16 February 2013 - San Francisco

Here I am in San Francisco, spending a weekend with my sister. I arrived Friday evening, so we could start bright and early Saturday. Over breakfast we decided to go walk the Lands End Coastal Trail-- or at least part of it.  But as usual, things didn't go quite as planned. Driving along the shoreline toward the Golden Gate Bridge we saw the fire boat was not only right in front of Alcatraz but was shooting off all the water cannons. This is really a beautiful thing to see. It makes the boat look like a butterfly. 

We pulled into the first available parking spot, grabbed our cameras and ran. We were trying to decide what was happening that would make the fire boat show up in full honor mode. 

We saw a three masted schooner and another large sailboat near by, but couldn't see any reason for all the fanfare. Turns out the the large sailboat was an Italian boat that just completed a record time sailing from New York to San Francisco. He beat the previous record by 10 days, and was even more gratified because the previous record holder was from France.The schooner was full of people cheering him on.



We watched until the fire boat quit flowering then continued on our way to Lands End. I mentioned that if we found a place to stop, I wouldn't mind a bathroom. Robin pulls a quick lane change, an even quicker turn and pulls into the Legion of Honor parking lot while explaining that she has a membership through the art museum and that we can get in free. 

Oh my! Classy! Once in the Legion of Honor, you can't just use the facilities and leave, so we walked through several of the exhibits. It was amazing!  An hour later we were back in the car once again heading toward Lands End. 


Lands End is on northwest side of SF. The trail starts at the ruins of the Sutro Baths and wanders north from high rocky cliffs down to equally rocky beaches and through dense wooded areas and flowering hillsides. Lovely!

 

 In its heyday, the Sutro Baths were a destination. The buildings housed
seven swimming pools, 100 private dressing rooms, a concert hall, a skating rink and a museum. 

It must have been a wonderous place.  I would have loved to see it in all its glory. The picture of the Sutro Baths (above) is very  reminiscent of Saltair which also had a ballroom and pools. 

Saltair was a fixture on the edge of the Great Salt Lake and even had its own special train to get people out there and back. It too is now another long gone treasure, with just a few pilings left sticking up out of the lake to mark where its passing.

Today, there are only the footings left at the bottom of the cliff where the Sutro Baths stood. This is the start of our trail. It was especially fun, as Robin had not walked this trail before so it was new to both of us.   

As we started the trail, the uphill side was sunny and the spring oxalis was in full bloom. The downhill side was steep to the ocean but afforded us some great views of the ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.   

Because it was a three day weekend, the park was full of people with dogs and children, but there was plenty of room on the trail to walk at your own pace and not be hemmed in or overwhelmed by people.

After walking a good half hour we started to hear a WHUMP. Almost sounded like a cannon shot. As we got closer to where the path dropped down to the shore, we realized that the tide was coming in hard. The whump was the waves smacking the backside of the rocks. The resulting crash of water was a spectacle worth savoring, so we sat on the shore and watched the water get closer and closer. 

 

The beach was very rocky, but the rocks were beautiful: large and  beaten smooth by the waves. 

The green rocks are serpentinite, the state rock of California. The gray and/or black with white veins is basalt, the red is chert, and the solid  gray is greywacke--a kind of sandstone. Greywacke. What a great name.  The rocks looked pretty drab until the tide washed over them. Then the shoreline became a veritable rainbow.

 

 There was a small cavern under the cliff that Robin had to drag me out of, but it was so intriguing. One side was all chert, the other side serpentinite. I wanted to see it as the incoming tide wet it down. Can you imagine how gorgeous the colors would be wet? But it would have been more dangerous than my (or Robin's) risk factor would have allowed. 

The shore was devoid of life. No crabs scuttling about. No kelp washed up with the waves. We saw a few mussels that had been dropped by seagulls. The one piece of life we did see was a find:  barnacles on a mussel shell. Looks like an art project.We helped it back into the water.

 

Earlier I mentioned densely wooded portions of the trail. Did I mention steep trails and steeper stairs?  

This is part of the  path down to the beach. By the time we climbed down and back up we were both having some twinges in the calves. 

And I thought we were both in such good shape. Ha.
 


 

From the beach you can  see the overlook. That tiny stick near the edge is a person. Directly below him on the beach is the red and green stone cavern. 

The side of the cliff was covered in flowers: some wild, some escaped. Here we have ice plant and allysum. 










At the top of the overlook, a local artist had created a maze. At the center was a bouquet of dried roses and a valentine to San Francisco. Here is Robin celebrating the center. 

We found some fabulous places to sit. 
Back at the start of the trail we discovered we could try on some antlers. Not something you can do on many shopping trips.

 Last view from the top of the cliff as we left Lands End. 

Leaving the park, we stopped again at the Legion of Honor and serendipity struck. Are we lucky or what? We discovered an organ concert was in progress. 




 Hidden behind walls painted to look like marble were the 4,500 pipes, ranging in size from 1/2 inch to 32 feet high. The apse over the Rodin sculpture is some of the trompe l'oeil marble. This must have been the idea behind surround sound. All those pipes and that big sound? Fabulous! The organ even has a thunderstorm pedal, which he demonstrated in a short pastoral. Great fun. It felt like we were sitting on a woofer.

At the concert we ran into a friend of Robin's who is quite the organ afficionado. He regaled us with all kinds of information about the organ, the organists, and its history. One of the things I found most interesting is that the frieze over the main entrance to the museum is made of plaster and can be cranked open on rails so that the music can be heard in the Court of Honor. Wow. 

After the concert we went into a special exhibit: Royal Treasures from the Louvre: Louis XIV to Marie-Antoinette. It was fascinating and totally over the top. Everything was encrusted with gems. Wood furniture was inlaid with semiprecious stones until you could hardly see wood. It was amazing to see, but there was nothing there I would ever want to own. Even this tiny miniature is encrusted with diamonds. The snuff box collection was eye popping. Makes you wonder how many snuff boxes one king can use. It was an interesting look at decorative objects from the mid 1700s.

All that on the first day. What's next? 

12 February 2013 - Mercury and the Moon

It occurs to me that I may be turning into a science nerd or a gotta- know geek or something. Last night Jack and I drove to the Churchill Jr. High parking lot which has a great unobstructed view of the Salt Lake Valley. 

On the agenda was sky watching. Under a thumbnail crescent moon we were supposed to be able to see Mercury, and with binoculars, Mars was supposed to be visible one degree away from Mercury. How cool is that? 

Turns out it was very cool. Downright chilly. With temps in the teens, 13 to be exact, we sat in the car for almost an hour watching the sun set, the moon appear, and finally as the sky darkened, Mercury showed up. 

The moon was amazing. Even with that tiny sliver of light, the rest of the moon was visible, nestled in the cradle.

 

When Mercury appeared, I was surprised that it was not quite as bright as I expected. The little pinprick of light in the center of this photo is Mercury. Mars was nowhere to be seen. Even with binoculars.

Here's the funny part. As we pulled back into our driveway, the moon and Mercury were visible over our house. Mercury is just over the roof line--and in the increasingly dark sky, the planet really sparkled. It was so cold and so clear that the stars were like shards of crystal. Breathtaking.

I am so lucky that Jack indulges me in all my odd passions. Whether it is following an insect around the yard, birdwatching, stargazing--I always have a willing companion in my adventures.

2 February 2013 - Gull Gawking

Last weekend I was poking around on the web trying to find some info on identifying a bird I had seen when I discovered the UBird website. It is run by and for a group of Utah birders who post pictures, take trips, and discuss birds and birding. Under their Trips tab they were showing a trip for Feb 2 - A Gullstravaganza. 

Apparently late January and early February is a great time to see many varieties of gulls. What the heck. I know nothing about gulls, so why not learn something?  I signed up. Then I spent the week waffling about should I go or not. Too cold. Too busy. Too many other things needing to be done. I went. The sun was out, but it was cold. Really glad  I took my wind pants. I went back to the car and pulled them over my levis while everyone was still milling around the parking lot.

About 30 people showed up for this trip.The majority of them were seasoned birders lugging scopes on tripods over their shoulders. A few of us were newbies. It was quite fun. At our first stop, the folks with scopes scanned the hundreds of birds on the pond and would pick something interesting. They would holler out "If you want to see a first year Thayer's gull come over here." Or someone else would yell "I have male and female golden eyes." Those of us without scopes would hustle from scope to scope looking at birds. I did have binoculars but had no idea what I was looking at, so seeing it in a scope, then hearing someone describe what to look for was great. I could then see where they were looking and find it in my binoculars, but the scope view was fabulous.

 We spent quite some time gull gazing and gull gawking at the first pond.  I personally was able to find and identify five different gulls: Thayer's, California, Herring, Glaucous and Ring-billed. In addition to that I saw the first winter juvenile coloration of a Thayer's and a Herring gull. Several members said they saw a Slaty-Backed Gull. I was never sure just what they were looking at. 

The pond also had a nice variety of ducks: Teal, Ruddy, Canvasback and the obligatory Mallards. Lots of coots. Several people identified a Shoveler, but I didn't see it. I did see male and female Golden-Eyes (pretty!), male and female hooded mergansers and a Bufflehead. 

Even with my fairly long lens, the birds were too far away for a good picture. The closest duck with the red and green head is a Teal Duck. The two white birds with black heads are Golden-eyes and the female is the furthest right bird. The white billed birds are coots and there is a Ruddy Duck in front of the coots on the left hand side.

  
 In addition to these we also saw a kestrel and a red-tailed hawk. My life list is growing! 

We moved to the Lee Kay ponds. Our fearless leaders were hoping for some open water over there, but it was totally frozen, and the gull flock was really far away. All those speckles in the middle of the picture are gulls.

  Even closer up you couldn't see much. We were having a bad air day, huge inversion of smog was whiting out the landscape.

 
 We visited four different ponds. I had fun and learned more than I retained. The organizers of the trip were hoping to see 7 to 9 kinds of gulls and were grousing about it. 

I was taken with the goose tracks in the snow. The holes are where some poor goose fell through a softer part of the snow bank. Makes it hard to walk.

 My brother, after hearing I signed up for the trip, wanted to know if I was gullible. Oh dear. I guess so. But he also said I could use his spotting scope! Next time I go to look at birds I will definitely be up close and personal.