B 2 S

Fifteen Dollars, Please. That’s what they say when you drive into the Park. The admission is good for seven consecutive days. I usually purchase the $30 annual pass instead because I’m out there a dozen times each year. Overnight fees are additional.

It’s Veteran’s Day and I’d like to say thank you.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Thank you to those who are serving. Thank you to my friends who have served and to those who served along side you. Thank you to the many who served in generations before us. Thank you to my father. And thank you even to the cranky old vet who lives in the house behind us and refuses to trim his trees as they grow tall and block our view of the beautiful valley.

Thank you all.

I’m a new owner of the Prius shown here. It’s been a few months now and I love it. EXCEPT FOR the annoying GPS that doesn’t let you make adjustments unless the car is stopped, AND the dealer installed satellite radio that has a hard time holding on to a signal, AND and the fact that Detroit is way behind the Japanese in producing these things.

Forty-eight miles per gallon really is no hype, and that’s if I don’t pay attention to how I’m driving. When I make an effort to avoid jack rabbit starts, mega G-force accelerations and cruise at the posted highway speeds, that number goes up to just over 51mpg.

Vortex Central

Straddling both Coconino and Yavapai Counties and surrounded by the Coconino National Forest, Sedona, Arizona, is known for it’s scenic red rocks, tourism and it’s upscale retirement community. It is also believed by many people that the area contains a concentration of vortexes - spots that release psychic energy or power from the Earth.

Have you ever felt the energy? How about the spiritual power? Any vibes coming through? Maybe you’re standing in the wrong spot. Are you willing to pay someone to guide you to selected hot spots? Perhaps you and Shirley MacLaine channeled your psychic efforts together and participated in the great Harmonic Convergence back in August of ‘87 to help keep the earth from slipping out of its “time beam” and spinning off into space. If so, I envy you. You’re all crazy as a loon, of course, but you seem to have a lot of fun with it.

The ability to stop using my common sense and go with the flow on this kind of wacky Twilight Zone stuff has never been my strong point. I’m a left-brain kind of guy, which means that I tend to be more analytical and logical than those who are powered by their right cerebral hemispheres. I guess that’s okay. It’s probably part of what makes America an interesting place to live. Believers and non-believers all of one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Or as close to it as we can get.

Halfway between Perris and Moreno Valley, California, there is a lot of land patiently waiting to be built upon as soon as the economy turns around. One morning I’ll wake up and all of southern California will be a huge conglomeration of tract houses, strip malls, fast food joints, retail shops and gas stations stretching as far as they eye can see. What ever it takes to keep that economic ball rolling.

San Onofre, California.

On most of my trips over to the ocean I hop off Interstate 15 a few miles past Rainbow and head down Highway 76 through Bonsall, taking me past the San Luis Rey Mission in Oceanside, California. The bright white mission stands out like a beacon even on the cloudiest of days. And on a clear, sunny day like this I can’t resist it. I always have to stop and take a picture.

• Forward this email and get FREE CASH.
  
• Forward this message and a cool video will play on your monitor.
  
• Forward this message and Miller Beer will give you FREE BEER (this one got my attention)
• Forward this email and Bill Gates will send you FREE SOFTWARE.
  
• Every time this email is forwarded Jermain Beerman, Jada Cohen, Kalin Relek and Fatima Hafiz will each receive a nickle to help offset their medical bills (but, oddly enough, only 3 cents per forwarded email for a badly burned Polish girl).
  
• FREE AIR TRAVEL on Delta Airlines when you forward this email to your friends.
  
• FREE $50 APPLEBEE’S GIFT CERTIFICATE when you forward this message.

Should I go on? There’s a zillion of these things out there and I seem to get more than my fair share of them, usually at the bottom of incoming emails. Some people actually believe them. Others are just too lazy to remove them before they forward the email along. Either way, it’s annoying. But now, thanks to an email that I received from former coworker Leslie Neal, I’ve found a message that tells it like it is. You betcha, I’d gladly pass this along with my email. Click HERE to see it in all it’s glory.

It’s quiet and eerie and cold in Oceanside, California, this evening. I could use a hot cup of coffee about now.

I stopped by Old Man’s late this afternoon and came across these rocks laid out in a large oval on the sand. Someone must have had fun collecting them while the tide was out. I was expecting pagan rituals further down the beach and was halfway disappointed when I found none.

This guy walks into a bar carrying an egret under his arm . . . what, you’ve heard that one? Oh never mind. It was a dumb joke anyway.

This mix of Snowy and Cattle Egrets were just a few of many perched on top of cattle pens located at the south end of the Salton Sea near Calipatria, California. Underneath these birds, but not shown in this picture, and in hundreds of similar pens all around them, were enough Holstein cows to keep the entire west coast in steaks and milk shakes for months to come. Smelled great, too, and believing there was no one around to hear me but the cows, I yelled out “I love the smell of cow shit in the morning!” (apologies to Robert Duvall and Francis Ford Coppola). That’s when I noticed the two farm hands on the far side of the pen laughing at me.

Ah, Joshua Tree. Except for a few of the warmer months during the summer, I have a hard time staying away from this place. And now that it’s beginning to cool down a bit find myself heading out there again. It’s still a little warm during the daytime, reaching the high 80’s to low 90’s. Nights are much cooler in the low 30’s.

Sunrise or sunset? I don’t remember. One thing for sure though, it’s cold climbing out of a sleeping bag in the morning around there this time of the year. This shot almost looks like a painting. Many years ago I dated a girl who gave me a framed print of a painting that looked a lot like this picture. For years it hung on my living room wall and almost no one liked it except for me. There were more browns in it than there are here. Maybe that’s what turned everyone off about it. Sadly, I lost it in a poker game one Friday night to a guy with an ace-high straight who promptly burned it in my fireplace. I wanted to ask him, “Are you happy now?”, but instead just asked him to leave.

At night the shadows from the campfire had this Mojave yucca plant looking an awful lot like a real person from a distance. Before long my imagination had turned it into a bunch of wild Indians about to scalp my ass. I guess you had to be there. Next to mescaline from the late 60’s, the joshua tree is right up there on my list of suspects when I start seeing Indians in the desert at night, so I was surprised when, by the light of day, it turned out to be a yucca plant and not a joshua tree after all.

Yukon Charlie, previously known as Harley Charlie until he rode off to Alaska on his motor scooter, is a professional photographer and part-time Renaissance Man from San Marcos, California. He is also one of my few remaining high school buddies, which is neither here nor there except that I’ve reached an age where that kind of stuff is more important to me than it used to be. Anyway, he just returned from the vacation of a lifetime and one that many outdoor photographers only dream about. A six-week, 9000+ mile motorcycle trip up to Alaska and back, taking him through some of the most spectacular scenery that eight western U.S. states and three Canadian provinces have to offer. Chuck said that except for the collision with a black bear out in the middle of nowhere, he had a great time.

Visit Chuck’s website to see some of the beautiful pictures (under Stock Color) that he captured along the way.

Our nephew David married his long-time sweetheart Jenny in Nanaimo, British Columbia last July.

My apologies to those of you who have been trying to locate my post on the M Lightship. The original post was one of many that were lost or tossed when I was moving things around here at B2S last month.

Here again are the pictures taken on 9/20/08 at the San Bernardino International Airport (formerly Norton Air Force Base) in San Bernardino, California.

See the Press Release for more information.

October is a great month to be in Morro Bay, California. Few people, cheap lodging, nice weather, and few people. I mentioned fewer people twice, didn’t I? That’s because one of the things that I enjoy most about going somewhere is avoiding the crowds.

In my particular situation a crowd could be as few as three or four people, but that’s just the way I get sometimes. So if you are considering a trip to Morro Bay in the near future do me a favor and hold off until November, which has always been an equally good month to be in Morro Bay.

I’ve been away and now I’m back. Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. I will say this though – attitude really is everything.

For example, let’s suppose you just spent sixteen hours on the road driving in from Missoula, Montana, and you find yourself along the beautiful coast of southern California near a very well-to-do city. It’s seven o’clock Friday evening and you need to rest before continuing on your way. There’s a nice little beach-side parking lot on the side of the highway, full of cars and trucks, open until midnight, so you pull over and settle in for a quick nap. Soon you hear nothing but the sounds of seagulls and waves gently breaking on the sand as you drift into a deep sleep.
Good Morning, Sunshine
Hours later, in the middle of the night, you are awakened by four police officers that have surrounded you and your now illegally parked vehicle. The parking area is empty except for you and them. They ask if you are camping there. Now this is where it gets a bit tricky. Far and away, the best answer to their question is to smile and say “No sir, I am not camping here, I was tired and needed to rest before continuing my journey“. And then, no matter what happens, keep your mouth shut and resist the urge to express a contrary opinion.
A Momentary Lapse of Reason
Because if you were to respond instead by saying something silly like “No shit, Sherlock, now how ’bout turning out those lights and getting the hell away from my tent so I can go back to sleep“, you could well be on your way towards having your vehicle towed to the impound yard while you spend the next couple of days nursing some new bumps and bruises in a holding tank at the local hoosegow.
Anger is But One Letter Short of Danger
Orange County, California, is home to Mickey Mouse, Knott’s Berry Farm, the Anaheim Ducks and (at least for now) the Los Angeles Angels, so you might think its residents would be an easy going, fun loving bunch of folks. Maybe so, but not these guys. They were in no mood for me, which was understandable as I was probably keeping them from their regular 2:00 a.m. donut run, and I failed to realize how angry they were until it was too late. They had zero tolerance for my inadvertent parking violation and my explanation, and when I told them that I thought they were a bunch of assholes they proved me right and quickly became four very pissed off assholes, eager to skip the whole due process thing and go directly to punishment. Where’s George Holliday when you need him?

So I’m back now, a bit wiser, and wondering if things might have been different had I been caught napping in a Lexus instead of a Prius. Or maybe if I’d just kept my mouth shut. Who knows? One thing for sure, I’ll eventually be doing some follow-up with these guys, because attitude is everything, and mine just got worse.

Idyllwild, California

Coast Soccer League Play

Born and raised in SoCal and I don’t surf. Can you believe it? I skate boarded, body surfed and boogie boarded when I was younger, but surfing never worked out for me. So instead, I take pictures of other people surfing. The longest telephoto lens in my bag almost-just-about-but-not-quite gets me out there close to the action. Isn’t that the way it always is with amateur photographers? Never a long enough lens.

Completed December 31, 2005, Southern California Edison’s Moutainview Power Plant has been helping to keep our lights on and our air conditioners humming out here in the Inland Empire.

One of many produce fields on the California’s central coast between Guadalupe and Santa Maria.

Surf fishing at Guadalupe Dunes in California.

The old Royal Theater in Guadalupe, California, under a beautiful cloud-filled sky.

Big Bear, California

The Mojave Desert in California just after sunrise.

Another sun sets in the Mojave Desert.

The overlook at Keys View in Joshua Tree National Park shows off the spectacular beauty that lies below in the Coachella Valley and the distant San Jacinto and Santa Rosa mountain ranges.

There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills
Nearly two thousand feet below Keys View is the site of the Hidden Gold Mine, a prospect once owned by Bill Keys and the principal reason why Keys scraped out the original road in 1926. (Note: The mine ruins are insignificant, difficult to locate, and the return hike up the hardscrabble hillside is extremely strenuous.) ¹

Chuck McCarty of Carty’s Racing in Ontario, California, invited me to the PSCA Las Vegas Nationals this weekend to watch him run his T-Bird. I don’t usually shoot this kind of stuff but I thought what the heck - Las Vegas and fast cars - it might be fun. And it was a blast! I hadn’t been to the drag races since the early 70’s and although I was definitely out of my element I had a great time. The track personnel couldn’t have been nicer and I’m looking forward to getting back there again one day. Hope you enjoy the pictures.

And last, but not least - the restrooms.

When you reach a certain age you don’t want to underestimate the importance of knowing where the bathrooms are located. If you’re not sure, just ask a beer drinker.

On the road to Big Bear Lake, California.

Found on a front door in Nanaimo, British Columbia.

The sunsets at California’s Seal Beach make me want to stay there forever.

Looking north from the Crafton Hills in Yucaipa, California, towards the San Bernardino Mountains.

Mojave Desert

in the San Bernardino National Forest

San Bernardino, California

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park

Early morning along the path that winds around Lake Fulmor near Idyllwild, CA.

Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California

Cable Airport in Upland, California

The view from my front door this evening.

This picture was taken near the mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. I’ve driven the coasts of California, Oregon and Washington quite a few times in my life. The Oregon coast is usually the most beautiful but the people there are always the most unfriendly. Seems if you are from California they want your money but not you, so now I make it a point to drive through Idaho instead. Friendly folks, those Idahoans. Good spuds, too.

in the San Bernardino Mountains