head back to San Jose to try to catch an early flight back to Dallas. I have a meeting early tomorrow morning that I would like to be semi-coherent for (don’t as why – I just want to be that way).

Alexander Valley

This is the view of the Alexander Valley from the winery my Aunt works at. Back the other direction are some geysers (off in the distance) that produce cool vapor plumes on cold days. Unfortunately, it’s warm so you don’t get geyser pictures. You could use your imagination, however

The really cool part about the drive up from Healdsburg is that the grapes are currently being harvested and the whole area smells of wine. You can catch a nice buzz just by rolling down your window and inhaling deeply!

San Rafael Bridge Outhouse

The San Rafael Bridge goes across the north end of the Bay – if you are going to San Jose this will take you down through Oakland on 880 and allow you to miss both the drive over the Golden Gate Bridge (too bad) and the drive through downtown San Francisco (well worth missing – it takes forever).

The last time I went across this bridge I noticed some extra special facilities for the construction workers. I had to work hard to get this picture (70 mph), but you can just see the top of the porta-potty in this picture. If you look closely you will notice that it is outside of the bridge rail. Yes, it really is hung over the rail on a small platform about 200 feet above the water. I don’t know about you, but this is not what I would call the ideal location for a bathroom.

What is strange is that only about 20% of the porta-potties on the bridge are like this – the rest sit on the road in perfect (relative) safety. I’m not sure exactly what the plan is here…

Old Car, Funny License Plate

And here the trip ends (no I didn’t crash into the back of the fitty-5 ford – I just quit taking photos as I hurried to catch my flight). The car itself was nothing special, but I liked the license plate.

Thanks for sticking with me – I’ll post more on the next trip.

Jim

This afternoon we went to Safari West – a wildlife park near Santa Rosa that specializes in African animals. According to our tour guide (Monty? who was from South Africa) this part of California actually looks quite like parts of Africa – especially the Transvaal.

The tour is in two parts – first a ride through the park on a very cool old army truck (sorry – forgot to get a picture) and then a walking tour through another part.

Ostrich – Up Close and Personal

How’s that for a closeup of an ostrich? I took this picture from about 2 feet away – right after the ostrich nipped my elbow and gave me a nice bruise.

Cows

Next stop, cows. African cows with really big horns. Interestingly, these were not longhorns – the horns were larger, straighter and came out of the head at a different angle. I wish I could remember the name – these were pretty cool.

Yes, I really am showing you the southern view of a northbound cow (and yes, it really is a cow – I checked).

More Cows

The one resting his head on the cow’s back is the dominant bull in the herd. He knows it, too (if you had a rack of horns like that you wouldn’t have any self esteem problems either).

Zebras

I took about 20 pictures of the zebras, but I won’t inflict the whole collection on you – that’s for when I can see you in person and show them to you slowly, with lots of extremely boring commentary

I also learned things about zebras today:

• At best, zebras can be described as surly.
• They are also grouchy, ill tempred, nasty, mean and cranky.
• Other than those fine qualities, they have pretty good camofluage (notice how well this one blends in) and that’s about all you can say about them.
• In the 1820’s a number of donkey’s got loose in Africa and the zebras cross bred with them. The result is a “zedonk” which apparently combines the worst qualities of each. What you get is an untrainable animal with a bad temper and the ability to hide quite well.
• A zebra is apparently a match for a number of the larger carnivores in Africa – lions hunt them, but not always successfully.

One of the members of the tour asked a lot of questions about riding zebras, and he really didn’t seem convinced that trying was a bad idea. I was hoping he would try, but no luck…

Cape Buffalo

These are Cape Buffalo – a creature that rivals the zebra in sheer grouchiness, but weighs three times as much and has horns. They are also more unpredictable – although our guide assured us they rarely charge the tour vehicles more than once or twice a day. I would have gotten a better picture but, for some reason, we never really got that close.

They had a camel that had been beaten up by a cape buffalo – and we all know that a camel is considerably larger (he’s recovering fine – they stuck him in with the giraffes, which don’t bother anything).

Random Animals

I don’t know what these are (some species of antelope) but I liked the one with her head stretched out on the ground.

Eland (?)

I’m not sure, but I think this is an “eland” – either way, check out those horns. They are not just for decoration.

The Tasty Wildebeest

And what “African” safari would be complete without the good old wildebeest? Yes, the very same animal that you see all the time on the Discovery channel being chased, caught or eaten. These were headed to the water hole and, of course, somebody promptly asked if there were any alligators in it (there aren’t).

Safari West

This is the valley that Safari West is in. In the middle of the picture are the giraffe barns (if you look closely you will notice the doors are extra tall. To the right you can just see a couple of roofs – these are “tents” that can be rented for an overnight stay. I’ll have to come back here some time as it looks like it would be a wonderful place to spend a night or two.

Giraffe

They had half a dozen or so giraffes of several types (don’t ask me to tell you what they are – it all has to do with coloring), but this is the biggest one. He’s 18 feet tall, the tallest a giraffe can get. I live in a third-floor apartment, so his head would come up to roughly my patio floor – pretty big if you ask me.

As for temperment, giraffes are pretty much the exact opposite of a zebra. The giraffe pen is also used for treating injured animals because it is the quietest place available.

Bird-on-a-Hat

This little guy is a european ruler – and his specialty is sitting on hats and heads. Before we went in to the bird enclosure we were warned about him – and told that he has a perfect record for not making a mess on anybody’s head. Believe it or not, he actually managed to make the rounds of about 20 people and not once did he make a mess!

Now He’s on MY Hat!

You haven’t lived until you have had a bird on your hat…

Dykars

The little rat-looking creatures in the middle of the picture are actually Dykars (spelling?) – the world’s second-smallest species of antelope. If you look very carefully at the one on the left (especially in the blow-up) you will see little tiny horns on it’s head – about an inch long!

Extra Color

Two seriously bright parrots.

This is, unfortunately, the end of the tour of Safari West. I’d highly recommend a trip if you are ever in the Santa Rosa area.

Up at the crack of dawn (or relatively close – 8-ish) and off to a good breakfast. Today we are going to go out to the coast and the spend the afternoon/evening at one of the local wildlife parks that specializes in African animals only.

A Good Start

Omelette Express – a Santa Rosa joint that makes one of the best omelettes I have ever eaten. I had an avacado, bacon and feta omelette that just rocked. The corn beef hash isn’t bad, either. Highly recommended

Oh, the decorations on the walls are the fronts of old Jaguars – how cool is that? If you check out the web site you’ll see a picture or two.

Fog Rolling In

The interesting thing about coastlines is that they generate funky weather patterns. In this area, you can drive 10-15 miles and go from sunny/hot to foggy/cool. As we crested the mountains between Santa Rosa and the Pacific, we came across this view. If I remember correctly (Aunt Teri?) this is fog rolling up the Russian River. I like fog…

More Fog

More fog – this time you can see it rolling up a valley.

Hawk on a Rock

This is either a hawk or an osprey (sitting on the top of the rock). These were all over the areay sitting on anything tall – much like the red tail hawks do here in Texas.

I got a closer look at him from a different angle (picture didn’t come out) and he was looking distinctly rumpled – hungover?

Gull on a Rock

The last bird-on-a-rock picture I’ll inflict on you – this is a gull on a rock out in the Pacific ocean. He looked a bit rumpled, too – must have been a rough Friday night for birds.

When I was getting set for this picture it was mostly sunny – then the fog rolled in in about 30 seconds.

Beach

This is the same beach as the one the I shot the gull on – just a bit around to the right. I’m not sure of the name of the beach, but it was pretty empty and desolate, qualities I think this picture captures quite well.

This is probably my favorite picture from the trip – it didn’t require cropping and perfectly captures the mood.

Shadow on the Beach

This is my Aunt Teri’s dog Shadow – he is extremely active, so he is often in this pose, but only for short periods of time. Getting this took quite a few tries.

Shadow (not in motion)

Shadow again – this time looking very intense. He’s a Shepherd mix with a bit of Sharpei – which shows up only in a few wrinkles on his forehead. He has a way of looking very worried at times with a seriously wrinkled brow. He’s not as serious as he looks…

I think Shadow is a bit put out with me – I took over his seat in his car

Jenner Visitor’s Center

A short way up the coast is the little town of Jenner. This is the visitor center, which is a bit confusing as it looks open from the road, but is actually closed. If you look at the larger image you will see that the building has been condemned, but that it still has an “open” sign on the front.

Jenner Post Office

This may explain things a bit – the Jenner Post office!

As far as I could tell this is a pretty permanent structure – and it’s been here for a while. I thought the post office had certain standards your building had to adhere to…

Hawk

I know, I know – I promised “no more birds.” However, if you check you will see that it was really “the last bird-on-a-rock picture,” not birds generally. This was another picture that the fog managed to change at the last minute – when we stopped it was sunny, but by the time I had the camera ready (a minute at most) the fog rolled in. I was going to wait it out, but then the bird left.

Damn bird…

Redwood Forest

The next stop was the local redwood forest. I like the idea of having a “local redwood forest” – it’s much nicer than what we have in Dallas – the “local slum” or the “local flat dusty area covered with prickly pear and soon to be covered with a new subdivision.”

I learned a number of things about redwoods:

• They grow very quickly – it’s nothing to have a 20 year old tree that is a foot or two through.
• Redwoods like a lot of water. The more water you give a redwood the faster it will grow and the bigger it will get.
• They tend to fall over in high winds. You only find really tall redwoods in sheltered valleys and canyons.
• Redwoods are unstable because they don’t have a taproot – just a network of shallow roots running out up to 150 feet from a tree.
• If you chop down a redwood and leave the stump there is a very good chance that a bunch of new trees will grow from the stump of the old one. Redwoods are apparently rather hard to kill.
• Redwoods tend to grow from new shoots, not seeds. Apparently the “duff” on the forest floor is too thick to allow seeds to reach fertile ground.

And there is your horticultural lesson for the day – there will be a short quiz later.

Parson Jones Tree

This is the second largest redwood in the park – I would have taken a picture of the largest one, but I ran down the battery on my camera and didn’t have another (digital camera lesson #2 – charge yo’ damn bat’ry).

If you look at the large version of this picture you will see that this particular tree is pretty large – and old (see the sign). Keep in mind that there is a bigger one in the same park…

Looking Up

The obligatory “straight up through the trees” shot – you have to do one, although they never really show just how tall the trees really area.

I liked the redwood forest – it was nice and quiet and smelled very good.

Comments

• Dec-2-2008 00:48:57 by Pam Lewis:
  I can’t believe you were out here. I live in Sonoma County and have been to all these places several times. If you ever make it out this way again, be sure to let me know and I’ll show you around.

The journey begins at Alphablox corporate headquarters in Mountain View, California. I have just spent 3 days helping to train new members of our sales staff and drinking copious quantities of alcohol – so I’m ready for a relatively sober weekend…

Alphablox

Alphablox Worldwide Corporate Headquarters – Whee!

I had to show this, but it’s a pretty boring picture. The only thing of note is that I’m starting off one of my photo albums with a picture that I didn’t even bother to take myself. So sue me…

Bay Area Traffic

As far as I can tell, California is famous for exactly one thing: traffic! Driving approximately 110 miles from San Jose to Healdsburg took well over 3 1/2 hours – before rush hour!

Isn’t this fun so far?

Obligatory Cop Car

Continuing the theme from the previous trip, I risked life, limb and freedom and took another picture of a highway patrol car. Oddly enough, the New Mexico cops have URL’s on their cars, but the California ones do not. Maybe a budget cutback? Maybe CHIPS.com went under already?

Cranes

30 miles (and well over an hour) up I880, I’m passing through Oakland. On the left of the freeway is the Bay and along the bay are a lot of very large cranes used for loading and unloading container ships. At this point I ceased to wonder what was holding up traffic and tried to remember where my erector set was.

Unfortunately, none of them were operating – they would have been fun to watch. On the right side of the picture you can just see a bit of the Bay Bridge – this is the best picture I have of it.

San Rafael Bridge

Normally I wouldn’t bother with a picture like this (you do believe that, right?) but somehow I managed to make the San Rafael Bridge look like it’s leaning to the left a bit. It is under construction, but it isn’t that bad.

Comments

• Dec-2-2008 00:47:12 by Pam Lewis:
  I drive this bridge every day to work and back.

Last day of vacation (bummer), but I’m headed to Carlsbad Caverns, a mere 150 miles away. Then it’s back to El Paso to fly home, another 150 mile drive. I hope The Bomb makes it back – there’s lot’s of desert between here and El Paso and I’m running short of Aqua Fina.

Let’s see what we have…

Entering Roswell

Halfway between Ruidoso and Carlsbad is a little town you may have heard of – Roswell (is that you, Sculley?). I’m not spending much time here, but if you go through Roswell, you have to take a picture – you never know what may show up…

More Roswell

Part of downtown Roswell. The yellow sign to the left offers “Quick Cash on Car Titles” – wonder what they would give me for a 2012 Acme Flying Saucer 3 with extra chrome?

Ok, that’s enough of Roswell – this town scares me and I’m getting out of here – on to Carlsbad Caverns!

Carlsbad Caverns Entrance

In we go – for some reason I like taking pictures of signs. I once did a road trip of the central US and took pictures of nothing but signs (ok, that’s a little weird, but you know me – I’m like that).

Next…

Cave Entrance

So, here it is – the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns. In case you didn’t know I just love caves – or anything cave-like. The last time I was here was in the mid-80’s on a family trip. I remember very little except being somewhat surly (what teenager isn’t) and doing a lightning trip through the caves with Dad. This
time I was prepared to have a better time and to take more time – I’ve got 7 hours to get to El Paso and catch a flight at this point.

By the way, there are actually two public entrances – the elevator and the “Natural Entrance” that involves a mile long walk. I decided to do the “Natural Entrance” as it offered more opportunities for photography – and I had 160 megabytes of Compact Flash card to burn!

Cave Entrance

A closer look at the hole I’m headed down. There’s another 100 foot drop down below the dark area – quite a ways to go.

At this point I learned several very important things about caves:

Caves contain bats.

• Bats do not spend all their time in the cave – they have to come out of the caves to hunt.
• Bats are not house broken – there are no little bat toilets in the cave (imagine the plumbing required to make one of those flush).
• Bat droppings (guano) STINK.
• Decomposing guano smells even worse than the fresh stuff.
• Caves contain large quantities of decomposing guano.
• Air currents tend to rise up through holes like the one you see above, carrying the ever-so-fragrant odor of decomposing bat guano.

UGH – STINKY!!!!! (or words to that effect)

I got down out of the air current as fast as I could!

Entering Carlsbad

Ok, now I’m down in the cave, below the ever-so-odiferous air currents and looking back up. You know what, it’s kind of dark down in here…

Cave Entrance

This is a really cool shot – just in from the entrance, in a very large room – maybe 50 feet high, 200-300 feet long, with a trail winding down the side.

Uh-oh – do you see a problem here? No, your eyes are not going bad – this picture really is NOT in focus. As I started reviewing my pictures (in the El Paso airport) I realized a few things about digital photography in dark places:

• Digital cameras are very sophisticated, but in some cases they behave much like a traditional camera with film.
• Taking pictures with film involves something called “exposure time” – the amount of time film has to be “exposed” to light in order for the picture to be captured.
• The less light there is, the longer the film must be exposed in order to capture the picture. This can range from small fractions of a second to several seconds.
• During the time you are waiting for the picture to be exposed you must not move the camera, or you will get a blurry photo – much like the one above.
• My digital camer’s instruction book (the 150 page one) made some mention of this phenomenon – but I just breezed past it and left the camera on “Auto”
• There was also some mention of not moving the camera while the CCD is recording the picture – and the warning light that tells you not to move the camera.
• I had just taken 160+ photos of a very cool cave and about 6 were good (that’s 3.75% if you are counting).

DAMN!!!!!!!

Ok, lesson learned – I’ll go back some day after reading the directions. In the meantime, you get to see the few acceptable photos.

Pointy Things


Stalagmites point up, Stalactites point down. Caves contain lots of both. Stalagmites point up from the floor and present little hazard except for tripping. Stalactites point down from the ceiling – over your head. Carlsbad does not rent hardhats, but they should…

We are about 9 photos in at this point.

Creepy Cave


On the one hand, I’m a little peeved about this being out of focus. On the other hand, it’s kind of creepy – looks like something right out of a bad sci-fi movie about volcanic planets!

This is around 24 photos in, not that I’m counting or anything

Really Big Stalagmite


Sometimes things actually did turn out right. This is down at the bottom of a 30 foot stalagmite looking up – and it came out pretty close to what I expected. I did not expect this to be a picture included in the album, however – I was just playing…

Right before taking this I had a nice chat with a ranger (there are rangers stationed about every 15 minutes through the cave). I asked him about changing light bulbs, as there are lots of lights in the cave, sometimes in obviously inconvenient places. He told me that they have one person named Emelio who changes most of the bulbs. He normally doesn’t mind, but there are apparently a few that terrify him to the point where he spends the whole process praying (the rangers go along to help with the climbing). There are also several that can only be changed by professional mountain climbers. There’s a job I wouldn’t want…

Photo 39 of 160-ish

The Really Hard Way Out


Every so often you run across some of the older trails in the cave – or the older stairs. These went right up a wall that now takes about 15 minutes, 2 caves and 500 feet to traverse. You can’t see the rest of the stairs, but the were rather rickety and went up about 80 feet.

This photo might make you think that the stairs ended in another dimension or something, but they really do go up a wall – I swear!

Photo 54 of 160 blurs.

Even Bigger (and blurrier) Stalagmites


This one isn’t too blurry, but unfortunately it’s the worst shot of the 10 or 12 I took of these. What we have here are 3 really big stalagmites – in the 40-50 foot range. The one on the right is actually attached to the ceiling now.

I just love the thought that this took thousands of years to create!

Smudge 82 of 160 (note the trend – not good )

And the Same to You!


Look – the cave is giving me the finger!

Blur 88 (trend improving, but don’t hold your breath)

More Pointy Things


This one isn’t too bad – at least you can get an idea of what I was shooting at. This is actually rather large – maybe 40 feet high or so.

# 130 (trend going wrong again – remind you of the stock market?)

A Good Shot!


If I only knew why this turned out fine. I took three more pictures of the same thing and they all stink. Why me? (don’t answer that).

# 142 (But I’m happy with this one)

Aaaallllliiiiieeeennnnssss


Well, here we are at the end – aren’t you glad that’s over? I’ll work on my cave photography and try again later.

Now, on to the photos from the rest of the trip…

Welcome to Texas


From Carlsbad to El Paso it’s about 150 miles. There are precisely two interesting things on the way, and this picture contains both. Can you guess the second?

Texas Mountains!


Here it is – did you know Texas actually had a real mountain? You can’t tell from here (I’m at 5,500 feet) but this thing is actually over 8,000 feet high. Impressive!

From here to El Paso there are about 100 miles of the most boring scenery you have ever seen. I put my foot down and flogged The Bomb as fast as it would go (90-ish). The only thing of minor interest that I saw was as stretch of road with for sale signs for 10 acre lots – 50 miles east of El Paso. And people were buying them…

Well, that’s the trip – thanks for hanging in there. If you have cave photo tips let me have them.

Jim