Hawaii, Day 7

Last person standing. That's me, for our Hawaii family vacation. Well, Matt and Kaleena were still here but staying somewhere on the beach. My father-in-law and his wife live on the Big Island and that is where we spent most of the trip. My husband and Chris and Meryl had left for home from there. Katie and her family left the night before after spending the day at Pearl Harbor so I woke up alone in my Waikiki hotel room and decided to spend some time on the beach with my camera before going to the airport.View to the southeast with early morning sun.View to the northwest.Not too many people in the water yet......but there were people on the beach......working out......and getting ready for business.The beaches are protected (created?) by rock walls built out into the ocean. When walking along one I realized that it was like looking down into an aquarium tank. There were fish everywhere. I took lots of photos but in most the wave action obscures the fish. There are a few that aren't bad for my first time trying to photograph fish. The only ones that I later identified are these needlefish.I wish that I'd had my new GoPro with me and a long stick to reach into the water.I sort of like this photo because the ships looks pixelated, but it's just the containers. Still on the wall, the sun was getting higher.

Here is an activity of which I was unaware--feeding bread to fish --these tourists brought an entire loaf and threw crumbs into the water.It's a great way to bring fish (and pigeons) to you, but I can't imagine that it is an approved method of watching wildlife. I was seeing plenty of fish without bribing them.As the sunlight hit the water the fish were easier to photograph......especially these almost luminescent needlefish.

As I walked back to the hotel, the beach was waking up.

Many more people out and about.

By the way, this was not my hotel. Mine was a few block off the beach in the low(er) rent district.

Back to winter in northern California. It sure didn't feel like Christmas time in Hawaii. Aloha!

Sheep Close-Ups

Guess which sheep will let me get this close and hold still enough for photos?  Gorgeous fleece.Why, it's Jade! Who else? She's the one in the Santa hat in the previous post.Sheep going out to pasture last week. I've closed the gate today. The grasses are dormant and need warm weather and more daylight to get growing well again...if they get water, that is. This grass is showing signs of drying out. I hope some of the rain that is predicted comes through.

Road Trip to Texas - The End

In the last post we had come home to California about sunset, but we were still a long way from home. We had decided to camp at Joshua Tree National Park, but arrived there after dark. Mid-week, mid-July. No problem finding a camping site. I woke up before sunrise and walked in the desert to get some photos.I didn't have much luck with great sunrise photos but the good thing about sunrise (besides that another great day is starting) is that the light is great for other photos.

Have you ever seen so many spines?

We had slept in the truck so it didn't take long to break camp. We had entered the park from the south and planned to drive through to the northern exit.We stopped at the Cholla Cactus Garden, a nature trail constructed through the cholla with warnings to not touch...for your own safety!

I was not tempted to touch. This "jumping cholla" is known for it's tendency to attach to a passerby without much provocation.

This is what the park is known for--the Joshua tree which is not really a tree, but a species of yucca that can grow to 40 feet tall. The park protects 794,000 acres of Mojave and Colorado Desert.

We drove to Keys View. At 5185 feet, its not the highest place in the park but I think it's the highest spot you can drive too. You can see the Coachella Valley to the southwest and Mount San Jacinto and Palm Springs to the north (just out of this photo)

Joshua Tree Park has plenty more to come back to, especially if we could take a vacation in the spring. Can you imagine what it would be like for early settlers? There were miners, homesteaders, and ranchers who tried to make a go of it here and there are remnants of those homesteads and mines.  We stopped at the visitor center on the way out and saw this statue and mural when driving away. After seeing the interesting public art in southern New Mexico and Arizona I wish that I had been on the lookout for it in the earlier part of our trip.Leaving Joshua Tree NP and driving through the town of Twentynine Palms, now the plan was to just head home. California is a big place. The iPhone map showed almost 8 1/2 hours to go.

More public art...or is this private art...or art at all? Amusement.

More amusement. This is the only souvenir I bought for myself (other than the National Park patches, which someday may be sewn to something but for now are on my bulletin board with others). This bighorn sheep now is on my big loom with a collection of other sheep.California oak woodland. Many hours still to go.

 Looking west from near Rio Vista. We live on the western side of the Central Valley and those are "our" mountains in the distance.

Ginny and the Drone

We had an interesting day here yesterday. Sarah and Bruce Barker of RightAfterThis.com were here to film an episode of a documentary series called Farm to Table and focused, at least for the first episodes, on women in farming. Farm Club members were here to weigh and sort the older lambs and Sarah and Bruce flimed us as well as other aspects of the farm. The only chance I had to take photos was when I heard Ginny barking at Bruce's drone. Backgrounds aren't great and I didn't have a very long lens so I cropped a lot, but here are the photos I got of Ginny.

 

We Interrupt This Blog...

...for breaking news. I've been writing about the trip to Texas and I think I have four days left. But tonight there are some spectacular photos of a fire that started this afternoon in the hills above Lake Berryessa. I shouldn't even be doing this post because I'm taking sheep to the fair first thing in the morning and I've been working for days getting ready for that. I should be going to bed. This is taken from the top of my haystack and is the view to the west. Lake Berryessa is in those hills and the map on my phone says 20 miles, but that is by road. Maybe it's 10-12 miles as the crow flies. The fire started about 2:30 and this photo was about 6:00 this evening. To the north was a dense cloud of smoke. We have had a south wind all day so the smoke didn't affect us but it is over Sacramento. All of these photos are with my iPhone. This is using the Pano app. I was on my way out to mow two paddocks of the pasture--they needed to be done before I spent the next four days at the fair. So the photos with the barn to the right are from the tractor. I must have taken a couple dozen photos. Every time I turned and drove north the scene seemed to change. This was about 7 p.m. About the time I finished mowing my son, who is on a USFS hotshot crew got home (next door) for his days off. Within an hour his boss called him back to Pollock Pines (about an hour and a half) because his crew will be leaving at 5 a.m. to work on this fire. Last I heard it was 4000 acres.

Road Trip to Texas - Day 7

On our first morning in Texas I took a walk up the road, a familiar route from my time spent here a year ago while waiting for Kirby to be born. Just as we had seen in northern Arizona and New Mexico everything was green. Summer monsoons are the norm, but there have been several dry years so this particularly wet year is a welcome change. However there can be too much of a good thing. We saw the signs on the Blanco River of the recent high water and were amazed at just how high it was. Katie and Kurtis live on high ground between Blanco and Wimberly (where the horrific May flooding swept houses and people away) so they were in no danger. This wash just down from their driveway has running water now but during the flooding was many feet higher and impassable. Hard to imagine.Western Horse Nettle All this rain has caused crop damage and postponed harvesting to the detriment (or loss) of crops in some areas. However, it sure brings out the wildflowers. I took photos of 20 different species on this short mile and a half walk and identified some of them.Green thread, Thelesperma filifolium Buttonbush, a memorable flower that I first saw last year.

Our plan for the day was to visit a sheep farm that I found on-line. I was looking for "local wool" and this farm, only about 45 minutes from Katie's house, popped up. Dan and Annette of  Stonewall Fine Wool and Lambs were gracious enough to allow us to visit, although they usually don't have on-site customers.

Most of the flock of Delaine Merino x Corriedale x Ramboulillet sheep, descendants of the original flock owned by Annette's family, were somewhere else on the 129 acres but ......the rams......and some lambs for sale were near the barn.Dan had fleeces ready for me to see and we spread them out on the table. He shears the sheep himself, although he has to fit shearing in around another full-time job.  He showed me these boxes of fleece--sorted, but unscoured staples on the left and washed wool on the right. What a transformation!The washed wool is very, very soft. I think it passed the "soft as a baby's skin" test.I was also impressed that Dan had made himself a drop spindle and taught himself how to spin.You know that I don't really NEED any more wool, but some of it followed me right into the car. I plan to share with my farm-sitting friends. Thanks very much to Dan and Annette for taking a couple of hours on their weekend to entertain us.

Next stop only a few miles up the road was the Wildseed Farm,  a  working farm that grows and sells wildflower seed to wholesale and retail customers.We were planning to go to this farm two days ago after a brief tour of the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, but as I explained in this post, the Museum requires a several hour visit to do it justice.

We missed the true wildflower season when all 217 acres are blooming, but there was still plenty to see.Those saguaro, barrel cactus, and beavertail cactus  and are all metal!  We walked through the Butterfly Garden.More plants from the butterfly garden.

More of the butterfly Garden.

Last we admired the fields of red and white zinnias and sunspot sunflower...

...and then piled back into the car. Kirby was a real trooper.

One more place to stop on the tour of points of interest near Fredericksburg and Stonewall, since it was on the way.

There is a visitor's center and a tour through the LBJ home but, due to one of our party being under a year old and it had already been a busy day, we opted for the 8-mile driving tour of the ranch where LBJ was born, died (1973), and is buried. Someday we'll return for the whole experience.

This is a beautiful estate, a portion of which was donated to the National Park Service (by prior arrangement) after the death of Mrs. Johnson in 2007.

A stipulation of Johnson was that this remain a working cattle ranch rather than become "a sterile relic of the past". The cattle on the ranch descend from the horned Herefords that he raised and he kept a close watch on management even during his tenure in the White House.