More Water Pictures

 Not sure why keeping this up-to-date is getting so difficult.  It's hard to blog while driving from SF to LA.  And then there were a bunch of followups on the repair work at my mom's house.  

But despite the rain last Tuesday night, the morning had cloudy sunshine.  

And walking along the boardwalk in Cambria  was spectacular.  

The rain that was predicted hadn't arrived yet.  

There was a steady supply of waves roaring toward the shore. If you ever consider a stopover between LA and SF, I highly recommend a hotel along Moonstone beach.  It's off the main highway and the Boardwalk offers magnificent, life affirming views and sounds.  

The birds were enjoying it too.  And part of my delay was me remembering how I used to play around with my photos before putting them up, and so I dabbled with Photopea - a free online program that is very close to photoshop.

But we had to move along to get to LA before five to turn in the rental car.  But we did have sun most of the way.  Everything was significantly greener than when we'd driven up this way.  

We stopped in Santa Barbara to test the reciprocity between the Anchorage Museum and the Santa Barbara museum of art.  Key areas of downtown maintain a Mexican like architectural style. Below is the city hall.

And here's a nearby city parking garage, where parking was free for the first 75 minutes.  Since we didn't have too much time, that was perfect.  

Then on back to LA where we dropped off the car and found a good vegan restaurant.  In LA it was threatening to rain again and but the storm held off for another day, and then we got lots and lots of rain.  But we haven't seen any flooding except for the normal rush of water going down the hill the house is own.  Had to rescue trash cans that floated down the street.  

We did have a Persian dinner the other night with lamb shanks. When I stray from the basically veggie and fish, it should be really worth it.  And it was.  Looking forward to being back in Anchorage soon.  

Elephant Seals Beach Near Cambria, California

Happy New Year to you all.  May it be a better year for all.  And may you all have find peace within if not without.  

What with adventures and projects with our SF grandkids and other other friends here, I've not gotten these pictures up.  But this was such an amazing time, watching the Elephant Seals lying on the beach, in the water, and occasionally moving around.  So enjoy the pictures and short videos.

I don't usually put up so many pictures in one post.  I really did edit out most of the pictures I took.  The videos are very short and at the end.  And here's a link to the Friends of Elephant Seals website that will tell you more about the seals and good times to visit.

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Some LA/Venice/Santa Monica Views

We're at my mom's house in LA. The bike still gets me around and things are in decent shape. Here are a few photos.

Venice Beach at Rose.

Santa Monica is doubling the bike path along the beach so there will be separate space for pedestrians and bikes

Pelicans at Santa Monica Pier.


















When you bike, you get to see signs like this.  We're going to see if we can get in tomorrow.

This is at a Persian ice cream shop in Westwood.

Back at the beach, this is a view looking north toward Santa Monica from the Venice Pier.











Looking south now from the pier.

SF 2: Beaches, Flowers, A Bridge

Part of yesterday's wanderings included the old Sutro Baths where Geary meets the ocean.  This is actually a National Park Service National Recreation Area with an interesting history that I'll let interested parties check out here.

The walk down to the beach area was filled with blooming flowers, birds, and bees.











This seems to be a coastal bush lupine.  The pollinator appears to be a Bombus vosnesenskii or yellow-faced bumblebee.

Part of what remains of the bath, including the two egrets.  

And here's what it looks like in the ocean - which was at high tide when we were there.  

 

Then we wandered some more and got to a point west of the Golden Gate bridge near Baker's Beach.  

From the National Park Service, again:

"Battery Chamberlin holds the last 6-inch "disappearing gun" of its type on the west coast. Built near Baker Beach in 1904, Battery Chamberlin was constructed to accommodate the lighter, stronger, more powerful coastal defense artillery developed in the late nineteenth century."

The trail from the beach to the Golden Gate bridge had lots of stairs.

It was a short, but wonderful time with the grandkids, and in San Francisco.  But it's raining today, time to get back to better weather in Anchorage.  

A note on the state of affairs.  My son, at age four, did not have the word "homeless" in his vocabulary.  But his four year old son uses that word all the time.

Leaving LA. Arriving Seattle. Then On Home To Anchorage

The rain stopped during the morning in LA and we had periods of sunshine.  We even got a rainbow while waiting on the plane to take off.











And here are all those beaches I've been posting pictures of.  This time from the air.  The line out to see at the bottom is the north side of Marina del Rey.  Then comes the Venice Pier, and beyond that is the Santa Monica Pier.  Strange light close to sunset time.

I spent most of the flight trying to catch up on my reading of Abramson's Proof of Collusion.  I'm trying to imagine the explanations we'll get when current Republican Senators write the memoirs.  Murkowski might write something like, well, I opposed when I thought it would make a difference, but I had to balance getting things for Alaska vs losing all leverage vs being attacked and cut out completely.  I waited until there were enough other Republican senators to act in ways that would make a difference."   All the pictures of her I see nowadays have this terribly pained expression.  Is that her current look, or is that what the editors think is the most likely to get readers' attention?

Abramson tells a bunch of different stories that all tie together to explain Trump's historic and more current ties to Russia, gives details on the key players, and a massive backup of footnotes, of sources.  He doesn't make extravagant claims.  He mentions things that are missing in the evidence.  One can't help but wonder how the Republicans piled up on Clinton, yet the evidence of Trump's collusion is overwhelming.  Yet they do nothing, letting him stay in the country's cockpit pulling the levers.  If there was a hint that a pilot had a drinking problem, he'd be suspended until it was determined if it were true.  If a teacher were accused of inappropriately touching a child, he'd be out of the classroom immediately.  Yet the Republicans allow Trump to keep tearing apart the United States' political and physical infrastructure, honor, economy, and ideals while they let Mueller gather the details.  (It's not bad that they let Mueller do his work.  I'd like them to protect Mueller from being removed, and protect his work from being buried by Trump's new Attorney General.)  But in the meantime they let him continue to do his damage.

I do recommend the book for anyone who isn't quite sure of how and why Trump will be found guilt of colluding with the Russians to get elected in exchange for wrecking Western alliances, removing sanctions, supporting Russia's annexing of Crimea, pulling out of the Paris Climate Treaty, and on and on.

And then I noticed we were flying over downtown Seattle.  You've seen enough pictures of all the buildings.  Here are a couple of more impressionistic pictures.

The wide shot.









And the closer shot.  (The green is the ferris wheel on the waterfront.)











Eventually we caught the next flight and made our way home to Anchorage where it feels a lot warmer than our outdoor thermometer's 14˚F (-10˚C) reading.  The temperature at the drug store sign up the street seemed a bit off in the other direction.  It said 42˚F.

The Ocean Never Ceases To Hypnotize Me

Even in a big city like Los Angeles - a city which has, I discovered today, escalators for shopping carts - the ocean still connects you with the most ancient and basic forces of nature.  (But first, I can't resist documenting this triumph of consumerism.)



It's supposed to rain tomorrow, and we're scheduled to fly home, so I decided to get one more bike ride in just in case it really does rain.

So off to Venice Pier this time to see if those huge waves from the other day were still around. (No, they weren't).  I even took my big camera which refused to work (seems it was something with the sound card, it works now, but I had to use the little camera.)

South of the pier

North of the pier

I can just feel that wave pulling the water into it as it forms.

And then as it crashes it pulls the water from behind. (Or does it just look that way?)

Related to that escalator for shopping carts, this Venice resident seems to be reacting to the gentrification that's finally catching up with Venice, particularly with the growing population of well-paid techies working in the neighborhood.