Finally, a beautiful, warm day that coincides with a Saturday. Sky is blue, humidity low, sunshine is warm. The Gospel Festival is in full swing in Grant Park, there's a cooking Meetup I wanted to try, a neighborhood art fair going on ... and I can't go out and enjoy any of them because I can barely walk. Smashed my toe into a doorjam while barefooted. To make matters worse, it's my pinkie toe. How undignified. It's a low-grade ache, except for when I try to put my weight on it, in which case it's piercing agony.
This is Not Good.
So, in honor of a day whose ambitious plans are completely bollux'd, I hereby post a picture of my Philly-to-Chicago drive four summers ago. Took just 16 hours, two of which were spent here:
Disclaimer - I shouldn't complain; for all I know it could have been a horrific accident.
One that I would have missed if I had come by 5 minutes earlier.
One last picture from the 2003 California trip: Point Lobos State Reserve
Inspiration for Spyglass Hill in Treasure Island
The crown jewel of the State Park System
"A Powerful Psychic Place"
I took exactly ONE picture that was at all interesting the whole time we were in LA. No reflection on the day itself - we had a great time. Dr. Tom showed us around a LOT of places in the short time we had: Universal Studios, Beverly Hills, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Getty museum, and we had a really good dinner in Santa Monica. Unfortunately, I wasn't getting very good results with the camera. The light wasn't very good, and we spent a lot of time driving in the car, which doesn't allow for careful framing. Plus, I'd been taking pictures for a week and I was getting picture'd out.
But there was one shot, at the Getty Museum, that came out kind of cool.
The Getty Museum sits on the top of a big, um ... mountain? This was a hill. Yeah. Definitely a hill. A very big hill. Maybe it was a mountain. People in Illinois would call it a mountain. People in Illinois would call a hill a mountain. I digress.
The Museum isn't a single building - it's a whole campus of buildings, all beautifully modern. Youngest Sister calls it "Starfleet Academy" and she's got a point. You walk around that place and you feel sleek and free and clean and cultured. Pedestrian Pa
radise, especially after spending a big chunk of the day in a car. On the outer parts you can look down the hill and see the lights of the highway streaming into the city, all lit up and pastel from the twilight. It was getting pretty late by the time we left the exhibits within and strolled around outside. There wasn't much time for taking photos, but the fading light finally yielded a good one.
Update: What? I didn't crop first? How sloppy of me.
Oh. Yeah - I almost forgot. We also spent a day in San Francisco.
Talk about good luck. Everything that could go right that day did. The weather was outstanding. We found our way around a completely new city without a single wrong turn, and managed to find ourselves, almost accidently, in a FREE parking spot only a five minute walk from the Embarcadero, exactly where we wanted to start walking.
I'll probably add some descriptions in a few days, but for now, here are some of the best pictures.
Again with the 2003 trip to Monterey that my Mom and I took to take vacation with Youngest Sister:
Driving down to LA to visit with Dr. Tom (my cousin), we spent so much time at the Hearst Castle that we were running late for the other place we wanted to visit, the Santa Barbara Mission. The sun had just set, and the Church had closed for tourist visitors about a half hour before we got there. Still, we spent some time looking around the exterior.
It was getting pretty dark, but that's the nice thing about modern cameras - they'll pretty much adjust the amount of light let in for you.
Unfortunately, because we were stuck on the outside, there weren't too many good angles to get a good shot. Most of the best ones had large chunks of parking lot or traffic signs in the way.
This one doesn't capture the mountain in the background as well, but I really like the tree. The fountain, though - ug, what was I thinking, making it smack in the center and lining up under the church tower? I'm look at this and can't help leaning over - I should have been standing about 3 feet to the right.
More pictures from the trip to Monterey, California in 2003.
Midway throught the week my Mom, Youngest Sister and I packed into the rental car and headed south to visit my cousin, Dr. Tom, in Los Angeles.
(Yes, the rental car. YS did not own a car. Did not yet have a driver's license. And yet lived in California...)
ANYWAY.
We took the inland route for the first half of the trip (see below, Pacific Coast Highway, re: Mom freaking over my driving on narrow twisty cliff-side roads). After about three hours we headed west and climbed climbed climbed uphill, then down, down, down to the coast. After a quick lunch at Moonstone Beach, we took a tour of possibly the most lavish, opulent mansion in the entire country: Hearst Casle in San Simeon.
This is me fooling around with the camera again...
And no, just one decadent swimming pool wasn't sufficient:
The pictures I took inside aren't very interesting - I was limited in the time I could take and visitors were allowed to stand only in a few marked-off placed. Also, the interior of the place is SO opulent that pictures can't do it justice. Think of a place so packed with priceless art and antiques that it's almost - almost - vulgar.
But I love this picture:
And that means it's time for amaturishly over-dramatic attempts at artsy-ness!
Here's a picture of the courtyard at the Carmel Mission - Mission San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo - one of the chain of churches up the coast of California. It was founded in 1770 and moved to it's present site in 1771 by Father Junípero Serra, who is buried under the Sanctuary floor.
I don't have a photo lab, and I don't have a lot of training in controlling focal depth or exposure, but one thing I do like to do is play around with the effect that "errors" can have, especially the kind that develop when you shoot straight into the sun.
Did you know that Pebble Beach Company owns not only the well-known golf course on the Monterrey peninsula but all rights to the image of one of the trees there? Granted, it's kind of famous and certainly takes a striking picture, but ... it's a tree. Nevertheless, if you try to publish or post of photo of that tree, anywhere, without their permission, they've got a gang of lawyers that will pay you a visit.
There's a form of cognitive bias called the Dunning-Kruger effect whereby the less competent a person is, the more they overestimate their skill level. Which is a fancy way of explaining why people who aren't such great drivers rarely realize how much their driving makes the passengers nervous.
On our 2003 California trip (see the post below), my Mom and I took a drive down Route 1, starting in Carmel. Driving that road is, I think, one of the things everyone should try to do at least once before they die. Words fail, and pictures can't do it justice - to call it stunningly, magnificently gorgeous sounds like cheap hyperbole, and yet it would be an understatement. However, part of the beauty lies in the rugged, coast-hugging nature of the narrow road, so it can be a little nerve-wracking, especially if you are in the passenger seat. It's even worse if your heading south, because the passenger seat hugs the outside edge of a road that is already pretty scary.
It took us over an hour to go only 20 12 miles south of Carmel, probably because we stopped so many times to get out and enjoy the view. Mom was getting more and more nervous. Finally, having stopped at a particularly beautiful pull-off area, we looked south and saw, in the distance, the Bixby Creek Arch Bridge.
And then for the first time in my life, I saw my mother seriously frightened. It wasn't mere nervousness anymore, she was adamant. She just couldn't face driving over that bridge. I wasn't disappointed - itt didn't even occur to me to be disappointed - there was no way I was going to ask my mother do something that made her so upset. It also didn't occur to me that it was probably my driving more than the bridge itself that was freaking her out. Anyway, we turned around and headed back to Monterrey.
So now I have an excuse to go back there some day and finish the trip.
A few years ago my mom and I were visiting Youngest Sister who was living in California at the time - in Pacific Grove, next to Monterrey and near Carmel. One of the things we did while we were there was to visit a winery, Chateau Julien. Neither of us had visited a place like that before, and it was a lot of fun. I couldn't believe how much attention was showered on the two of us -- we just showed up one morning, received a free personal tour and were invited to taste some really good wines.
Of course, that had nothing to do with my decision to purchase half a case before we left. Total coincidense.
(By the way - that's Chateau Julien, with an E.)
I took some pictures at the vinyard, but none of them turned out to be very interesting. However, on our way back towards town we stopped along the road and found a semi-hidden path down to the the banks of the Carmel River. It was beautiful and we had an impromptu picnic.
We weren't the only people to have discovered this spot, because when we were getting ready to go, our hostess from the morning and two others showed up with the same idea. As Mom and I climbed back up the hill/bank to the roadside I looked back down and saw what I thought was the perfect shot.
I still like it as a reminder of the nice time we had that day, but the two large trees in the center, especially the one on the \ diagonal, really detract from the overall arrangement. If I had moved farther to my right it probably would have come out much better. I don't know much about controlling the light, focus, etc. on the camera, so I'm really particular about setting up the composition, and the more I look at this the more it seems like a lost opportunity.
