Not Large Fires, but MUCH Closer to Home!

How much closer? I took these photos from my bedroom window in June. That is very darn close!

We live half way between Los Angeles and San Diego, but not close enough to be considered a suburb either. When they built my town in the mid-1980's, they reserved 40% of the area as permanent open space. In addition, it is surrounded by hills, mountains, huge wilderness areas and the ocean.  They also created many "greenbelts." Greenbelts not only look good, they also don't burn well. All that other stuff does burn well, and burn it does. Regularly...

We live on the eastern ridge line of a fair sized valley (or canyon). On the valley floor is a lake and a lot of wilderness that goes on for miles. This fire was two months ago and was directly downhill from our house. 

There is more room between these trees and houses than it appears, but it's still not very far away. If it had been windy, I might have invoked a personally mandated evacuation order. Of course, I'd evacuate as close to the fire as I could get.

 Two water dropping helicopters and bunch of fire trucks on the job

The helicopter is over the lake and is going to refill with water. Just beyond the helicopter is the amazing Aliso and Woods Canyon Wilderness area. 

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The next two photos were taken last year on July 4th. The location is less than half a mile to the south of the fire above. Fireworks are a huge no-no around here. Want the police at your house in a hurry. Just light up a couple of sparklers. The couldn't get the helicopters out because it was too dark. They were scrambling to keep this one out of the adjacent residential area.

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I took these photos at another fire in May. Same canyon as the last two fires, but about a half mile north of the first one. All of these were taken with the camera in my phone and are a bit grainy. We were about 75 feet from the helicopter. We were eating a sandwich at Togo's. When my wife spotted smoke coming from the canyon across the street. She was the first one to call it in. I wasn't sharing her happiness though, I was too busy kicking myself for NOT having a "real" camera with me! 

 The helicopter and firetrucks got there so quickly that they hadn't even stopped traffic yet.

 It only took me a few minutes to forget about the fire and start concentrating on the sky! I know what you're thinking and yes, I am wildly A.D.D.

 Fire? What fire? All I saw was the light reflecting off of the windscreen. If I had my CAMERA, I would have had a great look at the pilot's face!

 Okay, I am becoming seriously impressed with the camera in my phone!

I know the sun is blinding behind that smoke, but this is still my favorite photo of the whole thing.

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We've had a several more fires in the area while we've lived here, but it's late and I'm so tired!

Snow Canyon Utah

Back to Utah for a post.  Snow Canyon is truly an undiscovered jewel. It's close to a few national parks and because of this, people just pass right by. If you are ever in southern Utah, it's a must see.

The road into Snow Canyon. We were awestruck when we saw this scene for the first time (a few weeks ago).

No jeep roads here, so we had to dismount and explore on foot.  This trail took us to those low red rock formations. They are petrified (or solidified) sand dunes.

The dunes.

This is an odd shot. Not because of the scenery, but because I'm in it.

Just because...

The clouds really made these photos.

More sand dunes.

An amazing vista.

Very high desert, so it's not as hot as it looks. That's my wife heading towards that large, bright red formation.

I still have a couple more posts to do from this trip, so I'm going to continue alternating them with pics from our just completed roadie to the central California coast.

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The Hawk At The End Of The Road

Although we are no longer on our last road trip (AZ & UT), I still have at least two blog posts to do relating to it. At this moment we are in Oceano, California, which is on the central coast. I'm happy to report that today's long drive from the southern end of the state was the easiest on record. We actually breezed through Los Angeles and the Valley. Once we got to the RV campground (is that an oxymoron?), we took a nice (not so much) long hike through coastal sand dunes that seemed more like they belonged in the Sahara Desert. At the end of the hike there was a magnificent oasis called the Pacific ocean. You don't get to see those photos yet! First, we have to do a couple more posts from the last trip.

This wasn't the roughest ride on our trip, but we "heard" it would lead us to a nice place.

And so it did.

When you are in this part of Arizona, it seems like every road leads to the Oak Creek. Back roads don't seem to be enough for us, so we started hiking along the banks of the creek.

As out of the way as it was, the rope swing over the creek (behind my wife) told us that this was somebody's swimming hole.

Oak Creek is an awesome free flowing large creek that meanders all over this part of Arizona.

I posted a sample pic of this guy a week or so ago.  I wish he was sitting next to something else to give the size of this guy some scale. He was HUGE!

He was no more than 10 feet from us and had no fear what-so-ever.  We have many red tail hawks where we live, but none of them are as big this guy. I'm still not sure exactly what kind of hawk he was.  I wanted him to take off so I could get a photo or two of his wingspan. We waited and waited, he did nothing. We yelled, he just stared at us. I had given up when all of a sudden he took off. I didn't really have time to aim or focus my camera and had to shoot from the hip. That didn't work out too well. I got a shot of my own knee, one of the sun, one of blue sky and one of him that was too blurry to use.

No post about this part of the country is complete without some of this.

Or this...

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Just Sedona

Just a few shots of why everyone who comes to Sedona wants to come back. 

The City of Sedona has such strict building codes (including paint colors) that the houses disappear into the desert. They do have a couple of streets with restaurants, stores, motels, etc, but none of it is very close to the beautiful scenery.

these houses aren't as close to the rocks as it appears

On Friday I'll be posting some pics from a morning of exploring jeeps roads and no roads. 

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Road Trip Teaser

My wife and I had just finished a rough drive to get to a remote part of Oak Creek, about 10 miles outside of Sedona, Arizona.  We were hiking a creek side trail when this guy landed on a branch less than 10 feet from us. We think it's a Coopers Hawk. Whatever kind it was, it was HUGE!  Talk about death from above! This guy was pure predator.  He couldn't care less that we were so close to him.  I took so many pics of him that I got tired of it.  We have Internet for a couple of days, so I thought I'd post him as a teaser!

When we were in the Sedona area last year, I posted a bunch of photos of the red rock formations. This year I'm concentrating a bit more on the back road places and things like that. Of course, I'm taking some pics of the formations and will post them because I think Sedona is one of the most beautiful place I've ever seen.  I'll catch up on responding to comments and commenting on your blogs (if you have one) as soon as I have a chance.

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Derelict Japanese Cemetery - Kauai

Only a couple more posts from our trip to Kauai. In a couple of hours we'll be hitting the road again. This time not so far. We'll be RV camping (that may be an oxymoron) on top of a mountain about 100 miles from where we live. It's not nearly as scenic as Kauai, but I'm still hoping to get some good photos. I'm not sure if we'll have Internet or not.  In the meantime, here are some photos of an old abandoned Japanese cemetery. We found it off of another old dirt road in the area of the hidden glass beach.  A friend told us about both places. They aren't my best work, but I hope you'll find them interesting.

Looking back down the road that took us up to the cemetery.

Once again, we were reminded of the violent volcanic origins of Kauai.

Some of the grave stones were too buried in brush to get to.

We'll be trying to get some translations from my MIL.

Most of them seem to be from the 1800's

enlarge this one!

This one isn't Japanese, but the heart shaped tomb stone caught my eye.

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