Salton Sea Preview

The missus and I traveled to the Salton Sea this past weekend, and I'm planning on a series of posts about it.

For those unfamiliar, the Salton Sea is a salty rift-valley lake, under sea-level, and, at one time, a major resort destination for both residents of the Southland and the Bay Area. It is still the largest lake in California.

It's striking to be in the middle of the desert and see blue water stretching off to the horizon...

...and the decrepit chair was a good harbinger of the surrounding community that seems to be called Shoreline Village.

Korean Friendship Bell in San Pedro

An old friend came to town, and that gave us the opportunity to look on Google Maps and find cool stuff close by to drive to and visit. Go Southland Rare Hidden Attractions!

In the coastal San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles (a former autonomous city that was annexed by LA), and the base of the Rancho Palos Verdes Peninsula, an installation sits, a gift from the Korean President from 1976, the Korean Friendship Bell:

The pagoda sits on a hill overlooking the edge of the peninsula. The bell is constructed of many kinds of metal from traditional Korean methods. They have an informative plaque in bronze near the walking entrance.

The eaves of the shrine are beautiful and full of a vibrancy that you imagine is a visual representation of the sound it the bell makes.

We were tempted to strike the bell. In my state, the getaway would have been interesting. Also, we weren't sure it would have reached, as the lock up was noticeable:

Here's a shot of the shrine with the sun illuminating. The sky had been pretty cloudy, and started to break while we were at the Bell.

Well, that was a bit of weather misrepresentation. It was hazy in Long Beach, and as we traveled around the outer ridge of the RPV Peninsula, the haze was being burned off by the micro climates of the windward side of said peninsula.

The Korean Friendship Bell is a free attraction, so there's that as well.

The Swallows of San Juan Capistrano

Eh...in freeway bronze form:

The missus and I went down to some hot inner spot away from Oceanside--San Marcos. Since I lived in Texas, San Marcos to me will always be where you can catch the tube ride south of Austin. San Marcos in Texas is the furthest point that's considered metro-south-Austin, while the next set of shopping centers south is considered metro-north-San Antonio. Weird.

We went to meet some friends and drink some sour beers. There was a lambic and sour beer festival at a bar in San Marcos.

Afterwards we visited the Stone Brewing Co.'s Bistro in Escondido, along with the Lost Abbey Brewery tasting room, between San Marcos and Escondido.

Stone had a great big relief sculpture of their gargoyle logo on the wall:

I was hoping I would be able to drive, but my broken leg, while off the crutches, isn't quite strong enough for the clutch pedal in our Passat.

San Francisco

Yup. The last post claims to be a contest is our little own little Mediterranean city on the Pacific, San Francisco.

Since my leg situation, we haven't been invading too many places, although we've been interested in taking a trip to Ensenada in Mexico, and will probably be doing that soon enough.

Here're some more SF pictures:

Two of the more phallic symbols from the City. Icons, still, but...

Contest: City Identification

What city is this?

I'm not sure what prize I'd like to offer, but there will be one for the first correct answer to leave the answer as a comment.

Montezuma's Castle, AZ

Leaving Phoenix up I-17 leads a driver out of the locally lush Sonora desert locations through what's been described as like "the surface of the moon". Rocks and devoid of life. For miles. Then, after about twenty miles and a nice elevation change, plant life begins to return.

The changing flora yields a collection of desert shrubbery and succulents, and after another twenty or so miles you're left in a high hilly plateau, well covered in greenery and windswept with nice breezes.

Even though it's a desert, at this point it's pretty lush.

About a dozen or so more miles will get you to the entrance of Montezuma's Castle National Park.

That's about as close as visitors can get.

The Sinagua (sin-ah-wah) culture thrived in the southwest between 600 and 1400 ACE, and covered an area from Colorado to Mexico and from Nevada to New Mexico. The castle was built as a cool place to live during the blazing hot summers over the course of many years.

There are five distinct levels, and each floor is supported by axed timbers. There was a community of 200 nearby, but archaeologists believe that only thirty-five people lived in the castle at the height of it's use.

It has, over the recent centuries, become the object of conservationists efforts to preserve it.

Here's a closer look, thanks to the Mrs. Blonde Giant's nice camera:

These pictures have been taken along the footpath, and if you follow it around behind the rim of this cliff face, there is another set of ruins, a set to which visitors can get closer.

Maybe we should have led with this, but here's a diagram of the construction sequence of the castles's creation:

Montezuma's castle, the living quarters for Billy Jack in the movie of the same name, looks beautiful and classic, but, if a cliff dwelling site in the Phoenix vicinity is what you're looking for, I'd suggest heading southeast to Tonto National Park. The front isn't quite as complete as Montezuma, but you're allowed to walk around in the space.

Bardsdale Farm U-Pick and Tour

The missus and I, again with our Garifuna cat-sitter friend, took a quick trip to the hills north of Simi Valley, about even with Ventura in the grand scheme of things, but farther east by about fifty or sixty miles.

Bardsdale is the site of a Farm Fresh to You satellite farm sporting both orange and avocado trees for a U-Pick. Farm Fresh to You is the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) that delivers produce to our door at 6 am every Friday.

They hosted a get-to-know-your-farmer event this past Saturday morning, everyone interested was invited. There was a lecture by one of the members of the family that runs the business, a shaded market stall, a kid's corner for craft activities, an acoustic band, and a U-Pick. A U-Pick, if you've never heard, or can't imagine, is where you are allowed to pick as much fruit as your bag allows. Now, they gave guests a plastic bag, but we brought our own.

Here there were two types of orange trees: navel and Valencia. The Valencias were smaller but came from much larger trees. Valencias are used for juice mostly, and this small orchard space, newly acquired by the business owning family as an event space, was thought to be mainly a juicing concern, before the main juicing orchards were transferred to Fresno.

The avocados were about 85% harvested by the tine the family got control, and they asked the workers to hold off the harvesting and leave something for the guests (us) to pick.

They were unripe, but you can accelerate that at home.

I got to talking with Thaddeus, one of the sons of the family and the writer of the newsletters that are delivered each week with the box of produce. It turns out we were at Cal Poly, SLO, at the same time. He had some interesting things to say about their business model. He says that he could grow some great vegetables, and that would be fine, but today he is focusing on growing new farmers.

Part of their business plan that's radical is that they're both a produce growing concern, and a produce delivery organization. Long ago those two things had been separated, and today it's revolutionary to try and grow produce close by and then take it to the consumers. How far have we gotten?

This model is the important part, and they're doing their part to change the world. Not too many companies can say that.

Here's a picture of a typical small bag-in-a-box of produce:

They have different choices of boxes; some fruit, some vegetables, some able to eat raw, all seasonal...many, many choices.

Here's a copy of a newsletter: it has news from the farm, information on some of the produce, and recipes. Next to it is the list of the box's contents.

The oranges were everywhere, and the wonderful scent of orange blossom was succulent and overpowering. Here's a Valencia tree.

Another thing that was as omnipresent as the beautiful smell of blossom was the unmistakable hum of bees. Seriously, the buzz of the hundred of thousands of bees created a constant hum in the air that you quickly forgot about, but constantly dodging bees was an activity that you didn't take for granted. Strangely, it didn't scare anybody; all was calm in the bee-dodging game. Here my camera caught a bee leaving a blossom. Thaddeus said these blossoms will produce oranges by September.

In this picture you can see the navel orange trees in the foreground and the larger Valencias in the background.

Here's a walkway through the avocado trees. Since the harvesting of the avocado was nearly completed by a crew recently--a fact we didn't know until later--the first forty-five minutes of the walk through the avocado rows was frustrating and literally fruitless. Eventually we found the row that wasn't touched by the crew, and loaded up on rock hard avocados. We've got our accelerating methods at home.

Here's the bag I used to fill up on oranges (and about four avocados, the missus got about ten). I'm not sure how much it weighed, but it was between twenty and thirty pounds. Still eating and juicing them, I'll have Vitamin C poisoning soon enough.

Rare LA Hike

Rancho Palos Verdes is a blanket term that some people think applies to the mountainous peninsula that separates the northern LA area beach cities from the South Bay and Orange County beach cities. RPV is actually the name of a city on the peninsula. The peninsula is an erstwhile Channel Island that was brought into contact with the mainland by way of silt deposits from the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers forming the LA Basin over the millenia.

But, if you live in the vicinity of the peninsula, it is an easy getaway and hike, and the views, weather permitting, are quite nice.

The missus Blonde Giant (neither of us are all that giant) and I went with our favorite cat-sitter, the Garifuna. We parked up on a ridge street where there was parking, and entered the Three Sisters Trail from the top.

Making sure we were careful, we started out, heeding the signs and checking out local fauna:

The terrain is similar to the other Channel Islands, which is obvious, but if you've never been (and outside of Avalon, we haven't), it resembles the hills of the Central Coast of California,with a little more variety. On this side of the mountain there was no poison oak, thankfully. In any case, it's not your usual LA scene:

Speaking of Avalon, the largest city on the closest Channel Island, Catalina herself is easily visible if the weather permits, of course:

I love the misty layer of fog separating the island from the vista over the shrubbery...

One view reminds those knowledgeable of the Pacific Coast Highway of more northerly locales:

I like the lone sailboat:

We hiked down to the bottom, then went from the leeward side, where we had spent the entire hike down, to the windward side, where the pleasant afternoon was interrupted by a stiff and forceful wind. Our trail snaked around until it was lost and we had to make a way to an old dirt driving path to ascend again.  It, being more direct, was a bit steeper:

It did afford a little closer look at the canyon against which we walked:

It was definitely a nice afternoon, a few minutes from the house.

From the Surfliner

I was on a quick trip from my home base, Los Angeles area, up to the Central Coast, and I was taking the train. The Surfliner is one of the most beautiful train rides on this planet, once you get to Ventura, of course. That's when the train turns north and runs along the coast.

One of the early points, the skyline of LA is easily viewed:

The train ride affords views of a specific kind: city underbelly. It's quite enlightening in a certain way. This particular day was opening day at Dodger Stadium, which is also spied from the train, high on the mountain, the big lights poking over the ridge. This is the fiftieth anniversary of the displacement of the Mexican working class community opening of the Stadium in Chavez Ravine.

This is a nice shot of the dunes outside of Ventura, as the train turns towards the ocean. Soon enough, you're closer than the highway.

This next picture I like because I ended up with a picture of a walking surfer, and this yields a scale. The break looks regular and nice, but the walking man makes us reassess the size of the wave. I'm not a surfer, but I have surfed, and waves of a certain size forces us amateurs into a wide-eyed respect. These waves visible here may not have been that big, but they made me think.

My business in the Central Coast was a quick trip to collect some old East Coast friends and navigate the highways back to our house in the inimitable Long Beach the next day, a trip made with the help of aspirin and tepid water. Dramamine might have helped me in the back seat of a brand new rented Mustang, but it was okay. The company made it a great trip.

Joshua Tree Park at Dawn

On a recent trip to visit with my mother and grandfather in the Phoenix area, we, living in the Los Angeles area, decided that it would be great to camp out at Joshua Tree National Park. The idea would be to be able to wake up early and take a load of pictures at dawn. Turns out that schedules made that plan impossible.

The next best thing, we figured, would be to leave our apartment and make the drive to the southern entrance, directly off of Interstate 10--almost halfway between our apartment and our final destination--and enter the park with enough time to see some things as daybreak turned to dawn.

This plan would sate both our desire for nice photographs and getting to Phoenix early enough for an evening preseason ballgame. The only wrinkle: we had to leave at 3:30. In the morning. Which meant we had to go to sleep around 8 (actually ten after nine, but we were close).

I did the driving so the missus could sleep. The patchwork of LA freeways (the 710 to the 91 to the 60 to the 10) sped by with as little traffic as you'd probably ever find out here (lots, but fast moving). By the time w2e made the park's entrance, day was just beginning to break in the east, the inky black sky barely fading to dark indigo at the horizon.

We drove for what seemed like a time into the park, and eventually pulled into a let-out. We got out to stretch and breathe in the crisp air. It was glorious and silent.

The wind wasn't blowing yet--the sun hadn't heated the ground and air, causing air pressure changes and wind. One thing really struck me: the sound. Rather, the lack of sound.

The silence was enveloping as the indigo started to blue, and then the blue started to overthrow the black as the orange began to push.

In the few minutes that it took to go from day-breaking to dawn-starting an incredible thing happened. So innocuous when you live in a large city that you never notice, unless you have either a sleep disorder or (more fun and tragic) drug problem: the birds starting waking up.

What had been dark and quiet became, eh, less dark and full of the songs of the descendants of the dinosaurs. The breeze quietly started as well, and the mountains facing the east radiated a soft, pink quality.

We eventually drove back to a trail closer to the entrance and took some more pictures. I was going between a Pentax Super Program 35mm SLR and my trusty Canon point & shoot, while the missus was using her trusty Nikon D7000 DSLR. Her camera produces images mine cannot, and the following few pictures are from me.

Once we were done we headed out, headed to find a diner to eat some breakfast and let the sun gain somewhat in the sky. As it was when I drove out of the park and back onto the freeway heading east, the sun was unblockably in my eyes.

If you'd like a hand-constructed catalog of some of the missus' spectacular photographs (in many sizes) from any of these trips for home and gifting purposes, please contact through email: invadingblondegiants(at)gmail(dot)com.

Antigua Guatemala

We had arrived back in Guatemala City too early to just sit around at the aeropuerto, so we jetted out to Antigua after negotiating the last of our American dollars for the return trip in a private car...needed to make that flight back to LA.

At one point, in the 1680s, the city was the richest colonial town in the entire Americas. Within a hundred years it was mandated abandoned. Fucking Spanish.

By the time we made it to the city school was letting out, we only had a few hours to spend trying to soak it in (that was plenty), and my, er, bowel situation had finally become just that--a conscious need to be near a porcelain depository for more than hourly deposits. The discomfort in my belly area was noticeable; the constant pressure like a person standing on my stomach was more annoying than painful, but the occasional bad pressure, like someone grinding their heel on me, while brief, was lame.

But, for invading blonde giants like us, a few hours in Antigua is more than enough. We saw the various ruins in the city, we saw the volcano off in the distance, and we paid thirty-damn-American-dollars for appetizers and fruit smoothies at a restaurant.

Here are some pictures of the colorful streets, ruined churches...the volcano. That's Antigua! It struck me the whole time as weird that such a "Jesus"-crazy place wouldn't have done more to fix-up the old churches and cathedrals.

The volcano:

This is easily the coolest fountain I've ever seen, and I've been to Rome and Paris and Prague and Florence.

This yellow church wasn't destroyed. I don't remember the name.

Colorful streets...here the world that people who live here experience is behind those colorful walls. Every once in a while you could, while walking around, catch a glimpse into an interior courtyard and see how the world was quiet and un-cobbled.

This is one of the famous ruined cathedrals.

Once was enough. I might put up some different pictures at a later date, like maybe some of Mrs. Blonde Giant's pictures from the market we went to, or some more ruins details, but we'll likely never set foot there again. I don't think I can, or would want to, say that about many of the random places I've been.

Lonely Street Dogs of Copan

As is the case in most cities I've visited that weren't American or European, stray dogs are everywhere, skittish, and treated as a nuisance by local populations.

It was no different down in Guatemala and Honduras. In Copan, different dogs seem to prowl certain territories, and our street was no different.

Upon our first visit to the Via Via, the hotel/hostel we didn't stay at, there had been a spotted mutt napping in the entry lounge area. It looked almost like a Dalmatian.

Later on we'd see it running up and down the street, barking occasionally. He'd stand on the stoop of the Via Via, examining his claim, and if any dog even started coming down his street, he would go after them, barking, snarling, biting, fighting...basically getting them the hell off his land.

Sometimes those other dogs were substantially bigger than him, but most times they were of equal stature or smaller.

We mentioned how "tough your dog is" to someone who spent a large amount of time at the Via Via, to which they said, "That's not my dog. That's nobody's dog."

It was true. People called him Perro Fuego--fire dog--and he had no home. Fuego was just another homeless dog. He got love and attention from the American, Canadian and European visitors to the Via Via, and even got fed occasionally, but after dark, he was out on the street like the rest of them, trying to find a warm spot to curl up.

The nature of his arrangement with the Via Via--property he claims, and not an establishment that considers him their dog--you get the sense that his grasp on the territory is tenuous.

As an animal person, it was tough to watch him shake while he was curling up to got to sleep. Was it fright? It wasn't so cold. His expression, though, was of constant heartbreak.

At least he was king of something. Some of the other street dogs were in bad physical shape.

Fuego...well, Fuego ruled his property while we were around. Being tolerated and tolerated others alike. He was definitely cute and distinctive looking.

Copan Ruinas: Mayan Ruins in Honduras

Mrs. Blonde Giant's birthday was one of the motivations of this trip, and spending her Saturday at the ruins at Copan afforded us with a trip that gave us a chance to see the Habitat settlement she worked on in Huite (we missed it) as well as to get to a nice set of ruins. Tikal, in northern Guatemala, is the big, bad, bossman of Mayan ruins. 

Our original trip was a bit larger circle through Honduras, into Belize, and through northern Guatemala--and Tikal--and back down to the airport in Guatemala City. That trip was more like our European trip, of go-go-go. Looking back now, a week removed, I think we might've been able to pull it off, but I'll never be upset about our more relaxing trip.

Copan, in today's Honduras, was the seat of one of the Mayas most important cities in the south east region of their empire. It's height of power and influence was during the Classic Period for the Maya, about 300 CE to 900 CE. Around 900 Copan was attacked and toppled by one of their subjugated vassals further to the east, and this started the decline. By 1200, the city center had been mostly abandoned, and by the time the Spanish arrived, the Maya in general were shells of their former selves, Copan was basically already ruins, and the Aztec, further north in present day Mexico, was the real power broker.

There was one of the ball-courts on the grounds, one of the larger and more important ones still around. After important games, the loser would be vanquished. The ball court is one of the highlights of Copan's ruins.

The other main highlight are the sculptures. There are so many spectacular stela--large ornate rectangular statues, not unlike decorated obelisks. Besides the stela and altars--spots for sacrifices in front of the stela--there are the mostly intact "hieroglyphic stairs". The large staircase going to the top of one of the walls had hundreds of years of Mayan history carved in glyph form spread from the floor of the city to the top of the building. Today a protective canvas tent structure covers the stairs, which are inaccessible to visitors' feet.

Here's a sense of how it all would have looked back at the height of the city's eminence.

When you first arrive at the ruins, you pass through a macaw sanctuary. They are beautiful and big. Also, they're loudmouths. They screech and scream and holler and shout. I'm pretty sure that "macaw" is a Mayan word for "won't shut the hell up." The scarlet macaw is the national bird of Honduras.

Then, once in the grand plaza, you first encounter a small step pyramid. This is a thing that they allow people to climb. For how much longer is anybody's guess. The stairs on these pyramids are deliberately spread out farther than current building code allows. They're far like that so you don't "turn your back on god" when descending. It is very difficult to walk down the stairs like you would normal stairs, rather, you feel like backing down them.

The stela are spread out, each telling the story of the king who erected them over the years. The remaining stelae seem to cover from 600 CE to around the late 800s CE.

 This is one of the most dignified looking faces in the thick of hundreds of carvings...

The ball court (the slanted sides facing each other) and hieroglyphic stairs are right next to each other (as you can see from the first depiction of the classic period).

Looking past the tented hieroglyphic stairs, this picture gives a sense of scale, the ruined walls sloping skyward.

Trees growing through the rock...can't stop the growth, baby!

From those points we ventured around the back;

...to the living quarters of the royal family.

From here we visited the Acropolis, skipped the overpriced tunnels, and took more pictures.

Nearly worn out, here are a few more random pictures from the way out and around to the museum. We spent a serious amount of time over there, leaving us weary and thirsty for some cold alcoholic beverage.