A visit to San Francisco

Originally we were staying home for the month of July but when some friends suggested we attend a Giants baseball game in San Francisco, we decided to go to the bay area over night.  Arriving in foggy conditions I am reminded of the Mark Twain quote that went something like: "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco".  As usual, we didn't dress properly and it was cool.  We ate too much food.  I dropped a perfectly good piece of pizza on the ground. the music was too loud and we were grateful for our earplugs.  AND the Giants one the game.  "Woo Hoo" as my friend likes to say.

View from my seat.  The amazon woman in front of me never stopped talking to her daughter.

They turned down the lights for fireworks in the fog!

We visited the California Academy of Sciences and De Young Museum.  I love the penquins and this one penquin was walking around on the rocks trying to find a place to dive into the water.  He just couldn't do it.  The crowd was yelling "JUMP, JUMP".  He was quite a tease.

Penguin at Calif. Academy of Sciences

There were about 10 ostrich chicks in a special area feeding.  Only 17 days old.  Really neat.

17 day old Ostrich chick.  Body about the size of a large chicken

Saturday we drove over to the Marina area to visit the palace of the fine arts then hopped a bus down to fishermen's wharf for lunch and visited the Liberty ship and a World War II submarine.  Impressive.

Juvenile Night Heron at Palace of Fine Arts

Reflections on a Bristlecone Pine Forest

If you have ever spent any time in the Eastern High Sierra mountains you have no doubt heard of the White Mountains and the Bristlecone Pine trees.  We make an annual journey to where you can drive to the parking lot at over 11,000 ft elevation.

One of the tree trunks 

It takes a good 2.5 hours driving from Bishop to get to the Patriarch Grove. Winding roads up to the visitor center then another 45 minutes over dirt roads finds you slowly moving through these magnificent trees, the oldest living things on the planet.  The rocks are amazingly white, and vegetation sparse, yet when you look down close to the ground you find an amazing variety of tiny plants and insects.

Amazing wildflowers at 11,100 ft

Majestic and Very Very Old

We hike amongst the trees and go off trail over to another ridge half mile east.  We only saw 5 other people the whole day we were up there.  so close to the sky.  Truly a wonderous place on the planet.

Reflection on Sraddha's sunglasses.  That's me taking picture

More photos to come when I have time to process.

Mono Pass hike.

Saturday we hiked up to Mono Pass from Rock Creek Lakes trailhead. Mini Pass elevation is 12,060 and trail is 9 miles round trip.
On descent we stopped at Ruby lake 11,200 ft.

Annular Eclipse of 2012

Yesterday we all convened up on the ridge west side of Ananda Village to watch the annular eclipse.  I had researched this a couple weeks ago and more the night before after one of my colleagues at work sent me a link on this eclipse.  Annular eclipse's happen when the moon covers the sun but not 100% which would be a total eclipse.  Last annular eclipse happened in USA in 1998 and next total eclipse in USA is 2017 so this was really special to be able to see this from our home ground.

Barb (my photo buddy) and I talked earlier in week and made plans.  In researching this, I found that a strong neutral density filter (3.0 or 10x) would give the best for around the sun.  What I didn't realize was it would basically black out everything.  I shot about 100 photos at various exposures all of which were too underexposed so didn't get anything except the silhouette, which was cool in itself but my goal had been also to capture the outline of the oak tree in front of where we were positioned.  Oh well.  Another learning experience however I won't get another chance for a long time.

Anyway, it was still a really neat experience to hang out with a lot of people and let them look through the big lens at the live eclipse.  People brought welders glasses to see also and reflectors to watch.  It was really fun and the light was pretty amazing.  

Waiting to photograph the eclipse on ridge at Village
(Thunderclouds over Donner Pass in background)

Partial about 30%

Getting darker

Maximum eclipse from here (about 97%)

Watching eclipse by reflection

Waning Eclipse

Making hand faces while watching reflection of eclipse

Birds of Sierra Valley

Last Weekend I drove Charli up to Sierra Valley which lay east of my home about 70 miles up in the Sierra.  One of the largest high mountain valleys, it is home to many birds during nesting season.
We camped out 2 days and spent one day driving around the valley in search of birds to photograph.

Here is a link to the album of the photos.

and a few of the pics if you are interested, click on each one to view larger versions.

Yellow Headed Blackbird

Cinnamon Teal

Egret Fishing

Mr & Mrs Sandhill Crane enjoying the moment