Reef Range

 

Shell Sunrise

When I noticed yesterday that low tide was going to happen around noon today I decided to head out to Duxbury Reef. I figured the tidepools might be murky from storm runoff, but I hoped I might find something interesting due to all the recent rain exposing the reef to so much fresh water.

I arrived early and walked north up the beach to look around the point and maybe see Palomarin Beach, which has been one of my favorite tidepooling locations, but it's another couple of miles up the coast. There appeared to be reef all along the way, though, so I'm not sure there's anything to be gained by hiking all that way for tidepools.

Especially after a big storm, perhaps. The tidepools were indeed murky. But the really strange thing was the lack of biodiversity. There were lots of turban snails, as usual, but not a lot of anything else. I only saw one full-sized sea anemone, and even the sea weed was sparse, maybe due more to the time of year than anything else.

Even though the tidepools were disappointing, it was a beautiful morning to have Agate Beach almost completely to myself. The drive up and over Mt. Tam was enjoyable also, and it looked like just about every embankment that could slide, did slide. Road crews had already been on the job, though, so the road surface was nicely de-mucked.

Shell Sunrise II

Sculpture in the Range

Basin and Range

Slight Rainbow Over Seal Rocks (3/13/23)

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More Pt. Reyes

 

Sunrise Over Drake's Estero

Egrets Nesting

Pt. Reyes Wallflower, Chimney Rock

Chimney Rock Deer

Exposed Reef at Drake's Beach

Smooth Lines at Drake's Beach

Kehoe Beach

* * *

Carson Falls

 

Lower Carson Falls

After dropping my wife off at work Friday morning I drove home and put on my rain gear in anticipation of having a little adventure in the storm while hiking up to Carson Falls. I'd been thinking about hiking to Cataract Falls, but the upper part of Mt. Tamalpais was closed, and Fairfax-Bolinas Road was closed at Azalea Hill.

Despite having all the rain gear, it didn't rain a drop during the whole hike. We'd heard some rain during the night (but no thunder), so we know the forecast wasn't completely wrong. Still, it seemed a little comical that Mt. Tam had closed for weather that turned out to be fairly pleasant.

It seemed like it hadn't been very long since I last hiked up to Carson Falls, but when I checked my photo files after getting home I found it's been six years. This was maybe the second time I've been there and failed to find any foothill yellow-legged frogs along the sides of the falls. I hope they were down there somewhere, and looking forward to a productive mating season.

Upper Carson Falls

Buckeye By the Falls, March 10, 2023

Buckeye By the Falls, January 11, 2008

Bay Laurel

Mt. Tam View with Madrone

Short Clip of Carson Falls

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Pt. Reyes in Early March

 

Iris Patch & Setting Moon

Sleeping Beauty

Elk & Setting Moon

Drifting Thoughts

Chitons & Friends

Sea Star, Anemones & Sea Grass

Giacomini Wetlands

Color on the Fence Line

Table for One

Contemplative Bull

A Gathering of Elk

Elk Surprise

Whimbrels in a State of Aesthetic Arrest

Hold Fast

Cliff Dweller

* * *

Bad Gopher

 

San Francisco Wallflower, March 6, 2023

March 7

March 8

I was so glad to see my first-of-the-season local San Francisco Wallflower (Erysimum franciscanum) on March 6, and when I checked it out again the next morning it looked sad and droopy, as if weighted down with rain. Unfortunately, a closer look revealed an even sadder situation, a nearby gopher hole. When I checked again this morning there was no longer any sign of the wallflower.

Wallflower, Bush Lupine & Bracken at Grandview Park (3/24/2020)

[UPDATE]

It wasn't there yesterday, so here is the first bloom for Grandview Park, caught on March 9, 2023. The first handful of lupine blossoms has also come out.

* * *

The Maltese Vessel

 

The Bulk Carrier Knossos

Joel Cairo: You always have a very smooth explanation ready.

Sam Spade: What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?

Wilmer Cook: Keep on riding me and they're gonna be picking iron out of your liver.

Sam Spade: The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

--The Maltese Falcon quotes from IMDB

I'd seen a couple of small whale spouts just off Ocean Beach, probably migrating Gray Whales, after walking down there yesterday morning. The beach sand was packed so hard from all the rain that I didn't get any in my shoes for once. The sun was shining, but it was not warm. I stood on the beach with my eyes watering slightly from the cold wind, trying to catch a third, and better, glimpse of the whale, which appeared to be moving south. I even watched the offshore flight of gulls on the chance one of them would see the whale and check it out. No luck.

When I got home and set out on my bike, I returned to the Cliff House with my camera, this time to watch whales instead of clouds. I didn't see any whales, but I did see a Maltese-flagged bulk carrier named after the ancient Greek city of Knossos (home of the Minotaur!) heading into port. 

Knossos is a city on the island of Crete, about 600 miles east of the tiny but densely populated Republic of Malta (not to be confused with Malta, Greece). The sailing vessel Knossos was just arriving after traveling almost 6,000 miles from Tianjin Xingang, a Chinese port on the Yellow Sea about 100 miles southeast of Beijing. I'd have thought the Knossos would be riding lower in the water if it was full of goods from China, but maybe it's carrying something relatively light, like textiles (compared to iron ore, for instance).

The Knossos Entering San Francisco Bay

* * *

President Jimmy Carter

 

President Carter on the Flight Deck

Hard to believe how much time has sailed by since I was a teen-ager assigned to the pre-commissioning crew of the Navy's newest aircraft carrier, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69). The ship and its crew were just getting their sea legs when President Jimmy Carter came out visit. 

Our home port was Norfolk, Virginia, and we'd just been out to sea and had our first liberty port in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Carter's visit came a couple of weeks later, on March 17, 1978, when we were 60 miles off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, taking part in a Combined Weapons Training Exercise. 

I only remember two things about that day. The first was eagerly trying to position myself to snap a photo of the president as he watched from the flight deck. The second was watching an F-14 fly right in front of us, not much higher than the flight deck, at supersonic speed. The same jet that I'd only heard roaring in the past, now made no sound whatsoever as we watched it fly closer and closer, finally swooping past us with flaming afterburners, yet still making no more noise than a skulking wildcat. I was totally unprepared for the tremendous sonic BOOM! that blasted us a moment later.

Carter was the first president of my adult life, and even though he got stuck being the boss during a prolonged gas crisis inflicted on us by Arab oil producers for our support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War; the Iranian hostage crisis (and disastrous rescue mission); the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; and economic problems inherited from prior administrations, I've always admired him, in part because he'd been a Navy nuclear engineer, which made him a genius in my eyes. But also because he was an environmental and social champion. 

He has also been a compassionate and down-to-earth human being (and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize) who, with his wife Rosalynn, continued to do good things for the world after he left the White House. So many people talk about Reagan in glowing terms (I was especially surprised by President Barack Obama's enthusiasm), but his defeat of Carter in 1980 was a major turning point in the American character. And look where we are now. 

The President and First Lady Aboard the Ike

* * *

Cloudy With Chance of Awe

Drama at Seal Rocks

 

Going for a walk this morning I discovered the first San Francisco Wallflower of the season near Grandview Park. It's located in an area we know affectionately as The Wind Tunnel, and it has been living up to the name today, so I haven't tried to photograph it except with my phone. The next highlight of the walk was seeing a Great Blue Heron along Sunset Boulevard, presumably on gopher duty. The final joy was the mass of clouds everywhere but over my head. I walked backwards up one of the last hills before home so I could take in the view.

There were more cool clouds out the back window once I got home, so I set up a timelapse to run while I went out for a bike ride. Still more clouds off the coast drew me up to the Cliff House. It was obviously raining way out at sea, and pouring cats and dogs on Mt. Tamalpais and Tennessee Valley. The whole storm train blew more north than east, so it missed me completely. When I got home I ran another timelapse just for the heck of it while I fixed my lunch.

Above Sutro Baths

Cliff House Falling Into Disrepair

(Add appropriate sound effect of your choice.)

The Tugboat Osprey Pulling Some Kind of Barge Out to Sea

View Toward Muir Beach

Rear Window View

Rear Window Timelapse

* * *

A Movement of Clouds

 

Partly Cloudy Skies, Grandview Park, March 5, 2023

I don't know if I'd been dreaming, but I woke up thinking life is like getting a block of stone when we're born, and we spend our lives learning how to sculpt it. Some people seem to be born with an internal vision of what their final shape should be, although surprises sometimes live even in stone. Other people chisel first one form, then another and another, and later in life, there's very little stone left to work, and their shape becomes a sphere around which passing clouds sail and billow on the wind.

Once again this morning I drove over to Grandview Park on the chance of catching a rainbow, and this time my disappointment was realizing it was too early in the morning for the bow to be in the right position (arcing over Mt. Tamalpais). But since I was already there, and my coffee had no doubt already cooled back on my desk at home, I set up the camera for a timelapse and waited to experience whatever nature had on offer. 

Although the cloud action was mainly over the Marin Headlands, a line of clouds formed up in the west with the promise of a good rainbow angle. I changed lenses and pointed the camera toward them, keeping my camera bag ready for a quick exit from the swiftly approaching rain. The clouds blew in from the ocean and darkened the western edge of the city, casting a giant shadow that moved toward me like a solar eclipse. 

There would have been a great rainbow -- if only the clouds had been showering. Drat. No rain fell, but the temperature dropped precipitously as soon as the shadow fell upon me, so I packed up my gear and headed home for breakfast as the clouds continued their eastward journey.

* * *