Castle Crags State Park

Camping with My Brother

July 9-10, 2016

 

WARNING:  Pictures of creepy spiders are found below.  Proceed at your own peril.

Also, Sorry to those of you who follow and/or comment on my posts as well as those I normally follow.  I've been having some computer problems at home that make replying to my posts on this site and those I follow difficult. 

Castle Crags State Park, CA

Sam and I met my brother and niece for a one-night camping trip at Castle Crags State Park on Saturday.  It was a nice little trip, although I didn't take a lot of photos.  We ate sketchy camp food and played a couple of games of Pirate Fluxx.  I couldn't hike up to the vista point with Pongo, so we mostly stuck around the campsite and enjoyed each others' company.  It was nice, in that sense.

Castle Crags State Park, CA

Sam, Pongo and I stopped at Colusa National Wildlife Refuge on the way home.  It's at about the halfway point, making it a good spot to stretch our legs and let Pongo have a little adventure.  There's a short hiking trail where he was able to chase an uncountable number of lizard off of the trail.  It's summer so the waterfowl are mostly gone except for a lone greater white-fronted goose that we saw at the pond near the parking lot.

Common Buckeye - Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA

Western Tiger Swallowtail

We saw a lot of butterflies.  I chased down a handful of buckeyes but couldn't get a good photo.  They kept their wings open only for a few seconds after landing, which never gave me enough time to find them in the viewfinder, focus and zoom in.  That shot above was the best I could pull enough.  You get the idea, I guess.  They have wonderful eyeball patterns on their wings.

Western Tiger Swallowtail -- Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA

Monarch

We saw a large number of white butterflies as well as a few swallowtails and a couple dozen monarchs.  I'm used to seeing monarchs in large numbers at their wintering grounds in Pacific Grove, but this was a bit different.  Here we were seeing them among the milkweed in one of their summer hangouts.  There's even a sign on the trail that notes the area as a designated monarch environment.  Pretty cool.

Monarch -- Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA

OK.  Here come the spiders.  I'm only going to post the two creepiest spiders we saw.  I haven't been able to identify them. 

Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA

Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA

We didn't notice all of the spiders until about half way through the hike, and then they seemed to be everywhere we turned.  I'm not afraid of spiders, but I have to admit I was a little freaked out by the end of that hike.  There were some big and scary-looking arachnids out there!  Sam has always been afraid of spiders, so he was jumping left and right all the way back to the car.

Here's a nice photo of a field of flowers to clear your mind if you've made it this far.

Colusa National Wildlife Refuge, CA

Bixby Bridge

You Can't See a Dream

January 18, 2015

I was thinking of doing a series on Pacific Coast bridges in my other blog and realized I don't have any photos of Bixby Bridge in my collection, so I decided I needed to fix that before proceeding with that series.  I set out to rectify that yesterday.

Great Egret & Brandt's Cormorant -- Pacific Grove, CA

Great Egret

I got off to a late start, arriving in Pacific Grove around 3:00 in the afternoon.  I'd have time to drive along the bay and hit the butterfly sanctuary before heading down to Bixby Bridge, which is about fifteen miles South of Carmel.  Fog was kind of settling in over the town as I arrived.  It wasn't enough to make the pictures particularly moody, unfortunately.

 Pacific Grove, CA

The butterfly sanctuary turned out to be a bummer for a couple of reasons.  First, there weren't many many butterflies there.  Monsanto has been a pretty good job of killing them off with its Round Up weed killer.  Monarchs are fussy little things that feed almost exclusively on milkweed, which Round Up is very effectively killing off across the country.  As of last year, the butterfly numbers were down ninety percent from twenty years ago.  This year's count is 16,300, which I think is up from last year but still very far below the six figure counts of the past.

Monarchs -- Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, Pacific Grove, CA

The second bummer was that I broke my 250mm lens.  Well, it still kind of works.  My tripod fell over while I was setting up for a shot earlier in the day and discovered in the grove that the auto focus no longer works on that lens.  It's the cheaper of my two lenses so if one was going to break I'm glad it was that one.  There's some comfort there, I guess.  I could have done without that, though.

 Black-tailed Deer -- Monarch Butterfly Sanctuary, Pacific Grove, CA

After visiting the butterfly grove, I headed down to Bixby Bridge.

Big Sur, CA

How many bridges have songs written about them?  More than I'm aware of, I suspect.  Death Cab for Cutie's "Bixby Canyon Bridge" is one of my favorites of theirs.  It tells something of a story, the writer's disappointment with not finding the soul of Jack Kerouac beneath the bridge.  Sometimes we build things up and can't help but be disappointed when we encounter the reality of these things.

Bixby Bridge, Big Sur, CA

Bixby Bridge, Big Sur, CA

Rainbow Beach, Big Sur, CA

Point Lobos State Nature Reserve

A Foggy Day on the Point

January 19, 2014

The 49ers lost to the Seahawks yesterday.  Bummer.  Not that I saw any of the game.  I was down in Pacific Grove and Point Lobos.  I listened to the game on the radio while I drove around.  That's how I follow all of my sports these days.

Monarch Butterfly -- Pacific Grove, CA

I started the trip off at the Monarch Grove Sanctuary to take in the annual gathering of the butterflies.  In normal years they'll clump together in huge groups hanging from branches in the grove.  For some reason that no one knows the butterflies return to the same areas to winter every year.  I say return, but the butterflies that show up every year are four or five generations removed from the butterflies that wintered in the areas the previous year.  A monarch butterfly's life is measured in weeks, not years.  Except for the wintering butterflies, that is, they may live up to six months.  There were no large clumps of butterflies when I got there, though.  The docents that were there said there's reason for grave concern.

I should probably point out that the docents are worried every year that I've visited.  Make of that what you will.

Monarch Butterfly -- Pacific Grove, CA

On January 8, the estimated count for the monarch population at the grove was 11,000 butterflies.  That's better than some previous years, but way down from what was normal a couple of decades ago.  The bigger concern was the behavior the butterflies have been exhibiting.  They're showing mating behavior at least a month ahead of schedule.  It's been an exceptionally warm, dry winter and the docents think it's confused the monarchs.  Unfortunately, the Central Valley milkweed isn't ready for them yet and won't be for a month or two.  If they mate too early, they'll have no place for their eggs.  The life cycle of the monarch is not the most flexible of things, it seems.

Pacific Grove, CA

After visiting the butterflies I drove around Point Pinos.  The stretch of coastline from the Monterey Aquarium to Point Lobos is the most amazing stretch of shoreline that I've ever seen.  The rocks are shaped like no place else that I've ever been and are full of wildlife.  The surf can be huge in the winter.  It was pretty big on Sunday, although I've seen bigger there.

White-tailed Kite -- Pacific Grove, CA

Southern Sea Otter

Are white-tailed kite's only around in the fall and winter?  It seems that's when I see them.

After driving around Point Pinos I headed out to Point Lobos.  While Pacific Grove and Monterey had been sunny and warm, Point Lobos was socked in with fog.  That's not a problem as far as I'm concerned.  I like the fog.

Point Lobos State Nature Reserve, CA

The fog is a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to taking pictures.  Everything comes out gray and dark.  Getting pictures of animals in the fog can be tough because they tend to be far away, meaning the fog will have a strong impact on their appearance.  However, if the fog isn't too dense it can add a lot of drama to landscape shots.

Point Lobos State Nature Reserve, CA

It was another great trip to Point Lobos.  Now, let's get that snow going up in the Sierras so I can make a trip up to Yosemite.

Point Lobos State Nature Reserve, CA