It's been a while since I've actually been to Laguna Beach! During the summer, the town is quite crowded, with summer tourists, several art festivals, and summer beach crowds. I usually find other beaches to visit in the summer season, but the tourists have gone now, and it's cooler inland, so the beach crowd is a bit smaller than in the summer.
The last time I was in this spot, this bench was just being installed. I thought the rock to be interesting.
This evening a large harvest moon rose just at dusk in the eastern sky -- I saw it about an hour later. The sky is still clear, and the moon still large.
It seems that the posting of photos has been changed -- I'll be a lot happier when Xanga 2.0 is a bit more stable!
Well -- I lied! In my post about the tall ship entering Dana Point Harbor for the Tall Ship Festival over this past weekend, I said I would not go to see the tall ships. This afaternoon, I needed to get out of the house, and headed for the beach -- my car almost automatically heads for Dana Point when I go to the beach. It occurred to me that, at 5 pm, the Festival would be over, and most of the people would have left. That was true, except that on their way to their home ports, the tall ships stopped for a reenactment of a naval battle. From the top of the bluff, I was able to find parking, and to see this reenactment. I'll show them in the order I took them.
For each puff of smoke, 5 seconds or so later there was a large 'boom.'
While walking around the tall ships, I also noticed that there was an elephant on the dock next to where the Pilgrim is docked.
I walked around the base of the pier to the next one to take a closer look.
From that pier, I could also see a different view of the harbor and its activity. First, a shot of all four Tall Ships at dock.
And then the channel. There must have been a pretty good breeze!
As I left, I drove to the other end of the breakwater, and found another elephant on the lawn at the Harbormaster's Office.
And one by a nearby intersection.
Discussion
The photo routine in Xanga 2.0 is roughly the same as in v.1, once you find it! I'm very impressed with the clarity of the photos, which post with no degradation.
There has also been some discussion today about comments. I am a bit dismayed to see emails and other computer information displayed on the comments page. This information is such that it compromises the security (privacy) that we are all used to. Fortunately, the information is visible only to the person on whose post a comment is made, and not to everybody. I have been concerned about this, and about how to deal with it. At this point, I will continue to comment, but only on those sites where I don't mind revealing my email information to the poster. If I don't comment on your site, it is simply because I don't know you well enough. If this seems rude, please accept my apology ahead of time, but until that information no longer appears on my comment screen, I find it necessary to protect myself in that way.
From that new vantage point, I drove around the back side of the bluff, to my favorite spot overlooking the Harbor.
The first thing I noticed was that the Thursday afternoon races were in full swing.
Then I realized that this is the weekend of the Tall Ship Festival, and there was a Tall Ship in the channel. At first, I thought it was anchored by the side of the channel, but then it began to move -- it was being towed in to the Ocean Institute, where it would be tied to another of the Tall Ships. Because of the congestion, I probably won't go anywhere near the harbor while the festival is running, but it was fun to see 4 ships in the harbor already.
I wandered up and down the banks by the Ocean Institute, shooting details of the various ships. Generally, the best way to tell the difference is by looking at the hull. But the rigging was quite fascinating, and many of the shots were taking looking up.
Sails trimmed differently -- I don't know enough about this rigging to understand why the sails seem to be sideways!
Three ships in line at the dock. The fourth will eventually be lashed to the first.
I imagined what it must be like sailing along and seeing a thundercloud like this!
Here comes #4 under tow -- the flag at the top of the mast is the California State flag -- the Golden Bear -- and the name of the ship is Californian.
The Pilgrim now has a named dock.
The next shot shows the crowd that showed up to greet the Californian. The rowing scull was out for a practice session -- they were practicing getting into the boat -- in this shot three of them are not in the boat -- in the next, they have just climbed in.
Here she comes, motoring very slowly towards the front of the line.
Once the Californian had lashed to the next ship, I meandered back towards my car, past one of my favorite sculptures.
Discussion
These photos were all added to the post through the method in my previous post titled Playing with Photo -- Update. For some reason, after I published this post, I noticed that it had dropped half the post and some of the photos above that -- I don't know why that happened. Afterwards, when I edited it, I had to resize and center the photos individually (before, they followed the initial settings).
Thanks to a comment from @fwren, I can update my last post with an even easier way to align and size photos! Let's try it with a different example.
Looking at the fence, this may actually be a better example to begin with. This is so easy I could not believe how hard I've struggled with it! When you are ready to add a photo, click add media at the top of the screen. Select your photo At that point, there will be a second column on the right of the screen. The top part of the screen is a section called Attachment Details. Scroll down in that column, using the scroll bar within that right hand column. The lower part of the screen is labelled Attachment Display Settings. In that section, there are drop-down boxes for alignment and for display size. Select your options (I selected center alignment and large size), and click on Insert into Post. To my eye, there is no degradation of the photo if you post it this way! That will take you back to your post, and you are ready to continue to your next photo, or to text, as you prefer.
I've been playing with adding photos to a post -- there are apparently several ways to accomplish resizing of photos as you add them to a post. I'll begin with a reasonably sharp photo.
After inserting the photo and making sure it was centered, I then clicked on the photo. At this point, there are drag boxes at the corners of the photo -- I dragged the lower left corner of the photo out and down, enlarging the photo. The shape of the photo does not remain the same, but when you release the mouse, the centering remains. The sharpness of the photo degrades as the photo is enlarged this way.
Starting again with the original photo, I then tried clicking on the photo, and on the photo icon in the upper left corner of the photo. There is a size scale on the screen that appears under the Edit Image tab. However, this is preset, and the photo above shows that it is 100% size. However, there is also an Advanced Settings tab which allows you to Scale the photo. The original size was 300 x 199. To increase the size by 1/2 (to 1-1/2 times the original size) and maintain the same ratio, I reset those numbers to 450 and 300, and clicked Update at the bottom of the screen.
In a second example of this, I changed the size to 600 x 398 and clicked Update.
All of Southern California is in the grips of a major heatwave. Temperatures have soared, humidity has soared, and there have been health alerts, heat warnings, and so forth for at least the last week. My house is difficult to cool sufficiently to be comfortable, and sometimes it is better to leave the house and head for the beach -- even if it isn't much cooler there, it feels as if it is! That was my tactic this afternoon. The camera was with me, and I brought home 70 photos, many of which are good enough to post -- I'll break them into several posts.
When we have extreme heat, one of two things happens. There might be dry winds coming from the deserts and blowing out to sea -- this is relatively pleasant, compared the other alternative, which we've had this week. Recently, the winds are coming in as the result of a low pressure area, heating up, flowing counter-clockwise, and drawing moisture up from the Gulf of California. The humidity is high, and as it reaches the mountains and rises, the air cools, forming thunder clouds.
The above two shots are of a thunderhead building in size and strength. The next is of a different cloud, behind Saddleback Mountain, which had just collapsed in a thunderstorm.
From thata vantage point, I moved on to another spot in Dana Point where I thought there might be some elephants. I'm not very familiar with this particular spot, but was pleased to find a couple of elephants quite easily at the top of a bluff, right by a large beach parking lot.
Looking over the edge of the cliff I was able to see an area known as The Strand, where they are developing a housing community. Only a few of the beachfront lots have been developed, but you can see in the next series of photos that there will be more (it's laid out in pads already), and that they will be very close together.
Just over the hill and around the point is Dana Point Harbor. In Part 2, we'll see some of what was happening in and outside of the harbor this afternoon.
Discussion
In preparing this post, I have discovered that adding photos as I have here works much the same as it did in Xanga -- I have yet to find the sizing protocol, but the alignment is very simple, and affects the entire post from the point of the first photo. With the new post screen in Visual Mode, begin typing your post -- if you wish different than left-justified alignment, you can set this on the toolbar as you would in a Word document. When you click add media at the top left of the screen, click on the photo you wish to insert, and click "add to post," at the bottom right of the screen. Having done that, click on the photo to reveal two boxes in the upper right of the photo. Click on the blue box of these two, and there are several options for alignment of the photo. If you haven't already set the alignment you want, this will set the alignment for the rest of your post, or until you reset it. There are also some sizing options on this same page, but the photos above are set at 100%, and the sizes larger than that are greyed out and unusable options. I will continue to explore this.
I have an HTML screen, but understand there is a way to change to a visual screen, which I think would suit my needs better. I don’t see the visual/html option at the top right of the screen as has been suggested — just the screen options/help tabs. Is there another way to change back to Visual?
Over the past few weeks, we have had some very hot weather in Southern California, with temperatures at or above 100 degrees. With that heat has come what the meteorologists call 'monsoon flow,' or humidity that is drawn from the Gulf of California. There have been some nice sunsets, and some wonderful thunterclouds against the mountains. Below are a few shots I took over the past weekend.
It's good to see the new Xanga -- can't wait to try it out!
As a part of their curriculum during 2012-13, children in the 4th and 5th grades in the Capistrano Union School District studied Asian Elephants. At the end of this unit, each child was given a baby elephant to paint. These were all on display, along with the larger elephants. First, the display overall.
I then wandered around the tables taking group photos of the ones I thought were particularly interesting.
There was a quiz game around the elephants -- if you answered all the questions correctly, you were entered into a raffle for
Several of the animals were displayed for sale -- this size went for $350.
On Sunday, I took some additional shots of the children's elephants. They are all so creative, but these were a few more of my favorites.
The animals are now on the move -- and can be seen elsewhere in Dana Point.
And to place myself back in reality after viewing this wonderful exhibit, I drove around the corner and found these endangered species.
And a Cal 20 coming in from an afternoon sail.
The eyelashes on this one really stood out!
Betty Boop
Polar Bears are of particular interest to me!
One last elephant for this post from the childrens' elephants. I'll post more from that part of the exhibit in the next post.
Continuing back around the park, there are many more elephants to look at. The first one was painted only one side.
The next will stand for itself.
The next was entitled Coconut.
Again, the next speaks for itself.
The Butterfly
There will be one more post similar to this one, and one which shows the work of the children in Grades 4 and 5 in the Capistrano Union School District.
Many of the elephants in the Elephant Parade exhibit were painted by local artists or by celebrities. Most of the celebrity elephants are actually exhibited on the beach -- there is a short boardwalk out across the sand, with elephants on each side. I'll let them speak for themselves.
There was a lot of speculation as to how long the surfboard would stay on this one -- it was attached by velcro!
The surfer had just come out of the water -- her boyfriend was taking photos of her by this elephant.
This last guy was one of the first I saw of the celebrities -- I did not get the tag or the name of the artist.
And this one speaks for itself, and on banners and printed materials for all of the elephants.
I visited the elephants again today in the early afternoon, discovering more, and taking lots more pictures of them. I'll just show one this evening -- the others will have to wait, since many of the photos I wanted to show actually didn't load, and I'd rather take the time to show them properly. Each elephant has a plaque that explains the artist's vision -- I'll include them as well for most of the elephants.
In all, I took about 600 photos of the elephants -- I won't post all of them, but there will be several more in this series! The next post will include several that were painted or inspired by celebrities.
A couple of days ago, the local newspaper had a banner article about the Elephant Parade.
Somehow I found this pretty intriguing, and when I looked just a little farther I saw that the Elephant Parade was coming to Dana Point for the weekend and staying until November. The elephant parade is an outdoor exhibit designed to support Asian Elephants, an endangered species. In Thailand, the elephant is the national symbol -- there are currently only 3,500 elephants left there (1/10 the population of 100 years ago), and only 1,500 of those live in the wild. They are dying out throughout Asia due to illegal poaching for ivory, as well as the intrusion of human population into their wildlands. Marc Spits and his son Mike established Elephant Parade after being inspired by Mosha, an elephant which stepped on a land-mine at the age of 2 years -- Mosha has been fitted with a prosthetic leg, which must be replaced every year as she grows. In conjunction with the Asian Elephant Foundation, The Elephant Parade has been travelling world wide, and has now come to the United States, landing first in Dana Point.
Meet Mosha
There are about 30 elephants, displayed throughout Doheny State Beach Park, some on the lawn, and others on the sand, for the weekend. Next week, they will be moved in small groups to various venues in Dana Point -- around the harbor, and at the 4 major hotels in the city to stay on exhibit for the next couple of months. At the beach park, it was very crowded, with both the elephants and a lobster fest, as well as a hot summer day. It was difficult to get good photos of the elephants for all the people. I will go again tomorrow to see them again while they are all together -- and I'm sure I'll see them as I go photoshooting around Dana Point over the next few weeks. For now, a couple of shots I took today as teasers of more to come. The elephants are displayed in groups of 2 or 3, spotted around the park.
The aviator was one of my personal favorites, although you will see in the next post that I had many favorites!
As a part of the exhibit, the 4th and 5th graders in the Capistrano School District, which includes Dana Point, had a 2-week unit studying Asian Elephants. As part of this study, they were each given a small elephant and some paints, and they all painted their elephants. The small elephants are also on display --I'll show them in the next post as well, but I particularly loved the small Mosha.
As background information, I have a sister who has lived in Italy since 1970, when she was 28 years old. She has dual citizenship -- American by birth, and Italian by marriage. She has a land-line telephone and a cell-phone, but we most usually communicate by e-mail when we do. I use my cox.net e-mail address, and she uses an address @alice.it. Our messages are often personal, like birthday or Christmas wishes, and thank you's. She comes to California each summer to visit -- from 1970 till 2010, her visits were to visit our mother, and since then to visit her children. The last message I received from her before this story was in February 2013. Our relationship is somewhat tenuous, but civil.
In March, as I began to think about my own summer plans, I sent a message asking what her travel dates were likely to be, so I could plan my travels around her dates. There was no response. In May, I had changed plans for major travel, but wanted to plan the summer more carefully -- I again wrote a message asking for her dates. The next morning she called me, saying that she'd sent me a message the week before. While she was on the phone, I checked my spam folder, both on my computer, and on the Cox webmail, and found nothing. She sent a subsequent message from a gmail address which came through.
Needing to know that my sister's messages will get through to my in box, I called Microsoft's customer service seeking help in finding a white-listing setting or a setting that might block e-mails from @alice.it. They were unable to help me. Knowing that they usually send me to ASUS, the manufacturer of my computer, I called ASUS, with the same result. And I called Cox, my ISP -- they couldn't help either. But SOMEthing had changed since February that was now blocking my sister's messages, so I went hunting through every setting I could find. I did find a setting with a sub-setting labelled International -- I changed that setting, and asked her to send a test message -- it ended up in my Webmail spam folder, but did not come through to my Windows Livemail at all. I found a white list setting in Webmail and adjusted it to move e-mail from my sister to the in-box. That done, the next test message came all the way through to my e-mail in box.
I was telling a friend in Santa Barbara about this. By chance, my nephew had asked him a question the answer for which would have been in an e-mail from my sister, but he'd not received any information. My nephew spoke with his mother, and she had responded to my friend's message some time ago, the day after receiving the question. He uses a MAC, and I am totally unfamiliar with MAC's. He obtained from a dealer an instruction sheet describing a setting to adjust if e-mails were not coming through. We found that the setting there was as described on the instruction sheet -- however, if we changed that setting and entered my sister's e-mail address in the drop-down box, checking a box to activate that, it would allow the message to go through -- labelled SPAM!
Had these setting changes not worked, she was planning to use a g-mail account that she had set up because friends of hers were also having problems. We could send messages to alice.it, and she would reply by g-mail. But when she tried to use g-mail here, Google messaged her that they had blocked it because she was using it in the US rather than in Italy, where she had set it up! Her solution was to set up a second g-mail for use in the US!
Today, there was a long article in the newspaper about the NSA and its monitoring of personal e-mails, apparently far more extensive than anybody had realized m, and confirming my thoughts that the blocks that were put into place in my e-mail settings in February or March had something to with the NSA. It appears that the NSA is watching e-mail messages from foreign countries coming to the US.
Back in Santa Barbara, the next afternoon we went for a short walk. While people were getting ready and looking at some local construction, I spotted some interesting succulent plants.
Right behind the train station, there is a bridge that crosses Mission Creek -- the bridge is old and is being replaced. It's a wonderful waste of money, since the road comes to a dead end at the tracks, and one must turn to the left immediately after crossing the bridge!
I suppose perhaps because it's where my Daddy came home from the war (WWII), I have a special fondness for this train station. There's a wonderful portico to the right side of the building where people used to wait for the trains after purchasing their tickets inside -- it is sad that, since I was last there, the benches have all been removed -- apparently the homeless had discovered the spot, and the benches became a great place for them to sleep (and to make the area undesirable for the people for whom it was intended).
Across the tracks is another little building I had never noticed before -- it was a flag-man's station house. It now stands on a narrow patch of land slated to be developed as a children's museum.
It was good to see that the design was carried into the parking attendant's shelter!
Walking down State Street towards the ocean, there is major renovation in progress -- they have preserved placques here and there showing some of the history of the city -- this one explains the connection of Northrop and Lockheed aircraft companies to Santa Barbara.
* * * * * * * * * *
On this site, from 1916 to 1921, some of the finest airplanes in early American aviation were built. John K. Northrop, a 1919 Santa Barbara High School graduate, joined with Allen and Malcolm Loughead (later known as Lockheed) to build the largest airplane of its era, the 10-passenger F-1. These early planes were mostly constructed with wood and Irish linen.
They also created a sleek sports plane with an aerodynamic designed laminated wooden fuselage. The concept of "lamination" was to forever change how planes were designed.
Although they were leading innovators in their field, business success eluded them. They closed shop in Santa Barbara in 1921.
As we rested on a roadside bench across from the beach, I shot a few miscellaneous vehicles as they passed us. The first is an amphibious bus that can take a boat ride across the harbor!
An electric bus also went by -- this is the city's bus system that replaces regular buses, and takes the place of the cars that the City Council is trying to eliminate within the city!
I was also able to get a clear shot of the iconic dolphins fountain at the base of the wharf.
And a Harbor Patrol truck headed to their headquarters.
As I left town on Sunday, I saw the Chromatic Gate, recently repainted after several years of deterioration. Such is the fate of civic art!
From Lake Cachuma, we moved on to have some lunch. It was 99 degrees in the valley, and we knew of a nice restaurant with lots of shade umbrellas and a nice breeze. It is in an older house, with a nice front porch, and is associated with this hotel.
The courtyard has some farm equipment as decoration. This was the dominant piece. When we arrived, the mill was turning in the wind;
as we left, it was still.
I tried to take a shot of a weathervane on the hotel roof through the windmill's legs -- it didn't work very well, but I was also able to get a good shot of the weathervane separately.
On another part of the roof, another weathervane, honoring the proximity to Solvang,
and a nice fountain by the front door to the hotel.
After lunch, we made a quick stop in Solvang for dessert -- yummy pastries and cookies. The stores there sell tubs of butter cookies! I loved the reflections in the window along with the cookie tubs -- even a Danish flag shows up in the reflections from across the street.
Tummies full, we decided that we were within a very short distance of the house my niece and her husband recently purchased, and we ventured on to see it. The house on top of the hill is theirs -- the building below is a motel. The house is in a village about half way between Buellton and Santa Maria -- they have plenty of land to do the permaculture that interests them.
The next post will cover the rest of my week in Santa Barbara.
The next day, my friend and I went to Santa Ynez for lunch at a hotel restaurant that we enjoy. On the way there, we stopped to view Lake Cachuma, the main water supply for the City of Santa Barbara. The lake, behind the Bradbury Dam on the Santa Ynez River, is designed to hold 189,000 acre feet of water; it currently is holding 102 acre feet! When it is full, the water covers all the white section just above its current level. And the brush around the lake is also very dry.
A vulture soared back and forth over the lakeshore.
Lake Cachuma is an earthfill dam. It was recently reinforced with a second, downstream structure, shown with the spillway.
Just behind the spillway, there is a silt line in the water. It appears that this was part of the original design, but it is a little scary that the line is visible from above! Farther back up the lake, where it can't be seen, there is an inlet to a tunnel through the mountains -- it is through that tunnel that water is pumped to the coastal, city side of the mountains. At this point, the pumping must raise the water from lake level to tunnel level in order to pump it through the mountains. The city does receive some water from the State to augment this supply (something like 5,000 acre feet a month), but the usage plus evaporation currently exceeds the inflow of water each month.
The next post will show a little bit of Santa Ynez, and of Solvang, as well as some other sightseeing that we did that day.
For the last week I have been in Santa Barbara again, visiting friends and family. I drove up last Monday, stopping in Malibu, and again when I saw a paraglider directly above the road.
I also stopped at the park where a wildfire burned to the ocean a couple of months ago. The following shots show some of the regrowth beginning already.
I was fascinated by the ring of growth at ground level around many of the lower brush plants.
I also stopped for one shot of the power plant that I usually sail by in Oxnard.
The real reason for this trip was to visit with my sister. Since 1970, she has lived in Italy, traveling to Santa Barbara for about 6 weeks each summer. Recently, she has broken the 6 week visit with a week-long baroque singing class in Seattle. When I go to visit her, I usually see her once or twice during the week I'm there, as her son and daughter and their families (including the 1-year-old grandson) also live there. This time was no exception, but we did have a delightful luncheon together at a restaurant at the base of the Goleta pier.
and at the foot of the cliff that borders the campus of University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB).
In the parking lot after lunch, I found an interesting sculpture, similar to one in a downtown Santa Barbara beach.
I have been super busy recently, with routine activities plus meetings of a volunteer group I belong to, and a new photo club I've found, and lunches with friends, and medical appointments (again, routine). I took a few minutes this afternoon to go to the harbor and take some shots of a beautiful sea and Sunday afternoon racing activity to leave you with as I will have limited access to the computer for the next week. I just sat down to edit the few photos I took, and found that the memory card was still in the computer! I had thought the camera wouldn't even turn on if there was no memory card -- but it definitely has no way to record the images. It's the first time I've done that -- and probably won't be the last, but I'm definitely feeling silly! Here are a few recent shots that may or may not be representative of what I'll be doing for the next week -- and I'll come back with new ones. I promise I'll check the memory card!
On Saturday afternoon, I was to meet two other Xangans at the San Juan Capistrano train station and walk to the Mission for a photoshoot. One of them was flying in from Canada, picking up the other, and driving to San Juan. Shortly before I left home, I noticed on WordPress that there were flight issues on the way from Canada, including a missed connection. Assuming that I would not meet people at the station, I decided to go anyway, just in case I misunderstood, or in case they were able to get on a later flight that would meet our timetable. Southbound traffic on the freeway was backed up for miles -- it was Saturday afternoon on the main road from Los Angeles to the Mexico border --so I got off the freeway and took surface streets for the last few miles. Traffic there was bad, too, but I expected that. As I came closer to the center of town, I shot the new Church while sitting at a stoplight. This church, known as the Mission Basilica San Juan Capistrano, was built in 1984 to support the community while the old Mission is restored.
I finally made my way to the train station, where I stayed for about 1/2 hour, waiting to see if my friends arrived.
I made use of the time by playing with my camera a bit, changing aperture settings, ISO settings, and cropping in the camera. I am always amused by this gate, across the train tracks from the station itself,
and I was amused by this sign, about 20 feet up the track from the spot where there is a crossing the width of a roadway!
The area includes numerous local plants -- a cactus along the tracks,
and an ivy-covered parking structure.
Aat one point I walked a short block away to the main street through town. From there, I could see the main entrance to the Mission and the ruins of the main chapel behind it. I was using a 200 mm lens, and for that reason, it looks as if the ruins are directly behind the main entrance buildings -- in fact, the ruined wall is nearly a city block farther back.
Next to the parking lot, a building is being demolished and another will be rebuilt -- this wall caught my eye, with its damaged lattice stair railing.
Here comes the first of two trains. There is no train whistle, but the gates are lowered, and bells ring. This train was a northbound Amtrak train, with the engine on the southern end of the train, pushing it up the tracks (a common configuration, known locally as push-pull).
Bo-oard!
It was followed through the station by Metrolink's southbound Surfliner, the commuter train from the northern part of the LA basin, through Los Angeles, and on southward to San Diego.
An older car,
and a couple of newer cars.
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