Northern California Drive Abouts
Not a whole lot to report. Been wandering about on the West Coast some more, resulting in a few more snapshots. These are from Northern & Central California.
It was a cold, hazy morning... I was driving south down from Oregon... The layers of silhouettes poking through the low-laying strata of smoke and haze.was simply breathtaking. These images really don't fit well into a camera. The aspect ratio is too wide and the range of shadow to highlight is too deep to fully capture. But, that doesn't seem to stop me from making the attempt. I think part of it might be that when one finds oneself at these moments of vast beauty-of-experience, one wishes to share it in some way with someone. Then again, maybe it is nothing more than fussing around with a camera gives me something to do as I spend time there taking it in.
I like the look of volcanos. like sand at the bottom of an hourglass, only much more interesting. Their presence is often so abrupt to the surrounding land.. and the larger ones change the atmosphere around them. You can see a faint circle in the cloud cover above Shasta. This might be caused by atmospheric effects from the mountain or it mught just be the Lemurians fooling about.
What do you do with that extra three feet of culvert pipe? Paint them up like Minions! Extra tires laying around the place? Don't throw them in the burn pile, paint 'em up like snowmen!
Not a wildfire. This was smoke from a scheduled, controlled burn. There was this dense, ground-hugging bank of smoke that was rolling into the valley I was crossing. When I entered it The blue skies above disappeared visibility fell to a few hundred yards... Slow down, turn on the headlights and smell what will hopefully prevent the next year's wildfire.
The rocky outcrops ofthe Sierra Buttes
The neon tubes have all broken away. There was a bakery here once.
The frost had been on the pumpkins for a few nights and these oaks have begun their Autumn redressing.
This is a chimney in need of a house.
I took this same picture about five weeks earlier. I used a different lens, different camera. This has a much nicer sky... Change o' the seasons.
Look Ma, no hydraulics! This old Excavator waits patiently in a field for it's next job.
There is something about the wigglyness of the branches of some oak trees. Even after they have fallen they can be interesting.
This is looking Southeast into the San Joaquin Valley from one of the high crossings of the very southern bit of the Diablo Range, about 15 miles, as the crow flies, from Coalinga
A big ol', lichen-covered rock sticking up out of the side of a hill.
I think ramshackle might be putting it politely.
Misty, overcast day by the ocean. A low-laying haze creeps between the hilltops.
This is not a very pretty picture, but it's sure interesting. This hillside is about 100 feet tall. In the middle you can see the ancient ocean floor has been twisted so that it is aligned to the center of the earth instead of flat and then it is pretty much just folded up. At the bottom it curls around 90 degrees and then heads up to the right at a 45 degree angle. You can see how, during the eons it took to make this impressive fold, some of the layers of sediment delaminated & made gaps. In other parts you can see intrusions between layers. It is tough to see in the picture, but at the upper left, the strata has made another 90-degree bend.
When I was young & would get a croissant with my coffee in the morning I would love to peel apart the puff pastry layer by layer. This hillside gives me the same urge.... But I don't think it would dunk well.
At the time of this picture, the Bee Rock Store was closed up and for sale. Can you resist a business opportunity named "Bee Rock Store?"
An overcast day above the grape vines in the Salinas Valley.
That divot on the right is where the road leads... and if you follow the road all of the way through, you drive through the Carmel Valley and end up in Carmel.
The top layer of this hillside is filled with rounded river rock. and then there is the eroded away layers of colorful sedimentary stuff. At the bottom of the cliff you can see a human face.
The Face in the Cliff... What is it watching?
There is only a small, private road that goes to that little valley in the distance.
How often do you see a newt crossing sign? Here's one. What is missing is a sign warning you not to feed them... pretty rough critters, those newts. I'm pretty sure the next newt crossing sign I see will have it's picture taken too!
This picture is looking west across the Salinas Valley... That is the northern end of the Big Sur range across the way.
Something about these oaks trees makes one think they are going to reach out to grab you... or maybe something less sinister. Perhaps they are in the midst of a ballet that takes centuries to perform. the pirouettes happen so slowly that it takes a lifetime of careful observation to notice the slightest degree of spin....
But really... it is dark and gloomy under there... I'm pretty sure that on a foggy winters' night you're not going to want to hang out and have a picnic under them.
This is one of the routes between Salinas and San Juan Bautista... The slow one. Looking west from the crest you see a little bit of Salinas, the alluvial hills just north... and all of the way out to the ocean at the horizon.
I like these double tankhouses outside of Hollister. You don't often see them conjoined like this.
Northern California Drive Abouts