Sierra Fall Color

The Rock That Needs No Introduction

A quick trip, but so many sublime moments, starting with my arrival at Yosemite's Olmsted Point just in time to catch the sunrise. A world of glaciated granite and vanilla-scented pines; the top of Half Dome catching the first rays of the day; the dry air a bracing 29 degrees and free of smoke. I'd be taken by surprise when I returned home the next day via Sonora Pass and encountered a great deal of smoke, possibly from the lightning-caused Quarry Fire that's been burning in the Stanislaus National Forest for more than a month.

I'd left home at 3 a.m. with no plan for where to be at sunrise. My only thought was to see the sights along Tioga Pass -- to make sure I didn't leave so early that I'd cross in the dark -- then hope for good pika weather on the far side of the pass, among the talus surrounding the Nunatak Nature Trail. 

I staked out a position at the base of the scree slope where the jumble of rocks was mostly a dark-hued rusty color (the white rocks were too bright). Nothing to do but wait for a pika to show up and move within range of my lens. In the meantime I just enjoyed the beautiful but silent morning. After standing still for a few minutes I noticed that the silence began to lift: the chickaree was scolding something in the distance once again; the robins and Clark's nutcrackers were singing and getting back to work; nature's baseline was restored. Just a little longer and I was soon observing a lone pika as it plucked its fresh breakfast greens while also observing me.

Next stop was Lee Vining Canyon, where I hoped to find the location of a shot I took in October 2011. The aspens along the creek were lovely, but despite all my poking around I was unable to find the spot until I was about to leave. "Well, I'll just bushwhack a little down this embankment and see what's down there." Voila. I realized it was the place (lots of horsetail and aspens) and went back to the car to get my camera. The aspens had lost most of their leaves, so it's no wonder I failed to spot the location right off. I fired off a few frames anyway since I'd spent so much time looking for it. 

Lundy Canyon was my next stop, and I experienced one of my favorite fall-color moments of the trip while looking for a shady campsite to park and eat some lunch. I stopped at a beautiful stand of aspen, and while I was looking through my viewfinder a gust of wind sent dozens of aspen leaves fluttering through the air like golden snowflakes.

My next stop was going to be Sagehen Summit, which I've never been to before. On the way out SR120 south of Mono Lake, and well past Mono Mills, the highway takes a left and begins a long straight section. Even from far off, it looked like maybe a cop car was coming in the opposite direction. I looked at my speedometer and saw I had lead-footed myself up to 71 mph, and I hoped that was okay. As the patrol officer drove past me he made a vehement "slow down!" motion with his left hand, and my heart sank as I watched the rearview mirror, certain that he was going to turn around and cite me. I also checked my navigation screen and saw that I was in a 60 mph zone. Dang. I kept driving and soon went around a bend while I kept looking for the approaching lightbar of doom, but I soon turned onto the dirt road to Sagehen Summit feeling like I'd dodged a bullet.

I never got all the way to the aspen area. What I could see from a distance didn't look that promising, and the unpaved road wasn't that great in the Mazda. Just past a ranch where I was going to turn around, a coyote with a beautiful full coat trotted toward me, coming right down the middle of the road. It dodged into the weeds as I passed, then returned to the road, only to have to hit the weeds once again when I turned around to head back out.

On the way back toward Mono Lake I stopped near the base of the Mono Craters and parked in the shade of a big pine to have a little bite to eat from my cooler, along with an ice-cold drink of water. As the sun dropped ever closer to the Sierra crest I drove down to Navy Beach to photograph the formations of sand tufa. I'd recently read about horses hanging around Mono Lake, but most of the landscape was so denuded by fire that it seemed impossible that horses could survive. 

As I hiked out toward the tufa towers I was surprised I couldn't find them. It's been a while since I was out there, and I wondered if the horses had demolished the elegant structures. Piles of old horse pucky were all over. Thankfully, I finally reached the main event, where I noticed two trail cameras that had been set up, presumably to monitor horses, not human visitors.

After photographing the tufas in the last direct light of the sinking sun's rays, I took a seat to wait for sunset. Alone with the strange sand-tufa formations, I listened to the water lapping against the lakeshore and the occasional bird call from out on the lake. A couple of coyotes sang out a few melodious notes to each other. A wasp investigated a small tufa tower, possibly hunting insects or sizing up a future nest site. A promising deck of cloud cover had moved in during the afternoon, but you never know if you're going to get any color.

While I was waiting I ruminated on a couple of books I've been reading, one an argument that cells are the real heroes of life, not DNA (which the author likens to the tools used by a builder, namely the cell), the other an argument that calculus is "the language of God." Centered in that wide-open landscape I felt the awesome beauty of life's journey from an exploding singularity to all the chemical elements that shaped this planet and gave birth to life itself. Somewhere deeper than the cell, and deeper than calculus, lies the tantalizing mystery of how it has all come together to shape the present moment.

My reverie broke when the sunset colors began, and I tried to make a few photographs in the quickly changing light. First there were strokes of red over the Sierra crest, then way out past Black Point, and then -- what the heck? -- over here above Mono Craters.

Back at the car I ate some more pasta salad while taking in the view of the darkening lake, then drove up to park for the night along Virginia Lakes Road so I'd be in position to photograph the aspens in Dunderberg Meadow first thing in the morning. I was all done by around 9:30 a.m. the following day and drove up to Sonora Pass, wondering if there would be any more color up that way, and thinking I would just head home if it had already passed. Except for a little bit of color in the creek canyons, most of the aspens appeared to have lost their leaves some time ago. Above the pass, the mountains and meadows looked as closed for the season as several of the shops in Bridgeport.

Dawn at Olmsted Point

Creekside, Tioga Road

Frosty Meadow

Golden Willows

Lakeside Grasses

Morning Light Along Tioga Road

A group of deer crossed the road in front of me as I approached the park exit, so I pulled into a small, handy parking lot, grabbed my camera, and waited for the deer to come into view. I only got two frames before they lost themselves in the shadows.

Nanook of the Nunatak

What's Up, Doc?
(The pika would eat whole stalks without using its hands.)

Pika on the Move

American Pika
(Ochotona princeps)

This is a general view of the pika habitat along the Nunatak Nature Trail. Note the pika's "haystacks" pouring out from below the central rock.

Rabbitbrush & Aspens, Lee Vining Canyon

Roadside Forest

Falls on Lee Vining Creek

Forest Bathing, With Notes of Vanilla

Horsetail and Aspen Grove

Lundy Lake Cottonwood

Aspen leaves cover the road like fallen snow.

Golden Forest

Mono Craters view from near the County Park. The yellow line of riparian aspens drifts down Lee Vining Creek to Mono Lake.

Much of the landscape surrounding Mono Lake's South Tufa area was laid bare by the Beach Fire three years ago.

Sundog Over the Sierra

Sand Tufa at Navy Beach

Last Light on Mono Lake's Sand Tufa Formations

Sunset in the Tufa Garden

Sand Tufa Topped With Limestone Icing

Night Sky Along Virginia Lakes Road

The elemental iron at the center of each of the 35 trillion red blood cells now coursing through your veins and pumping through your heart was born billions of years ago when it was created by an exploding star and sprayed into the vastness of outer space.

Dawn View from Mono Lake Overlook

Sunrise from Mono Lake Overlook

I drove over Conway Summit after taking in the sunrise to photograph the aspens in Dunderberg Meadow, probably my favorite fall color stop.

Fall Aspens in Dunderberg Meadow

Aspen Layers

After my stop along I-395 I drove up Virginia Lakes Road to view the aspens with the sun shining through them from behind.

All Is Yellow

Backlit Aspens and Pines

Morning at Dunderberg Meadow

* * *

Fall Butterflies

 

Buckeye butterflies cavorting on coyote brush.

I wasn't sure I'd be able to bike up to Tam on Thursday after having some bike trouble on Tuesday. I was coming home from my daily ride and a stop at the grocery store, just about to head home up the 3/4-mile-long hill, when my derailleur went insane and dropped me into ninth gear! 

I was SOL even with the e-bike in turbo mode and had to push about 60 pounds of bike and food up the hill. I'm glad this didn't happen way out around Mt. Tam! I got it home, put it on a bike rack, and drove it to Barbary Coast Cyclery where they fixed it (my shifting cable had broken) by the end of the day Wednesday. 

So yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day for a bike ride up to Mt. Tam. Goldilocks temperatures and almost no headwinds. The trail cams had not been disturbed, and the ravine was merely damp after the brief rain we had. Since there's still no real rain in the forecast I decided to leave the cams in place, but I will have to move them before the ravine turns back into a creek.

As nice a day as it was on the mountain, I was just about to head back home without taking any pictures when a lone buckeye butterfly landed near me, then proceeded to fly away when I got close to enough for a shot. Just as I got back to my bike to pack up and leave, I realized a nearby coyote brush was a-flutter with maybe a dozen buckeyes. Several of them appeared to be getting harassed by others of their own kind. I couldn't tell if it was a mating thing, a territorial thing, or something else. In one instance, the nagging butterfly was about half the size of the "victim," and it reminded me of a baby bird trying to get its mama to feed it.

This tiny madrone growing out of a crevice in the rock was full of ripening berries. This is at the hang-glider launching area on West Ridgecrest. A guy showed up at one point and put up some decorative wind socks on the other side of the road, but he didn't have a hang-glider on his car, and the wind was blowing offshore. He disappeared somewhere before I left, so I wasn't able to find out what it was all about.

More cavorting buckeyes.

Gray Hairstreak

Acmon Blue

Hedgerow Hairstreak

Various bees and flies also were feeding on the flowering coyote brush.

It was such a clear day I couldn't resist stopping at the north parking lot of the Golden Gate Bridge to photograph the city skyline which looked good even in the mid-day (1 p.m.) light.

No bobcats went up or down the ravine (though a fox did), and the critters that crossed the ravine were in and out of the frame in a snap. This is a frame-capture from a video clip.

Pretty sparse animal activity (except for squirrels), but the first clip shows a fox appearing to rub its neck in some old scent before depositing some new scent.

This is a short series of still frames from the back yard last night. Just yesterday my wife had been watching one of her paranormal-type shows (something to have on while knitting) where their trail camera picked up a "mysterious object" that the show made much of, but was pretty obviously a bug or something, and not a UFO or supernatural object. But when I checked my own backyard cam this morning I was surprised to see some unusual lights show up behind a rat. Was it an extraterrestrial or a ghost?! You decide. :)

* * *

Fall Color

 

Bougainvillea Blossoms

As I was out on my walk this morning and mulling over the possibility of heading out to the Eastern Sierra for fall color next week, I took a moment to appreciate the color closer to home. The bougainvillea was climbing over a neighbor's fence, so I took some home to get a closer look at it. 

The pink bracts enclose three flowers; the photo above shows them in different stages of opening. I was interested to learn that bougainvillea is in the four o'clock family, Nyctaginaceae, and that its sap can cause a poison-oak-like skin rash. The petals of our own desert four o'clock (Mirabilis multiflora) sport a similarly showy color. 

Bougainvillea is a native of South America and was discovered (by Europeans, that is) during a circumnavigation of the Earth undertaken by the French Admiral Louis Antoine de Bougainville in 1766. One of the botanists on the trip was Jeanne Baret, who disguised herself as a man in order to join the voyage, and became the first woman to circumnavigate the planet.

Other fall color I noticed on my walk included princess flower (Pleroma urvilleanum). According to Google definitions, pleroma is a Gnostic term for "the spiritual universe as the abode of God and of the totality of the divine powers and emanations." Someone must have really liked this flower! One of my favorite things about this plant, which is among the first horticultural plants I learned when I moved to Santa Barbara in the early '80s, is the fallen petals that cover the ground below them.

Finally, since I'm already stretching the idea of "fall color," I'm posting more video clips of the cherry-headed parrots going after the acorns on my neighbor's coast live oak. The footage was shot through a double-paned window with the FZ80, and I substituted the obnoxious sounds the camera made with some royalty-free background music.

Princess Flower on Noriega Street

Princess Flower Detritus

Parrots & Acorns

* * *

Yardsters

 

Show-offs

I'm getting about 18 gallons of gray water per load of wash, and running two loads a week has been keeping the garden alive all summer. I was worried the gray water would actually harm the plants at first, but all is well after my second year of using it. 

Incidentally, I just read an article that says it's a myth that coffee grounds are good for your garden. The author, James Wong (writing in the Autumn 2023 issue of New Scientist), points out that, "Coffee grounds, even after brewing, are still a rich source of caffeine" -- which is a kind of natural herbicide. Oops.

I'd forgotten what one of my plants was called, but Pl@nt ID came up with the name. I'd mentioned our gopher problem to a guy working at Sloat Garden Center about three years ago, and he recommend the plant, called society garlic, as a gopher-inhibitor. I planted some and it didn't flower until the second year we had it. I was surprised to find it flowering this time of year. (I think our problem gopher was eaten by a cat; I found its gut pile and skull out back.) I still plant small leftover garlic cloves here and there in case gophers (or vampires) come back.

Society Garlic
(Tulbaghia violacea)

Fuchsia Sage
(Salvia buchananii)

Bush Monkey Flower
(Diplacus aurantiacus)

Garden Pals

The Usual Suspects

I heard the Blue Angels getting started just after I posted, so I went to the back room with the FZ80 on the off chance I might photograph them going over one of the Twin Peaks....

* * *

Buffalo Days

 

American Bison, Golden Gate Park

If buffalo wings are hot, then so are buffalo days. 

I was surprised to see the bison all hanging out in the sunshine today. It was around 11:30 a.m., so not quite the hottest part of the day. But those dark, heavy coats! I sought the shade just to stop and watch them for a few minutes, and I was in shorts and t-shirt, riding my bike. I felt like I'd time-traveled back to Santa Barbara when I got to the beach. Such a beautiful day.

It's 88 degrees in the shade just outside the door of my flat at about 1:30 p.m. About 76 degrees inside, although I expect it to exceed 80 degrees later on, as it did yesterday. It's a good afternoon for ice-cold lemonade and relaxing with an engaging book, like Arctic Dreams.... 

The Nickel Pose

Ocean Beach, San Francisco (not San Diego!)

Lots of brown pelicans chilling on Seal Rocks.

Enjoying the beach out by Noriega Street.

Picture-perfect beach weather.

* * *

Baby Snakes

 

Baby Gopher Snake

It didn't take long after I brought my trail cams home that I realized I wanted to take one more crack at photographing the bobcat and fox going either up or down the ravine. I actually bought a new GardePro camera to replace the old Foxelli cams I've been using for years, but which seem to be getting toward the end of their life cycle. Also, I like the GardePro's "no glow" night vision, the working microphone, and the better clock. The Foxelli mic was poorly designed and didn't work, and the clock always ran fast, but despite the degrading video quality it's still useful enough to keep at home for backyard critters.

Anyway, I took the two GardePro cams back up today and set them up in the ravine in a way to catch critters approaching from either high or low, and also crossing the ravine. I biked up today to catch the cooler weather, since by Thursday it's supposed to get hot. 

On the way up toward Rock Spring I found a road-killed baby gopher snake. That's the one posted above. On the way back down I saw a second road-killed baby gopher snake and posed that one on a nearby lichen-crusted rock.

After I set the cams I ate the sandwich and apple I'd brought along and watched the acorn woodpeckers doing their thing. The tide was pretty high by the time I rode back down to sea level. I saw some shorebirds foraging in the pickleweed and figured they were the same greater yellowlegs I've stopped to photograph before, only to second-guess myself, then turn around and go back to check in case they were something else. So much of the ground had been inundated by the tide that the birds were in taller grass and pickleweed than last time, and I could barely see their long yellow legs.

The second baby gopher snake.

The waning gibbous moon sets behind the West Point Inn.

Acorn Season!

Greater yellowlegs on the prowl.

As this bird was keeping an eye on the sky, it looked through the lens of the FZ80 as though it had some kind of mohawk on its head, but it's just some pickleweed in the background.

* * *

Huckleberry Rat

 

Hot Lips
(Salvia microphylla)

What a great surprise to put the flower photo above into Pl@nt ID and get the result of "Hot Lips." I'd seen this one growing in the neighborhood as my wife and I walked home from the bus stop yesterday. We were just coming home from seeing the "Open 2023" exhibit at the De Young Museum (which was outstanding, and I'm not just saying that because my wife has a painting in the show). 

I knew I wanted to photograph the neighbor's flower, so this morning I skulked outside for a dawn patrol flower-snip. Was I caught on someone's doorbell cam? Is there at this very moment a video of my snag being vilified on NextDoor? 

I can only hope so.

While I was out, I also snipped an actual native wildflower -- one of my favorites. I think it's one of my favorites because it blooms in the late summer and fall, a scarlet contrarian. Hummingbirds love it too.

Since I have my trail cams at home, I put them out back to see if I could catch the culprit who's been scratching in my garden. I had a feeling who it was, but there's nothing like getting the video evidence. 

The main surprise was seeing an animal finally go after the remaining huckleberries still stuck to the branches of our back yard Vaccinium. I had to prune it quite a bit a while back when several of the thin branches got so top-heavy with berries that they bent over and snapped.

California Fuchsia
(Epilobium canum)

Formerly known as Zauschneria californica.

Was this the naughty scratcher?

Huckleberry Rat & The Scratcher

* * *