Yesterday we visited a National Forest site, the V-V (pronounced Vee Bar Vee) ranch, for an archeology fair. We missed the Hopi dancers because of time zone differences. Arizona as a whole does not observe daylight savings, but the Native American reservations do. We turned up in time for the dancers Arizona time, and they had performed at reservation time, so we were an hour late. Even so we had a great time. There were a number of exhibits by…
First cow of the day yesterday at 12:23pm when we were over the border into Arizona. We arrived mid afternoon at the home of Paula’s sister Andrea and her husband Rennie. Here are some flowers from Andrea’s garden.
As we entered the park this morning, Paula asked the ranger where the best place would be to see bighorn sheep. “I don’t know,” the ranger replied, “I’ve never seen any myself.” We headed drove off up to Keys View, which overlooks the San Andreas Fault. A couple just leaving told us they had seen four bighorn sheep cross the trail to the viewpoint and head down the hill. They were well down the slope by the time we got…
Neither Paula nor I are desert people, but here we are in a godforsaken desert interrupted by yucca plants with delusions of grandeur. Joshua Tree National Park is packed. The roads, trails, and parking lots are close to Yosemite-busy. Many of the visitors seem to be European, perhaps looking for a foretaste of what global warming will do to Southern Europe. Anyhow, here are my attempts to find a few shards of beauty in a desolate and unsympathetic landscape. Can…
Funny stuff, felt. You might think of it as a material for costuming, hats, or artwork, but it played a fundamental role in the most advanced transportation of both the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries. Long time readers of this blog (both of you) may remember when we crossed the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct, perhaps the greatest engineering achievement of the canal age. It is a mighty iron trough held up on stone piers. The sections of cast iron were bolted together…
Last night we spent with our old friends Barry and Sue. They are planning to downsize from their eleven thousand square foot home in the hills north of Los Angeles now that they no longer have most of their extended family there. If you are in the market for a new home, here’s the website, and here’s the view from the guest suite that they put us up in. Compared with home prices in San Francisco it’s a steal. Sue…
Heading south today we stopped at two of the original Spanish missions, Mission Nuestra Señora de la Soledad, and Mission San Antonio de Padua. Let’s get the historical background out of the way. Depending on your viewpoint the missionaries were either devout men who were willing to travel to the far side of the world leaving all the comforts of civilization behind in order to spread their faith, or racist imperialist conquerors who enslaved and imprisoned the Native Americans, and…
There’s no question that we saw condors today, flying overhead, past us, and below us. This is our friend, number six. They really are a limited edition bird, with only four or five hundred alive, but that is up from twenty seven in 1987, when all the remaining birds were captured to set up a captive breeding program. The day dawned sunny and cold. We saw the first cows at 9:36am, along with a coyote, and were on the trailhead…
We packed up the car and headed south on 280. First cows of the day were at 10:56am. There’s a herd that grazes near the Stanford linear accelerator. Q: What do you get if you put a cow in a linear accelerator? A: Moo-ons I know the jokes are bad, but now that Ken Dodd is dead someone has to pick up the SLAC. First stop was Pinnacles National Park, formerly known as Pinnacles National Monument, and before that as…