I was weedwacking with my headphone/hearing protectors playing music.. I kept hearing a helicopter… but thought it must be fatigue…. surely I would not hear a helicopter while wearing this gear and with a screaming engine by my side…. but I looked up, and decided it was worth running to the shed for the camera.
These large helicopters had ‘forward-Looking Infrared’ units, but they also had these large bright ‘sun-lights’ that were on….
People tend to think of California as tanned folks in convertibles… living in beachfront homes… certainly, almost anyone could be forgiven for thinking of that when they hear the legendary name ‘Malibu’…. but Malibu is not only some 27 miles of scenic beachline, it also includes the ‘sphere of influence’ of Malibu for some miles inland…
Here we see the sea from the hills high over Malibu….
rugged hills, steep terrain, very few suitable building sites make for a sparsely populated area…. and so close to the big city….
Just beyond those hills… on the edge of the sea is the town of Malibu… a couple dozen miles of scenic wonder…. and a fitting edge to the nearby Central Coast..just up the strand.
Looking into Malibu from the hills
Come down the hills some.. and the beaches come into view….
There’s so many millions of super-great places to see in the world… I’d love to see them all.. but I’ve only seen some few dozen… one of them is where we live…. and the only other place I think I might like more than our canyon is the Malibu Hills…. I just really like Malibu and the Topanga/Santa Monica area so much. I think it’s the opposites in this instance…. I like the vitality of the city for a very short few hours once in a while…. but nice quite seclusion is really a treasure…. Malibu is nice and quite in the hills… but so close to the energy of Los Angeles.
Looking into Malibu from the hills
Here’s a zoom of the previous photo. Notice how tall the cliffs are by the beach.. this is common for California beaches. Many of the beaches have narrow and steep paths following gullies.. the more difficult to reach, the more seclusion… (a no-brainer I know.. but it’s amazing how so many people will not spend just a little effort for a nice sparsely-populated beach)
Black rocks at Malibu
Untouched photo.. the colors were great.. the black rocks, blue sea and sky, and the green grasses seem light compared to the gray sands.
Point Mugu
This is Point Mugu from the south.
The highway was blasted through the hillside… it used to go around the point… but was very narrow… now there is a very unusual rock that is seen in a few movies and commercials… it really is eye-catching
Tall sand dune at Point Mugu
This is a tall sand dune at Point Mugu State Park… you can try climbing to the top if ya like. I suppose it’s a few hundred feet tall….
It gets so tall because the tall cliffs block the sand from blowing inland… it’s just a happenstance of location and conditions that make this possible.
The Walrus and the Carpenter
Were walking close at hand;
They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand:
“If this were only cleared away,”
They said, “it would be grand!”
“If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year.
Do you suppose,” the Walrus said,
“That they could get it clear?”
“I doubt it,” said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear.
Why does it matter where I live?
In the canyon I can wile away my days.
The sun rises and sets, and I listen
to the soughing breeze in the oaks.
Let others pursue activities and goods,
I will BE, among creation
while the busy world spins faster
so far away
Dexter’s Camera, a VERY famous old camera store in Ventura
A December trip to Ventura was pretty fun. Main street is the place to wander and look at all of the very old stores… many full of curios.
~America~
‘Ventura Highway’
Chewin’ on a piece of grass walkin’ down the road
Tell me, how long you gonna stay here, Joe?
Some people say this town don’t look good in snow
You don’t care, I know
Ventura Highway in the sunshine
Where the days are longer
The nights are stronger
Than moonshine
You’re gonna go, I know
‘Cause the free wind is blowin’ through your hair
And the days surround your daylight there
Seasons crying, no despair
Alligator lizards in the air
I went by a hotel in Buellton. I thought it was a pretty nice looking place, so I took some photos I thought I’d share.
Entryway
Larger than life bullfight statue
Larger than life bullfight statue
Larger than life bullfight statue
Large Pottery Vase
The ‘Bullfight’ statue is larger than life size. Very impressive. An interesting fact to notice is the strapped-on pad on the bull’s back. It appears this would be a ‘target’ for the Banderillero to aim for, allowing him to hone his skills while leaving a trained bull uninjured.
This local area was settled by the Spanish in the 1700′s and developed into a thriving cattle area through the early 1800′s, and even to the present day this is ‘cow-country’. I don’t know how much Spanish-style bullfighting was practiced locally… although the locals did have the nasty habit of chaining a grizzly bear into a corral and turning a bull loose into it to fight to the death.
We had a neighbor call us… she heard an injured dog, or perhaps a coyote that had been yelping near her house… being afraid a dog was caught in a fence-line or injured by the troublesome coyotes, she called us and asked me to go take a look….
The path near the neighbors
First I had to go through the woods between our houses…. you can see this game path has not had much traffic in recent months. With the rains, the animals have gone higher into the hills for the lusher grasses on the slopes. In the summertime they stay more under the cover of the trees where the water may still run, and there are green plants to eat. In the summertime the slopes are dry and barren.
Over or under the log
You can go over or under the log… depending on your size.
game trail
Further on I came to a game trail.. this one has more activity… there is a spring near here….
lush hillside meadow
I had to make a detour off the path to avoid a large patch of poison oak that the path wove through. Even though the virulence of the plant is diminished in the winter due to rains washing the oil off the bare branches, I usually try to avoid it.
the spring flows over the rocks
Here we see the water flowing over the shale rocks.. this photo does not show the scale… the six foot drop this water is taking…
succulents in the rocks
These are some local and native wild succulents. They are growing out from the Miocene-age shale deposits. This was the floor of an ocean long ago. But the rock strata of another continental plate slid under ours, and lifted this one high above the sea… some of our neighbors will find seashell fossils in their rocks. I’ve gotten some indications.. but nothing really nice.
succulents and a 'nurse plant'
A lot of plants like to have a ‘nurse-plant’ growing to their south while young. In our arid and dry environment this can mean the difference between dying from the sun and heat as a baby plant, or squeaking by in the partial shade of a larger plant that will give enough shade to keep the frying summer sun off you. By the time the baby plant is well established and better able to survive, the nurse plant will be getting thin, and eventually dying… this will help furnish a natural mulch around the ‘baby’ plant. Timing and location are critical in nature. Off by a heartbeat, or a foot can mean the difference between life and death.
I never did find the animal… I suspect it was a coyote which moved on as I neared.
The misty hills of Nipomo… high tension lines from Diablo Nuclear Power Plant
Late Dec 2010 between the record-setting storms
But I can never see these types of towers without thinking of Godzilla…
I suppose if I ever see Tokyo I’ll think of him also.
I’m a fan of Godzilla movies.. although I don’t think I’ve watched one for decades. The more campy and silly they are, the funnier. In the sixties we already laughed at them… although the effects were advanced for the time… there was still a delightfully silly element to them… like they knew it was silly, and said “let’s play it as a silly thing”.
‘With a purposeful grin and a terrible sound, he pulls the spitting high-tension wires down… Godzilla!
History shows again and again how nature puts up with the folly of men”
We’ve been getting lashed with our version of storms the last two weeks straight. Oh yes, we’ve gotten a few days with little or no rain here and there.. and we’re happy for that as continued rain would have resulted in much more flooding. As it is, there have been many California locations hit by small amounts of flooding. But in general we don’t get the widespread flooding of many places in the Mississippi watershed or drainage. California flooding is more likely to be confined to a neighborhood along the base of a hillside, or alongside a creek.
Here are some photos I took of the local area around Nipomo on the 23rd of December 2010. Toppled trees, muddy roads, high winds, and green hills show colorfully.
Here’s some photos I took in Christmas Eve 2010. This was a year that we got our winter rain a bit early… the rains first came in September this year rather than the usual November. And we got near-record rainfall that ended just days before these photos were taken… we got some 9 inches of rain in five days. Usually our hills are just starting to turn green in December.. but this year they started turning green in late October.
