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| A little sunshine breaks through to highlight the still-green flanks of Mt. Tamalpais. |
I thought I might get caught in the rain during my ride down to the beach today, and indeed I did. Getting home cold and wet, I scratched the planned salad for lunch and swapped it out for a hot bowl of franks 'n beans. While I was gone I had my DSLR run a time lapse of the clouds flowing and boiling out toward Sutro Tower and Twin Peaks. Unfortunately it ran out its 40-minute timer before the rain started, but you can tell it's coming.
I brought the FZ80 along for the ride and couldn't resist photographing the clouds over the ocean, the dunes, and Mt. Tamalpais. I might have to head out to Pt. Reyes tomorrow to look for some cloudscapes with wildflowers.
Over the weekend my wife and I brought a picnic up to Mt. Tam, and I was reminded how crowded it gets up there on a Saturday, with so many cars and bikes sharing the steep, winding, and narrow roads. I almost took out a bicyclist whose approach was perfectly blocked by the wide A-pillar on my car (the single worst feature of the Mazda 3). I felt awful that even driving carefully almost resulted in a collision with a bicyclist, and it reminded me to be extra-careful driving on Mt. Tam, and also to never let my guard down when I'm riding.
From our picnic spot I was surprised to see a pair of rangers hiking along the trail below. I don't recall ever seeing rangers hiking on Mt. Tam before. About an hour after they passed by, a couple of people pedaled by on bicycles, on the same trail, which is most definitely not a legal bike route.
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| Storm at Sea |
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| Dunes & Clouds at Ocean Beach |
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| Several weeks ago I saw two red-tailed hawks standing close together up where that red circle is, but one of them flew away by the time I got my camera out of the bike's trunk bag. I've been waiting to see it again ever since, and today was close enough. They were both up there, although on opposite sides of the blade. This is the Murphy Windmill south of the more popular Dutch Windmill at the Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden. |
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| Close-up of the hawks circled in red above. |
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| State Park Rangers carrying side arms and wearing bullet-proof vests hike along the flower-studded Coastal Trail. |
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| This is a pretty busy trail, especially at mid-day on a gorgeous weekend, but somehow a pair of scofflaws on bikes managed to get through. |
Cloudscape Time Lapse
(5/2/23)
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