Monthly Archives: January 2014

Point Cabrillo Lighthouse

A lighthouse usually attracts the attention of tourists. I’m not sure what it is about them that fascinates people so much but it works. Point Cabrillo has a beautifully restored lighthouse that we took a look at. It is about half a mile from the parking lot to the lighthouse but this didn’t seem to deter too many people. The walk down was a long straight road so you could see where you were going the entire time. With a sunny day and a gentle breeze off the ocean, it couldn’t have been nicer.

The lighthouse was shut down and replaced by a marker beacon many years ago but a group got together and restored the building and reactivated the light. It is now an official navigation marker again. The next step is the restoration of the surrounding buildings. This is still in progress but you can rent out the old lighthouse master’s house if you wish. A lovely spot and a nice looking house. Might be a bit creepy at night though.

Amazingly enough, I did manage to get a few times with nobody near the lighthouse to grab a shot sans tourists. A lucky break but one I was grateful for. The rocky coastline is a very attractive place on a nice day but it doesn’t take too much imagination to see why a lighthouse would have been needed. Some of the exhibits in the building itself amply demonstrated this. The light bulb itself was surprisingly small. For those camera people amongst you, the optics these guys use are pretty impressive.

Decaying PV-2 and DC-3

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While Schellville has a great collection of vintage aircraft in operation, it also has a couple of large airframes that do not look like they are going anywhere in a hurry. Parked near the runway are a DC-3 and the PV-2 Harpoon. The DC-3 is a rare sub-type….

The PV-2 has apparently spent some time as a spraying aircraft and it has some Arizona logos on it from a previous existence. It doesn’t have any doors on the bomb bay so I am assuming that these were removed as part of whatever conversion was done for the spraying role although that is just a guess. Both of them are sitting out on the earth and, with the low sun angles you get at this time of year, they look particularly interesting.

We grabbed some shots of them both while keeping an eye out for any other interesting movements that the field would bring.

Seals

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Our coastline jaunt took us further south to Monterey. We have been there before a couple of times on vacations so almost didn’t go but I was tempted to see whether there were any Sea Otters mucking around close to shore. As it turned out, either there weren’t or they were doing a good job of being somewhere other than where I was.

However, there were a couple of seals hanging around in one inlet. Sea lions are very common along this coastline and seals are not rare either. However, I always feel like the sea lions are more conspicuous and seeing the seals somehow feels more unexpected. Given how many there are, this is probably a dopey thing to think but that wouldn’t be a first for me. Anyway, one of the seals was resting on a rock while another was swimming around. It’s possible there were two different seals in the water but I couldn’t be sure so I shall only claim one covering a fair bit of ground. While they are ungainly creatures when out of the water, they can certainly cover some distance in a hurry once in the water. I got the feeling the one in the water wanted the rock but it didn’t look like he was going to be lucky any time soon!

Albion’s Trestle Bridge

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Albion was our resting place for the trip to Mendocino and it has an interesting feature itself. It is the last remaining wood trestle bridge on the Pacific Coast Highway. It is quite a height between the river and the road so this is quite an impressive structure. Of course, I wanted to get some shots of it. From where we were staying, we had a view of the bridge. However, we were on the coastal side of the bridge so it was in shadow in the morning and in the evening, at least by the time we got back, the sun was below the headland so it was in shadow again.

One morning I did head down to the river to see if that provided a good shot. Unfortunately, the area is a campsite so getting access was difficult. I did go back up on the hills looking down and got a better view but the campsite is a little distracting in this view. My best effort was an oblique look along the bridge from the road leading down to the river. A little frustrating photographically but very cool to see anyway.

Parade of Bands

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What we hadn’t bargained on when heading to Pleasanton was that the town’s main street was closed for a parade of high school bands. Some sort of competition was obviously underway with different stops along the street with judges checking out various aspects of the bands. If you were at one spot, you would see some of the band doing their thing while the rest of the band members were hanging back behind them. It all made sense when you realized that this was happening at various places along the street.

We hadn’t come for this but couldn’t resist watching some of them perform for a while before we got back to doing what we had come for. Nice to have a town so close that has things like this happening on a regular basis.

Whales

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A short distance along the coast from our beach overlook we came to a lighthouse. This seemed like a popular part of the shoreline on a Sunday, even though the weather wasn’t great. I imagine on a sunny day, it is full of people along here. We strolled along the shore and out towards the point on which the lighthouse was built. The sea was looking very calm and out a distance we could see a number of kayakers in a loose group. Initially we had no idea what they were up to and assumed it was just a nice place to be. Then we saw something we had not expected.

A plume of spray followed closely by another signaled the presence of some whales. They were not far offshore and were coming in our general direction. I don’t know how to recognize whales unless they are of a few distinct types but I know that they get grey whales along here so I am going to guess that this is what they were.

They made pretty good progress along the coast and the kayakers were following at a discrete distance. I suspect for some that had been waiting ahead of the route, they got a pretty good view as the whales came through. We tracked them for a while. The problem with taking pictures of whales is that you don’t immediately know where they are. The clear their blowholes and you get a nice plume but that is often the first sign and it is dissipating by the time you get the camera on it. However, the shots are secondary in this compared to being there to see it.