Mt. St. Helens
Mount St. Helens erupted at 8:32 Sunday morning, May 18, 1980. Shaken by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, the north face of this tall symmetrical mountain collapsed in a massive rock debris avalanche. Nearly 230 square miles of forest was blown down or buried beneath volcanic deposits. At the same time a […]
Sorry, Mt. Baldy
We neglected to post anything about our visit to Mt. Baldy on 7-7-07. While our hotel was taken over by a huge Filipino wedding party, we escaped north to this highest peak of the San Gabriel Mountains (western San Bernardino County, between Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert). We took the chair lift to the […]
Mt. Shasta
Mt. Shasta, northern California, 14,161 ft. (4317 m)
Pea Soup
Best Western is a membership association of independently owned and operated hotels. (I looked this up, and it says so in their FAQs.) With more than 4,100 hotels in 80 countries, they call themselves “The World’s Largest Hotel Chain.” Many are the standard place name like Best Western Dallas North or Best Western Falls Church. […]
San Diego Wild Animal Park
Hmm. I wonder where they keep the bananas?The 1,800-acre Wild Animal Park is located north of San Diego near Escondido. Part of San Diego Zoo, the Wild Animal Park is a destination of its own. It’s operated by the not-for-profit Zoological Society of San Diego. The sanctuary is home to more than 3,500 animals of […]
San Diego Sunday
Our first California Coast dive was La Jolla Cove Ecological Preserve. If only we could have gotten a photo of ourselves in all the gear. Since we’re used to water temperatures closer to 80 than high 60s, we were equipped with thicker wetsuits, hoods, gloves, etc. These photos are pretty much what we looked/felt like. […]
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo and his National Monument
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo led the first European expedition exploring the what is now the US’s Pacific Coast. He arrived in San Diego bay in September of 1542 and declared it a “very good, enclosed port.” The National Monument commemorating his journey was established in 1913. The Old Point Loma Lighthouse is a short walk away […]
Punta Reyes National Seashore
San Francisco has lots to offer, and I’ll be sad to leave without eating my bread bowl of chowder and cioppino on Fisherman’s Wharf, but we again decided to use our limited time to do something we’d missed on past trips. Punta Reyes National Seashore is just north of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. […]
Joshua Tree National Park
“Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush […]
Joshua Tree National Park
“Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush […]