January - Sunrise
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| Sunrise from our front yard |
There are a lot of things I like about living in Fresno, but air quality is not one of them. In the summertime, pollution gets trapped in the valley. In the winter, fog settles in (which also serves to obscure the pollution). But there are those days in the spring and fall, and in the winter right after a storm goes through, when the the skies are clear. On this particular January day, the cloud patterns added to the morning colors (probably some pollution effects here as well) to make for an awesome sunrise.
We weren't even supposed to be around to enjoy that sunrise. We had planned to be in Mexico, but I had broken my toe about a week earlier and had just had surgery a couple of days before. It was January 31st, our last official day working for Multiply (though we were using up vacation time). I had peeked through the blinds and seen the colors and decided I needed to hobble outside in my special boot to grab a photo from our front yard. We won't get a view like this again, because the tree in our yard and the tree in our neighbors yard across the street have both been cut down.
February - Blueberry Blossom
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| Highbush Blueberry var. Hello Darlin' |
One of the things that suffered a lot in the 14 years we were out of our house was the landscaping. Some fruit trees had died and others were not healthy. So one of the many things we began to do was plant new fruit trees and other landscaping trees and shrubs to replace some of the old ones. We also decided to add some blueberries to the mix, which we had not grown before. We bought three different varieties, as that makes for better fruiting. Of course, we had to make sure they were varieties that would bloom about the same time. And we were happy to see that the blueberry bushes we planted in January were already blooming. we didn't have a big harvest, but we were happy that we had anything at all for the first year.
March - California Poppies and Kings River
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| California poppies beside the Kings River in Piedra |
In March, the wildflowers begin to bloom in the nearby foothills. We were busy with yard work and other tasks around the house, so that we didn't have much time to go enjoy them. And walking had been a challenge for me, because my foot was still healing. One day we had enough of work and being trapped in the house. My special boot had finally come off, so we hopped in the car and drove about a half-hour east to where the Kings River empties out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Some years, the wildflowers are spectacular here (see photo below) — this was not one of them. But there were a few California poppies blooming along the edge of the Kings River.
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| Piedra in a better year for flowers. Photo above was taken at the bottom of the hill shown in this photo. |
April - Bigelow Coreopsis
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| Bigelow Coreopsis along the Pacific Crest Trail near Walker Pass in Kern County |
One of the amazing sights we have in California is when the desert flowers come into bloom. There are different flowers in different places. The timing and composition varies from year to year based on precipatation patterns. There are actually websites where you can check to see when the peak bloom times might be. We didn't have a lot of time to go investigate the desert flowers this year, so we figured we would go see them someplace fairly close. Some years, the California poppies go gangbusters in Antelope Valley, but I was checking the "flower cam" at the poppy preserve and they weren't looking very good this year. So we opted for the Mojave Desert in eastern Kern County. We spent some time in Red Rock Canyon State Park and we also went up to Fossil Falls in adjoining Inyo County. But by far the most amazing display was on the eastern slopes of the Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains.
We drove up Highway 178 toward Lake Isabella and the hillsides, which are mostly bare for much of the year, were painted yellow. We parked at Walker Pass and walked north along the Pacific Crest Trail until we were surrounded by the blankets of yellow from Bigelow's Coreopsis. There were actually lots of other things blooming, but they were almost obscured by the yellow flowers.
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| Here is what they look like from a distance |
May - Alstromeria
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| Alstromeria var. Indian Summer |
While the cats away, the mice will play. Ingrid was off for a women's retreat so I decided to go on my own "retreat". I left early on a Saturday morning and headed over to Santa Cruz for the spring plant sale at the UCSC Center for Agroecology. This is where I had taken an apprenticeship when we first moved to California in 1993. While I was living on the farm back in those days, I learned about Alstromeria flowers. Over the years, we acquired several different varieties which graced our backyard here in Fresno. But when we returned, there were none left.
So after getting some vegetable and bedding plants at the Spring Plant Sale, I went down to San Lorenzo Lumber (Discount for members of Friends of the Farm and Garden), and I bought two different varieties of Alstromeria. (I wanted more, but I contained myself.) This variety is called Indian Summer. It still has some blooms on it as I write, even in December.
June - Big Baldy
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| On top of Big Baldy in Kings Canyon National Park |
It was four years almost to the day since we had last visited Big Baldy in Kings Canyon National Park, and it was time to escape the Valley heat and go to the mountains. The trail to Big Baldy follows a narrow ridge to the summit of the mountain. Since our previous visit, a wildfire had taken out most to the trees on one side and top of the ridge. This meant two things. One, there was not as much shade. Two, there was a different composition of plants that had come up now that the forest canopy was gone. We enjoyed examining the different wildflowers along the way. This picture was taken looking back to the east from the summit, where you can see the high Sierra peaks in the background.
July - Desert Rose
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| Desert Rose (Adenium obesum) |
In the fall of 2023, we had gone to a plant sale held by the Fresno Cactus and Succulent Society. While we were there, we bought a desert rose (Adenium obesum — not at all related to true roses), to "replace" the one we had with us for many years in Thailand. (That one was several years old and gnarly when we bought it, and so was a bit expensive.) The desert rose we bought in Fresno was a small plant in a 4 inch pot. Desert roses are fairly slow growing with a unique shape that lends well to bonsai. They will drop their leaves under stress, but will bloom on the naked stems — which is a good thing, since in Thailand our plant would often get defoliated by oleander hawk moth caterpillars. As a drought adaptation, they have chlorophyll in their bark and so can photosynthesize without leaves. They are native to the Sahel — that region just south of the Sahara Desert from Senegal to Sudan. Think sunny, hot and dry. They seem to handle humidity okay, as they are popular in Thailand. But they don't seem to like cold. (Kind of like me, running around the house bundled up when the thermostat is at 70F.)
Well, winters in Fresno can be a bit chilly, so we brought the plant inside. But our winters seem to be lacking in sunniness, which was compounded by the fact that the only window we have with significant sun in the winter is the master bathroom, which has one window above the toilet. The desert rose was not happy! ☹️ We thought it was going to die. Finally the days got longer, and we were able to put it back outside in a place where it could get more sunshine. It thanked us by producing a few blooms. Yay!
Below is a photo of the one we left behind in Thailand for comparison.
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| Desert Rose in front of our apartment in Thailand |
August - Morro Rock and Morro Bay
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| Morro Rock reflecting Morro Bay |
We really enjoy the central coast of California, but with all the stuff going on, it was almost a year after returning to California that we made it there. We typically hang out in the Morro Bay area because of the diversity of possibilities of things to do. There are the mountains and the bluffs at Montana de Oro State Park. Then there is the estuary full of wildlife. The harbor with its hustle and bustle of restaurants, fishing boats and sightseeing boats. Then there is the beach for walking. But what stands out is the rock. It is a really big rock.
Morro Rock is 581 feet / 177 meters tall. It is a volcanic plug — a remnant neck of an extinct volcano. The rock is protected as wildlife habitat. If you're lucky, you can spot some of the peregrine falcons that nest on the rock. The first day we were at Morro Bay, we could hardly see the rock because of the fog. But the second day, the fog cleared off and we could see the rock reflecting in the still waters of the harbor.
September - Half Dome from Sentinel Dome
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| Half Dome (on right) viewed from Sentinel Dome |
We picked a school day in the off season thinking Yosemite Park would be quiet. We were wrong. We didn't even go to the valley — which is generally the more crowded part of the park — and still parking spots were hard to come by. Our first destination was Taft Point. The last time we came here in 2008 there was hardly anyone to be seen. Not so on this day. After visiting Taft Point, we took a trail that circled under Sentinel Dome before climbing to the top of the dome. This is a longer, more difficult way to go, and we did not see many people on that trail until we joined the other route that goes to the top of the dome. From the top of the dome, you can get nice views in every direction. In this view you can see Half Dome on the right. Tenaya Creek flows in the canyon to the left of the dome. What is impressive in this view is the vast amount of bare granite rock that is visible.
October - Foggy Morning
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| Morning Fog over Central Avenue southeast of Fresno |
One of the characteristics of winter in the Central Valley of California is fog. During the night, cool air flows down off the Sierra Nevada Mountains into the valley below. When the cool air hits the moist air in the valley bottom, it causes the moisture to condense and make fog. Usually the fog is thickest just after sunrise.
Some winters have more fog than others, depending on how much rain there has been. On this morning, there were scattered patches of fog — but not enough to keep me from going for a bike ride. Right at sunrise, I came upon this patch of fog that seemed to create a tunnel on the road.
November - Mammatus Clouds
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| Mammatus Clouds over our house |
November offers another weather-related photo. I was working in the front yard when the wind pick up really hard and really fast. I rushed to the back where Ingrid was already starting to take the clothes off the line. This brief, powerful storm did not bring us a lot of rain, but we did get a nice double-rainbow and, what I find more interesting, some beautiful mammatus clouds.
December - Lewis Creek
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| Along Lewis Creek |
We were wanting to escape the fog in Fresno that had been persisting for the previous several days. It would lift — but not very high. It had been cool, damp and dreary.
I wanted a trail that was not too long and not too far away and below the snow line. We ended up going to the Lewis Creek Trail, which we had last been to in 2006 (photo below — I'm still wearing the same shirt). Since that time, probably about 10 years ago, a fire had burned through, killing off many of the big trees. When we first started out, I thought we were on the wrong trail, because I remembered it being a lot more shady. The trail starts off uphill a bit from the creek, then it winds down past some private land and eventually meets up with the creek. The the trail follows the creek up to Corlieu Falls. We were grateful for a few hours with some sunshine, since when we got back home in mid-afternoon, the fog still had not lifted.
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| Along Lewis Creek in 2006 |
Part 2 - Other States and Provinces
Nevada - Lovelock
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| One of several places to lock up your love in Lovelock |
In May we decided to take a road trip to visit Ingrid's family in Alberta. To add some adventure, we decided to not take the direct route. Our first day we traveled north on Highway 99 to Interstate 80. We traveled east on I80 until we got to the town of Lovelock Nevada. I picked Lovelock to spend the night for two reasons. First, It was about half way to our next destination. Second, the name. So how does a place end up with a name like Lovelock?
There were some natural marshes along the Humboldt River, which passes through what is now Lovelock, and in the mid-19th century it became an important stopping point for people crossing the continent. An English settler named George Lovelock came in 1866 and bought squatters rights for 320 acres. When the railroad came through, he gave 85 acres for a train depot, so the depot was named after him, and it stuck for the name of the town that grew around it.
To enhance tourism, the city put up several places where couples can put up padlocks showing the permanence of their love, putting a new spin on the name of the town. We didn't purchase a lock, but we did pose for a photo by some of them.
Utah - Great Salt Lake
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| Great Salt Lake and the Rocky Mountains viewed from Antelope Island |
On the second day of our journey, we continued east on I80. Our original plan had been to turn north in Wells, Nevada, toward Twin Falls, Idaho. Instead, we decided to keep traveling east, crossing the Bonneville Salt Flats. We decided to spend the night in a suburb on the north side of Salt Lake City, but before we did that, we made a visit to Antelope Island State Park. Antelope Island is located in the Great Salt Lake. We spent a couple hours there, checking out the lake and the vegetation that manages to survive in that environment. What we really enjoyed was the view looking back across the causeway to the snow-covered Rocky Mountains.
Idaho - Snake River
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| Basalt Columns beside the Snake River in Idaho Falls |
The next day we were heading to West Yellowstone. We turned off I15 in the town of Idaho Falls. After eating lunch at Panda Express, we went to see the "falls" for which the town is named. We found a small park on the Snake River just below the falls. We were disappointed that the falls in the present day are mostly water flowing over a dam. However, just below the dam, the river cuts through some old basalt colunms. It looks almost like some man-made retaining wall, but this one was built by God, and is probably a lot more solid than anything a human would have put up.
Wyoming - Old Faithful
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| Old Faithful Geyser faithfully erupting |
We spent two days in Yellowstone Park, which was not enough time because there are so many interesting things to see. One of the trails we wanted to try still wasn't open though, because it was too early in the season. One can hardly go to the park without seeing its mainstay, the Old Faithful geyser. It was Ingrid's first time to go to the park, but I had seen the geyser back in 1965. I don't remember much from that time except that at one point I was lagging behind my family on the boardwalk, and a geyser decided to spew some hot water just as I was going by. We had been told by the ranger earlier the dangers of wandering off the boardwalk, but I was just scared by the sudden explosion next to me and bolted to where my parents were up ahead, taking a shortcut off the boardwalk in the process. This time around, I managed to keep to the boardwalks. We decided to get our first view of Old Faithful from a distance. We joined about a dozen other people who braved the short climb to the viewpoint overlooking that geyser field.
Montana - Great Falls
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| The Great Falls of Great Falls, Montana |
From Wyoming, we were headed to visit relatives in southern Alberta. I had never gone to that part of the province before. We could have made ther drive in a day, but we decided we would rather not push ourselves and do some sightseeing along the way. We spent the night in Great Falls, Montana. Before we left the city, we decided to find out why the place was called Great Falls. This, too, was a bit disappointing because, like Idaho Falls, a dam had been put up at the site of the original falls. Still, it was nice to drive up to the viewpoint and check out the Missouri River from above.
Alberta - Pyramid Lake and Pyramid Mountain
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| Pyramid Lake and Pyramid in Mountain in Jasper National Park, Alberta |
Most of our time in Canada was spent visiting relatives, starting with an aunt and some cousins in Bow Island. On our way there we passed Writing on Stone Provincial Park, which is known for its unique rock formations and for petroglyphs. From there we traveled north to Barrhead. We took Dad on an overnight trip to Jasper National Park. It was the first time for him to visit the park since before Mom went into the nursing home several years earlier. On the first day, we went to Pyramid Lake. The first time I had visited that lake was on our honeymoon 40 years earlier. While we were visiting the park, we were under the realization that this might we'll be Dad's last visit to the park, so we did our best to help him relive old memories and make new ones.
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| Pyramid Mountain and Pyramid Lake from our honeymoon trip in 1983 |
British Columbia - Natural Bridge and Kicking Horse River
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| Natural Bridge over the Kicking Horse River in Yoho National Park, British Columbia |
We left Alberta by taking the David Thompson Highway through Saskatchewan River Crossing and heading south to Lake Louise Village where we spent the night. The following day we took the Trans-Canada Highway through Yoho National Park. I think this was my first time driving west on this stretch of highway. We detoured to Natural Bridge, a formation on the Kicking Horse River — I had never been there before. This was a pretty spot, and I tried out the long exposure setting on my phone to take this photo.
Washington - Frye Cove County Park
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| Rain Forest at Frye Cove County Park, Washington |
After several days with family and friends in BC, it was time to head back to the US. Our car was loaded with things we had stored with relatives in BC while we were in Thailand. Our first stop was Shelton. We had some time, so we made a detour to Frye Cove County Park near Olympia along the way. This is a very wet part of Washington, and everything was covered with moss.
Oregon - Haystack Rock and Cannon Beach
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| Haystack Rock reflecting on Cannon Beach, Oregon |
Finally some sunshine. We had had some rain every day since we left Montana until we got to Oregon. We left our friend's house in Shelton, WA, and headed for the Pacific Coast. One of our first stops in Oregon was at Haystack Rock. I had seen several pictures of this rock over the years, and now was finally my opportunity to see it in person. This one is not as big as Morro Rock in California as it is only 235 feet / 72 meters tall. It also has a different kind of origin. It is made of basalt and is a remnant of an old lava flow, the rest having been eroded away over time. The rocks to the left are collectively called the Needles.
It took us a while to figure out where to park so we could walk to the beach, but it was worth the effort to see the reflection in the thin film of water on the beach.
Arizona - Lipan Point, Grand Canyon
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| Lipan Point, Grand Canyon, Arizona |
Convergence. Ingrid had always wanted to see the Grand Canyon. Now seemed like a good time. One of my brothers had moved to Phoenix over the summer. A Thai friend of ours had married an American and was living not far from Phoenix, and they were about to make a trip to Thailand, so we could send some things along with them. So we decided we would make a trip to Arizona. We went to Phoenix first, then we traveled north to Williams, where we stayed while visiting the Grand Canyon, which was about an hour to the north of there. Williams is a quaint tourist town along the Historic US Highway 66. We even found Thai food there—one of our servers was from Khon Kaen, the province next to where we last lived in Thailand.
We didn't have much time to plan, as we had been busy prepping the exterior of our house for painting and we had begun putting down some primer. And since we didn't know much about what to see at the Grand Canyon, we booked a tour for the first morning with a group called Canyon Ministries. That same afternoon and the next morning were spent checking out viewpoints and other sites along the South Rim of the canyon. There are lots of viewpoints, but my favorite was Lipan Point. The photo shows a view looking west to north from Lipan Point. It's amazing how the Colorado River has etched out all this sedimentary rock.
The weather was unseasonably hot, so we didn't want to do a lot of walking. After we left the Canyon, we went to check out the Little Colorado River Canyon. Then we drove north, almost to Utah, to see the Glen Canyon Dam and Horseshoe Bend. When we returned to California, we detoured through Oatman, a ghost town along the old highway 66 that now has become a tourist town—the wild donkeys plying the streets help the tourism effort.
Baja California Sur - Playa Balandra
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| Playa Balandra, La Paz, Baja California Sur |
In January, we had planned to make a trip to Mexico. A friend of ours had rented a condo and had invited us to come, all we had to do was buy plane tickets, which we had done. But then I broke my toe and needed surgery and we ended up not going. We got credits for future flights with American Airlines. Fast forward to November, and we realize our credits are expiring at the end of the month. Where can we go with American Airlines for about the amount of credits we had? After doing lots of searching, we decided to go to San Jose del Cabo, one of the two "Cabos" in Los Cabos, the other being Cabo San Lucas.
This would be our first trip to Mexico. We hasitily put this trip together and really didn't know what we would do there. I had never really entertained the thought of going to Los Cabos before. We ended up working with the concierge at the hotel to plan some things to do in our 5-day adventure. One day we went whale watching, and got really close—too close?—to some humpback whales. Los Cabos was really built up for tourism though, with resorts everywhere and more under construction, so one didn't really feel like one was in Mexico. So, for one day we joined a bus tour to La Paz. We were the only non-Mexicans on the big tour bus. (The tour guide would give his main presentations in Spanish, then he would summarize for us in English. Because of the need to do this, we got to sit in the front row of the bus the entire time.) La Paz is the capital of the state of Baja California Sur and it seems like it has a raison d'ête other than tourism. As well as visiting the town, we went to two beaches near there, my favorite being Playa Balandra. On the way back, we stopped in a small town called Todos Santos and saw the Hotel California, which may or may not have something to do with the song by that name.
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And so another year comes to a close, but this is our first year we are "retired" (at least from paying jobs). We're grateful for all those who have helped us as we transition to this next phase of our lives. And we're grateful to God for the health and wisdom to get through the year.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Hebrews 13:8
