In and around LA

My sister in her new house in LA.

On the compound there were hummingbirds galore, here a nest.

We did a "hike" trying to reach the "Mesa". Halfway our age started playing up and we never reached the top.

Steve (my brother in law), did some weird yoga, me & sis were scared he'd topple over and split his skull upon that rock in front of him, the one my sister is sitting on. Nothing of that happened. We had a few scary moments tho.

Mr DELTA, a guy I know from Amsterdam was in LA too, on the right here, he was asked to put some of his works up in the Scion-gallery. The last afternoon before we left we paid him a quick little visit.

The trip starts

On the road. We left LA early, like 6:00 AM, avoiding the traffic of all the peeps who were so eager to go to work. Around coffee-time we were in Solvang, a danish enclave, where i explained the word "kitch" to my brother in law.

We rented a cabin in "Glenn Oak", of which there are no pics. Next morning we took HW1 along the coast. Grey, rainy day. This is "Ragged point". Wonder why they call it that ...

Big sur coast, looking south. Weather looking better

Same spot, facing north.

Pebble beach, 17 mile road.

"El Capitan", biggest monolith, photographed by millions of peeps. Seen lots of em, this one by me. Yes, Yosemite, we made it, just before dark.

Same spot, different rock. Everywhere I looked, i was just taking pic after pic.

Yosemite falls, more will follow. Here it's quite moderately putting out water.

Our tent. Heater inside. Food and cosmetics in the bear-locker. Costs about 100 bucks for the three of us, including tax.

Yosemite encore

Our first morning in Yosemite, bit cold, put up the gear to make ourselves some coffee. That turned out to be our morning ritual. There's no Starbucks in the dessert or the mountains...

After that we took the "mirror lake trail", an easy one of about 3 miles i think.

Big rocks, trees, snow and cliffs. Everywhere we looked, we just HAD to take pictures. Bear with me ;o)

This is Mirror lake

We had some lunch there too, and decided not to take the same route back ...

Takin the picture below

So we needed to cross the stream, found 2 trees and crossed to reach the other side of the valley

Sis thinking she is Alice in Wonderland or such ;o)

Mossy stuff everywhere, made me think of Ray Mears, squeezing water out of a handfull of moss, part of survival skills. Didn't dare to disturb the seeming pristine beauty of the place tho, so i kept my hands in my pocket.

On our way back to camp, even the most ordinairy paths were too beautifull, I was getting quite tired of all the beauty, it started to be boring, to be honest. There was not a spot that was NOT worth taking a picture or admire. Bah

Then, when we entered the Reastaurant-complex, There were other things, thank God.

Our dinner. Buffet with all kinds of stuff. Lots of meat, carbs n stuff. Not too bad.

During the night it rained, heavily, and it turned out our tent DID leak a little, also the heater was out of order. After a little complaining we were offered a cabin, for only 10 bucks more. Whenever visiting yosemite and having choice between the tents and cabin, go for the cabin. At least you kan keep food in there, altho that might not be a good idear anyway, because that same night another cabin was visited by a bear, who jumped up the roof and started to tear it off.... sorry, no pics of it, we saw the rubble, but the cabin was neatly covered by a blue tarp.

This morning was quite cloudy as you can see.

We went to the "Ahwanee-hotel".Some pics in the vicinity of this hotel.

Lower & higher Yosemite falls

Steve the Rock-hugger. We all have our things.

water, trees, rocks ..... trail to lower yosemite falls

The lower falls themselves. Left are standing about 30 peeps takin the same picture i guess. On the right side another 20.

Just some stream gushing down the mountain while we walked back along a trail back to our camp. Saw some deer too, but were too far away to make an interesting pic.

Vegetation stuff that looked interesting. Ah well.

...

On the road to Death valley

Lots of water, streams and such.

....

Paradise Cove hotel. We had an excellent room there, for 75 bucks for the three of us. Nice host & hostess, twas all good.

This is Lake Isabella, as you can see, the water level is pretty high. Looking like rain too.

Steve doing his pointing thing again ;o) Good thing is, as a geologist, he provided us with a lot of background info.

Death valley

Salty creek. Arriving here we saw an interesting-looking scar in the greyish hills on the botton of the valley. Close up it looked less interesting tho, very salty and stuff.

Salty creek encore.

Death valley, furnace creek. On the right side you can see some trees, that's our campground.

Just after arriving, sis still busy putting up the tent, Steve putting the smokey joe together. Our first BBQ is going to become a fact.

Suddenly it started raining tho, we improvised a shelter and survived. When the rain stopped, smokey joe was ready to prepare our tri-tip and potatoes in alu-foil, bel peppers and courgettes sprinkled in a marinade of olive oil, salt pepper garlic anchofish and kapers.

Devils golfcourse. Salt beds. I have been wondering who named all these things here, golfcourse ? Does Satan play golf ? What does he use for golf-balls ? Clubs ? What hole is this ? Ah well, it was beautifull nevertheless.

I think I took about 150 pics quite similar to the ones that follow. After de "golfcourse" we went up to "artists drive", again i asked myself whoever it was that named these things. "Artists drive" and the "artists palette" just sound too pretentious to me. Makes me even NOT want to go there. Alas, we went there and I am happy we did.

The golfcourse from some advantage point. Juliana (our car) on the bottom left.

This looks like a quilt I think, so I propose to put a sign there saying "Quilt hill" ?

Sis & husband

The coloured stuff there is the "artists palette" ...... we are going there.

Ofcourse there was a parking lot, so we parked Juliana, and i walked up these colorfull heaps of petrified gelato. Here pistachio, blueberry, valinna, and moccah with a chocolate dip.

Pistachio moccah vienetta with a chocolate dip ....

mmmmm, pistachio going bad, a cracked fungal crust ?

ah well, colours, colours and then some colours. It was all very pretty and pretty amazing. "look at the alluvial fan" and stuff like that, what is there to say. Yeah, I know, it's just rocks, minerals and stuff.