Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Meet Tchotchkie.

He's a Russian tortoise. One of my coworkers found him wandering through the neighborhood. He polled his neighbors to see if anyone was missing a tortoise but no one was. So he asked if anyone at work wanted to take care of him. I suggested the San Diego Turtle and Tortoise Society. They apparently didn't want to make a special trip and John didn't really want to drive the tortoise down to San Diego. So I offered to take him to see if I could get him a good home.

We bought him a home from the local reptile shop. It's a two-by-three foot box with a lid (wire on one end and solid on the end with a secluded little room). The reptile person said that is a big enough home for the tortoise. It seems small to me. I think I'll build a pen in the back yard. This is a digger, so I'll have to line it with hardware cloth to keep him from escaping. And cover it with a wire lid to keep predators away.

The reptile shop person said he's pretty much full grown. And his beak is an indication that he hasn't been given the best diet up to now. I guess they keep growing and wear down when they bite off bits of chow. If it doesn't wear away, I guess I'll have to take him to a vet to have it filed down.

This critter will outlive us (if we take good care of it).

Speaking of tortoises wandering down the street, I got to see this guy last week at Joshua Tree National Park:

I was driving down the main road and a couple were standing on the side of the road looking down. They were watching a desert tortoise. Of course, I parked the car and joined them. The poor thing was in the road with steep curbs on both sides of the road.

Earlier, munching on the plants growing in the road:

The couple left and I was there with no idea what to do. I stood guard as it walked from one side of the road to the other. We all know that we're not supposed to touch these tortoises. I wish I had seen the desert tortoise link above that tells us that in this case, when the tortoise is in imminent danger of being struck by a vehicle, that we can move it if done carefully. Somebody hoisted it up over the curb and onto the dirt but not the 50 feet from the road they say it should be moved. Next time I'll know better. I hope it stayed out of the road.

Solarography, Summer/Autumn 2011

I found some coffee cans at work on the "Free to a good home" table. I had made some solargraphs using 3-pound coffee cans I had gotten from the same table. I had made some with Guinness cans and quart paint cans. I found the smaller, 12-ounce coffee cans just before the summer solstice and decided to add one more round to the solarography project.

I put the cans back on the chimney's spark arrester the evening of the summer solstice. They just barely fit under the cap of the arrester. They came down the evening after the winter solstice. So it includes the day before and the day after the winter solstice. The overlap of the sun's path probably isn't noticeable but it's there. Oops.

Here's the view from the chimney looking to the southeast.

The dark bits at the bottom corners are little magnets I used to hold the paper tight against the can.

Here's about the same view taken with my fisheye lens. The sun is in the tree on the right.

And, just for fun, here's the picture in black and white to compare with the black and white solargraph.

Here's the view from the chimney looking to the southwest.

And the fisheye lens's view.

And the black and white version.

My original proof-of-concept attempt at solarography used a tiny camera made out of a 35mm film canister. I made another camera with it and strapped it to the weather station's tripod. For such a tiny piece of paper it captured a rather detailed image. It's looking south. Too bad its hole was centered on the side of the canister so it didn't include the full wintertime path of the sun.

 The fisheye view from the weather station.

 In black and white.

I haven't loaded the cameras up again so don't expect these views again. I need to find other places to put cameras. The little, 35mm film canister could be put out in the wild with some chance of its being left alone. But I have only one. New ones come with rolls of film. Film? Who uses film? Is there anybody out there who kept such ancient artifacts on the off-chance that might someday be useful? Mom?

Trying out a new phone app

Blogger came out with an Android app. So here's my first attempt at using it.

Jerry and I are hiking on the mountain near work. Here's a view of the Teradata campus from halfway down the hill.

I don't know where in the post the picture is placed. And I don't know if the location I'm posting from is published. I hope it is. (Well, it didn't.)

Another six months in the can

Another (a last?) set of solargraphs taken from my roof. The cans were put on the roof just after the Summer Solstice and I took them down today, a couple of days after the Winter Solstice. I couldn't do it earlier because of the rain. Besides, I get home after dark and I don't want to be scrambling around on the roof when it's dark.

I used two sheets of photo paper in a big coffee can. This time I tried something new to get the full height of the sun's progress by laying the cans on their sides. The pinholes were were aimed about 45 degrees above horizontal. This gave me a larger vertical range of the sun's travels but less horizontally than my other solargraphs.

The cans were attached to the spark screen on the chimney. One faced southeast and the other faced southwest. These pictures don't show as much detail of the roof as the earlier pictures taken with the coffee cans. I wonder why.

And none of the pictures I've taken show as much detail in the landscapes as in other solargraphs I've seen. I think the type of paper I'm using just isn't the best for this project.

Here are the pictures taken from June to December, 2010.

Looking southeast

Looking southwest

This set of pictures finally lets me see the same details in both the southeast and southwest pictures. During the gloomy part of October (where you see a wide band with few tracks of the sun) the same patterns of the sun peeking out of the clouds show up above the ash tree to the south. Next project: figuring out how to merge the two pictures to get the whole scene in one image. I don't think Photoshop has a lens correction filter for a pinhole camera especially for film that isn't flat.

The S-shaped tracks of the sun took me by surprise but that's one of the things that makes this interesting.

I think I'm finished with this phase of the project. I need to find places other than the roof to put cameras.

Geminids

I spent much of last night watching another meteor shower. This time it was the Geminids. I went to my usual spot and set up shop. This time I managed to turn off the interior light of the car so it wouldn't light up to greet me as I went to its rolled-down window to get supplies. (A lot of good that did...many of the people who came to that view point thought nothing of leaving their headlights on for many minutes while they got their chairs and whatnot set up.)

I set the camera to look up into the sky rather than include the horizon as I did for the Persieds. I set the camera to take 16 second exposures and my intervalometer to take a picture every 17 seconds. I made a movie from these pictures (imagine!).

Along the way I caught a fair number of meteors in these pictures. There was a period of about six minutes when I got six meteors in the camera's field of view. So, if six showed up in this part of the sky, imagine how many were visible in the rest of the sky! It was a good night for meteors. Till the clouds moved in.

I used Photoshop to merge the six pictures from this period into one image. You get to see how the meteors do appear to stream out of Gemini. The twins' shoulders are near the top of the image and their feet are above the image.

Six Geminid meteors
December 14, 2010, 12:40-12:
46am

The bright meteor going off the right side of the image doesn't really split along the way. It seems to be a result of Photoshop's rotating the image to align it with the other images that have moved because of the Earth's rotation. I'll learn more about Photoshop to fix that...my attempts were an utter failure.

In the center there are two short streaks passing by the Beehive Cluster in Cancer.

There were a lot of bright meteors visible before midnight while the quarter moon was still shining.

I'm getting too old for staying up past my bedtime. I got comfortable on my portable reclining chair with my heavy wool blanket and kept coming close to falling asleep. So I spent much of the time standing so I wouldn't sleep. But that is a pain in the neck.

Then the wispy clouds moved in. For a while there was just the area around Orion and Canis Major that didn't have clouds. Bright meteors could be seen through the clouds but I was getting discouraged and decided that I'd just go home. So I packed up and left at 2:30.

It turns out that the clouds weren't all that noticeable to my camera. We get to see the clouds near the end and we can see the stars clearly through them. I should have stayed an let the camera get more of the stars, meteors and clouds. The motion of the stars against the motion of the clouds is fascinating and at was just getting underway when I stopped the show.

I had the camera focused better this time. In August I think I didn't have anything bright to focus on and I just cranked the lens to its extreme distance setting. Well, it can focus to infinity and beyond. So the stars in my Perseid movie are somewhat fuzzy. This time they're sharper.

There are airplanes again but not as many as in August. There was a strange searchlight or something shining through the sky. Its range and focus amaze me. I want to know what it is. It shows up at around 0:50.

Be sure to watch in HD. And full screen.

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One more day at the Grand Canyon

After breakfast with the ravens, I went out on Desert View Drive in search of a new spot for a movie. I ended up at Moran Point. I got my camera set up at 8:20 and had it click away until 10:30. I was alone for much of the first hour and the car was parked right by the camera. I was able to sit on something more comfortable than a rock, stump or wall now and then.

A couple from Michigan asked about my automatically clicking camera. I explained what was going on and dragged out my laptop and made them see a movie I had shot the day before. They were politely impressed and took off.

Later, I was sitting on the wall near the camera and I heard a voice behind me saying something like "Well, here's Charles!" I turned around and there was John from Encinitas.

John has a print hanging in his living room of the painting that Thomas Moran made from Moran Point. I had no knowledge of who the point had been named for. I think he said that the print was produced by Moran himself and isn't a modern, mass-produced reproduction.

I showed John the movie I was making when we visited the day before. He was more impressed with the result than the Michigan couple.

Now you have the opportunity to be impressed with watching two hours of the view from Moran Point in just over one minute. (Remember, you can press buttons on the player to show it in HD and full screen. I recommend both!)



Later, as I was turning onto the road to Lipan Point, there was John from Encinitas at the stop sign leaving the point. I didn't make a movie there. I had run out of patience for standing around for long periods. Besides, the camera's batteries were running low and it takes a long time being plugged in to get them recharged.

The rest of Saturday and a bit of Sunday

After the clouds moved back in at the end of my Desert View video I packed up and drove back to the village by way of the many view points. I took some pictures along the way but that was it for the time-lapse videos for the day. I was tired of filming thick clouds.

I went back to Yavapai Point where I had recorded the rain and clearing clouds to watch the sunset.

Sunset, October 23, 2010
Yavapai Point, Grand Canyon

Three minutes after I took the sunset picture I got one of the full moon rising. The clouds reached almost to the horizon to the east but there was a slit where we could see a very narrow slice of the moon rising.

Moonrise

I went back to the campground where I heated up my water for coffee on my little Sterno stove. It takes a very long time to heat water over Sterno. I had warm, but not hot, coffee. Heating my bowl of Madras Lentils was much more successful. It didn't have to reach a state change so it didn't take as much energy.

While my supper was heating I enjoyed listening to the quiet breeze in the dark. There were thick clouds so I didn't get to see stars. There was the full moon that weekend so I wouldn't have gotten to experience the dark, dark sky that I would like to have seen. And it was rather cold.

So I spent much of the rest of the evening keeping warm in the tent. I didn't have a lot of quality sleep the night before so I spent most of the evening in the sleeping bag with my eyes closed listening to the goings on in the neighborhood.

There was a noisy party at one of the nearby campsites. Quiet time in the campground is supposed to start at 10:00pm and I thought that they were going to break that rule. But it broke up just in time.

I slept well Saturday night. I let the pad inflate fully so I didn't bottom out this time. After the party broke up it was quiet for the rest of the night. The sleeping bag was warm.

The party people broke other rules. When I got up on Sunday morning there were a lot of ravens helping themselves to the food that the noisy folk couldn't be bothered to put away the night before. While I was eating my bagel and peanut butter a raven or two perched in a tree over me eying my bagel. I pointed out the easy pickings in the party people's camp. By the way, Sterno isn't the best way to toast a bagel. It gives it a Sterno-y flavor.

I headed out for one more day at the Grand Canyon...

Circle of Life

Jerry and I went to the Wild Animal Park the San Diego Zoo Safari Park on Saturday. We got there early and snagged a primo parking spot that's about as close to the entrance as mere mortals can get.

A hybrid vehicle

We used our membership cards to get right in without waiting in line. We headed to the Journey Into Africa by way of an aviary. Someone there seemed to want Jerry to feed him (or her).

Big bird (not being fed)

On our way to the Journey into Africa we approached a circle of people all studying the walkway. One was poking at something with a stick. A little crayfish (or some relative) was standing on its tail threatening the group with its pincers. They wanted to rescue the little creature but were afraid of getting pinched.

So I grabbed it by its thorax and wondered what they wanted me to do with it.

They were just trying to get it out from underfoot. But the thing needs to be in water. It was far from any water. I suppose a bird was going to snack on it but it somehow escaped from the jaws of death.

The circle of would-be rescuers dispersed and they thanked me several times for rescuing the creature.

The Journey into Africa ride wasn't taking its first trip for forty minutes so we wandered through a part of the park with ponds. We got to a bridge that is just a foot or so above the water. This should be a good spot to toss the little crustacean. There were ducks paddling our way. I quickly gave the little lobster a toss to give it a head start.

I didn't count on the catfish.

Hungry (cat?)fish

I think the little crawdad became a snack after all.

We saw some other animals eating (but not other animals).

Rhinoceros eating (and baby)

Porcupines eating

Poor little crawdad.

More clouds

I left Grandview Point and continued east. The last viewpoint on the rim (or first if you start at the east entrance) is Desert View. This has the Desert View Watchtower.

Watchtower (undergoing renovations)

The inside of the watchtower has murals on the ceiling.

Watchtower ceiling

And murals on the walls.

Watchtower wall

And views of the canyon.

Desert View view

I made a short video here. It was shot in only half an hour starting around 2:15, October 23, 2010. It was getting very cold and windy and I was getting discouraged with all the thick clouds. I wanted scattered, puffy clouds but had to deal with thick ones. You might be able to see the landscape shaking from all the wind. I need a sturdier tripod. And I need to check that the camera is horizontal.

Oh, What a Beautiful Day!

I left Yavapai Point where I had recorded the three hours of thick, morning clouds and headed east. I stopped at Grandview Point.

The clouds were finally breaking up so sunshine reached the canyon floor. This time we see not only clouds moving but their shadows as well.

This video captured the canyon and clouds from 11:20 till 1:00 Saturday, October 23, 2010.

Oh, What a Beautiful Gray Morning!

I set up an alarm on my iPod to wake me up at 6:00 Saturday morning with the hopes that the clouds might disappear overnight. I wanted to have a glorious sunrise to record.

I didn't get the greatest quality sleep that night because there was rain that beat on the tent and the pad wasn't fully inflated. But I was sound asleep when a very loud phone rang. It was the iPod doing what I had asked. It must have roused everyone in the campground who weren't already awake. I turned off the alarm and lay there for a while. The iPod rang again. I guess I just hit the snooze button.

I dragged myself out of the sleeping bag into the cold, damp world. The clouds were still there, thicker than before. A beautiful sunrise was not to be seen.

I took a little Sterno-burning "stove" to heat water for portable Starbucks coffee. But this first morning I didn't have time to heat water. Even though there were thick clouds I wanted to get to the rim and be set up for the time the sun was rising. So I just poured a packet of the coffee into cold water and drank it.

That's not the best way to prepare Starbucks Via. It didn't dissolve. But I figured that the clumps of coffee powder would digest and I'd get my caffeine dose. I ate my bagel with Jif peanut butter (if you can call it that).

How can a product that has more than just fresh peanuts taste "more like fresh peanuts" than peanut butter that's just peanuts and salt? Anyway, it doesn't need refrigeration. I suppose I could have taken a natural product and just stirred it well but it would have been a bit messier than Jif.

I went back to Yavapai Point where I had filmed the rain moving through the canyon the evening before.

There were a lot of low clouds. There was no sunrise to be seen that morning. But clouds breaking up and the sun coming out is a good subject for a time-lapse movie. And there's the Grand Canyon behind all those clouds!

So I set up the camera right at the edge of the canyon. There was a 300-foot drop just a couple of feet beyond the camera. The camera was pointed over the edge so I thought that there was going to be no chance that anyone would get between the camera and the canyon. But I was wrong. There are two frames with a Japanese tourist getting a picture of the canyon from the very edge of the canyon. If you blink, you'll miss her.

While I was standing there (I couldn't just wander around and leave the camera unattended), someone asked about what I was doing. We discussed our photography hobbies. He had just started taking landscape pictures. He has a very sturdy looking tripod. I need to get one myself. We introduced ourselves. John is from Encinitas. (Hey, the REI where I got the camping gear is in Encinitas...what a small world.)

I stood there from 7:00 to 10:00. The sun made only a few, very brief, appearances.

Here is what clouds moving through the Grand Canyon the morning of October 23, 2010, looked like. The three hours are reduced to a minute and 11 seconds. It starts out slow with just clouds visible. But the canyon eventually makes an appearance. Give it time to develop.

It was a Grand time

Jerry and a friend of his made their annual trip to Phoenix last weekend. I thought that since I was going to be alone for four days that I might as well get out of town myself. Ever since I got my time-lapse movie gadget, I had been thinking that clouds and shadows in the Grand Canyon might be interesting subjects for time-lapse movies.

I checked the lodges in the Grand Canyon Village but they were all completely booked for that weekend.

Then I checked the hotels in Tusayan, the smallest incorporated town in Arizona, that is just to the south of the park. There were some rooms available but I didn't really want have to travel all that distance every day.

I looked into other alternatives.

Home away from home

I thought that camping might be the way to go. I figured that I might be able to spend what I'd have had to spend for a hotel room on camping gear and end up with accommodations for future outings. Jerry and I headed over to REI to see what this gear would cost.

It turns out that they rent gear. What a deal, for less than what it costs to spend a night in a hotel room 20 miles from the canyon I could rent a tent, a sleeping bag and a pad for three nights! I could see if I enjoy camping before making the full investment. I reserved the gear and a campsite.

I went camping for the first time since the road trip from hell. (Actually, I think I never spent a night in the tent on that trip. I think I always slept on the coffin at the back of the Carryall.)

We went over to REI Thursday evening to pick up the equipment.

The week before my trip the weather here at home turned wintry. Lots of rain and gloominess. That weather headed to northern Arizona.  I drove up to the Grand Canyon on Friday and for much of the drive there was rain but it quit when I left I-40 at Williams. There was hope that the weekend would be dry!

I got to the campground at around 4:00pm. I pitched the tent between the channel that drains the campground and a shallower channel that looked like rain had recently run through. I then drove to Yavapai Point with my camera.

I got my camera and intervalometer set up around 5:20. Sunset was around 5:40 but there was no sun shining. The thick clouds hid it and were dropping rain in the canyon. But there was enough light for the camera. I had it take pictures of the canyon and the rain for a half hour.

Over the weekend I made several time-lapse movies. Mostly of the heavy cloud cover. There wasn't a lot of sunshine.

Here is the movie I shot that first evening. It shows a rain shower moving through the canyon.

I didn't have the best night's sleep the first night at the campground. I think that I didn't give the self-inflating pad enough time to puff up so it wasn't the softest possible bed. And it rained. The tent kept the water out but the rain beating on the tent was a noise I wasn't used to so it kept me awake much of the time. The sleeping bag kept me warm.

Camping might be a fun way to experience nature. At least in warmer and drier weather.

Time for a Shower

Last night I ventured away from the glow of the cities to watch the Perseid Meteor Shower. I took my new, folding, reclining lawn chair, a warm blanket, a CARE package of snacks (thanks, Jerry!) and my camera. I went to the same spot where we watched one of those amazing displays of the Leonid meteors around 10 years ago.

I got to my spot at about 9:00pm. There were already several cars parked there and people sitting in their camp or lawn furniture. I parked my car and quickly got my equipment out so I wouldn't have the interior light on to bother my neighbors. I had tried to have them just not come on but it isn't obvious how to do that.

I left the windows down so that I could get things in and out of the car without opening the door and turning on the interior lights. But my helpful car thwarted that plan. When you walk up to it at night with your smart key in your pocket, it turns on the interior lights to let you see that intruders haven't infiltrated it. Or perhaps to let you know that you have approached your car instead of someone else's.

So, instead of setting up shop beside my car where I would have been shielded a bit from the headlights of cars that were to come and go through the night I had to set up in front of it.

Another thing that my intelligent car did for me is lock itself when I left its side. How nice of it! Locking up after me whenever I forget to lock it myself is a good thing. The problem with that now is that it has an alarm and to warn intruders that it's going to scream at them if they bother it, it has a bright, blinking light. So the car blinked all night. It wasn't so bright that it ruins people's night vision so that wasn't too bad. It was just annoying.

It was a beautiful night and location for watching a meteor shower. The sky was completely clear. And dark. I didn't know that the Milky Way was so bright anywhere in southern California.

It was rather chilly and quite windy. I am glad that I took a warm blanket with me.

There seem to be two kinds of people who go out to good meteor shower watching spots. There are people who watch good meteor showers. And there are people who go because it is, they've heard, a good thing to do.

There were many people in the second category there.

Some time after I got there in rumbled a convoy of four huge SUVs. A large extended family or circle of friends brought their kids to experience this event. Of course, the kids weren't all that interested. It took them about 20 minutes to get set up meaning the doors were open all that time and the lights were on all that time. After they kind of settled down they made many trips back to the cars. More lights. There was loud talking between the people getting stuff out of the SUV and the rest all this time. Fortunately they must have gotten bored and left after about an hour.

Then two couples came and set up very close to me. One was a non-stop know-it-all talker. She simply hates the Olive Garden. But she'll go if there's nowhere else to eat. (Question: Where on earth is there an Olive Garden that has no other restaurant nearby?) One of the men had had several long-term relationships with women with histories of suicide attempts. At least the know-it-all was watching the show. She'd frequently interrupt what she was saying with "there went another good one!" The others didn't seem to care.

Their conversation was entertaining to listen to. But then one of the women needed to pee so she and one of the men went off to find a place to go. They quickly came back. Wherever they had gone was occupied by something that moved and freaked her out. They left in search of a place with a toilet.

One person in another group was reading his iPhone or some other lit up device. That's great for night vision that's needed for watching the sky.

Those of us who were out there to watch meteors had a very good time. There were a lot of bright meteors. There was one very bright meteor that left a trail that was visible for more than a minute. I'm not a counter of meteors. I'm out there to say "ooooh!" and "ahhhhhhh!" I said "ooooh!" and "ahhhhhhh!" a lot.

I set up my camera and had it take pictures of the sky. I set its ISO sensitivity to 2000, opened the aperture all the way and had it expose each shot for 15 seconds. I had it take a picture every 16 seconds. (Could there be a movie in the making? Time will tell!)

Several hours into this I was sitting there watching the sky and noticed that I didn't hear the periodic noises from the camera. Its battery had died. I had a backup battery. I managed to get the dead battery out and the new one in in the dark (except for my helpful car turning on the interior lights when I reached in to get the fresh battery out of the camera bag and again when I put the dead battery in the bag). It turned out that the last picture from the first battery was taken only about two minutes before the first picture with the second battery.

Here are a few pictures that captured meteors. The camera was pointing nearly north. The glow seems to be coming from the Palm Springs/Palm Desert area. I tried to make the horizon horizontal but didn't quite succeed.

August 12, 2010, 10:47pm

This must be a sporadic meteor since it doesn't point back to Perseus which has just risen above the horizon on the right side of the picture. There were a bunch of impressive sporadic meteors all through the night.

August 13, 2010, 12:33am

August 13, 2010, 1:35am

August 13, 2010, 1:56am

I packed up and headed for home around 3:30. My eyes were blacking out on me. I guess my brain was staying awake but the eyes were insisting on sleeping. I wasn't seeing any meteors. I figured I'd better get home while I could keep awake for the drive. I saw one more meteor shoot toward the horizon while driving home.

I love meteors. But I just can't stay awake all night. My brain is still a bit fuzzy from lack of sleep.

Like a river that don't know where it's flowin'...

...we took a wrong turn and we just kept goin'.

Jerry and I took a hike through Daley Ranch in north Escondido. It contains a number of natural vegetation communities including lush oak woodlands, coastal sage scrub and chaparral, grasslands, and riparian areas (as the linked page tells us).


It's got some views of distant hills and freeways. But mostly it's got hiking through the chaparral.


They tell us that there are over 20 miles of trails. Jerry and I walked along a lot more of the trails than we had planned.


Jerry remembered to tell me to take my hand-held GPS device. That was a good thing. I had intended simply to record our walk and maybe post it here. But it turned out to be much more useful.

We made a wrong turn.

And we kept on going.

Here's the map of our walk.

At the top, is a track from where we started (the top left end) to a loop that has another little loop on it. We continued clockwise from the little loop. We meant to continue where the track turns to the northwest.

But first we mad a little detour to the south.

We weren't familiar with the trails so we didn't know that we were seeing completely new scenery instead of going back the way we came. Finally I had Jerry get the GPS out of the backpack where it had been recording our journey. Sure enough, it showed that we were way off track.

So we followed its track back to our missed turn. Three miles back. The GPS saved us from my becoming a very grumpy boy.

I had taken a picture of a sign at that junction the first time we passed it.

I should have paid attention to the trail marker next to it.

On our side trip we saw a rock that looks like a reclining man.

And some nicely zhooshed socks.

Here's a picture of Burnt Mountain. It gives you a feel for the scenery we saw. All 11 miles of it.

It was a nice hike, just a bit longer than we had planned on. We need to see the south end of the ranch some day.

(Why is Blogger sometimes making such large amounts of space between paragraphs? It's making me grumpy.)

It was a walk in the park, part two

San Dieguito River Park

Yesterday, after we walked through Kit Carson Park, Jerry suggested another hike.

We went home to swap our flip-flops for shoes and headed to the south side of the Westfield North County mall (Kit Carson Park is just to the north of the mall).

We took a walk on part of the North Shore Lake Hodges segment of the Trails of the San Dieguito River Park. This is a park that eventually will go from the ocean at Del Mar to Julian.

We had started out just to walk across the David Kreitzer Bridge over Lake Hodges. This is the longest stressed ribbon bridge in the world. When I drive to work each morning I see a patch of green in the lake near the bridge. I wanted to see what is flourishing in the middle of the lake.

Here is Lake Hodges to the east of Interstate 15.

It's kind of low this year.

This is what it looks like beneath Interstate 15.

The David Kreitzer bridge from the south side of Lake Hodges.

The stressed ribbon design gives us a bridge with only two supports, long spans, and a very low profile. This minimizes the bridge's effect on the lake.

Here's a view of the bridge from the bridge.

Here's the patch of green I see from my car. It's a little island!

We saw what we came for!

But wait, there's more to the trail. Why don't we walk a little more?

We passed a sign that should make Colleen happy to see.

*sniffle*

The required panorama made from six shots stitched together.

There were flowers.

Here's a Google Map of our little walk.

View Lake Hodges Hike in a larger map
(Zoom out or click on the link to see the whole trip.)

We just had to keep seeing what is around the next bend. Apparently it was almost four miles out and nearly that back. We drank a lot of water when we got back home. It was a nice day in the parks.

It was a walk in the park

Today, instead of doing laundry and other chores, Jerry and I got some fresh air in some local parks. I lugged my camera with me.

Kit Carson Park
Our first stop was Kit Carson Park.

We got to see a snake.

It no longer holds a swing. Maybe too many kids crashed into the snake's body.

There were trees with pretty blossoms.

There were wildflowers.

And there was Queen Califia's Magic Circle. This is the only American sculpture garden by Niki de Saint Phalle.

The approach to the Magic Circle.

The entrance through the Snake Wall.

Some views of Queen Califia and the Eagle Throne.

Some of the Totems with more of the Snake Wall in the backgrounds.

Why haven't any of our visitors seen this? I guess to leave something for their next visits.

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Next stop on the walk: Coming Soon!

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