Last Thursday, late in the day, we left to drive to Death Valley. The weather forecast was pretty dismal, so we decided to take our time driving there. The choice was driving to Mojave down the 5 – OK, I give up, I am going to start adding a the to the freeways to identify them as freeways, southern California style, so the 5 it is –  or driving to Bakersfield down the 101 and then crossing over the coast range at Highway 58.

We chose the 101 and 58. I had been on 58 a month ago and loved it, but I had only been as far as the Corrizo Plain. It turns out that 58, through the Coast Range, is a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde road. Before and up to the Corrizo Plain, 58 wanders through oak covered hills with small, picturesque, ranches; after Corrizo, 58 goes through the Midway-Sunset oil fields. It was the end of the day and the sun was setting in an ominous sky which gave the oil fields an extra mordoresque oomph.

The next day, we were up early – for us – and headed over Tehachapi Pass into the Mojave Desert.

Just like the map show, everything changes from green to brown as we climbed up out of the Central Valley – or, The Great California Central Valley as we were taught as kids; and it should be called great: it is the largest flat place in the United States – and enter the Mojave Desert. Right at the pass, the wind farms have a lot more windmills than the last time we came over the pass. Each one is much bigger and they were all operating. As an aside; it is sort of strange that on the other side of the Coast Range, all the old windmills used to pump water have been replaced with photovoltaic cells to drive electric pumps; end of aside.

On the other side of the pass, the landscape opens up to the Mojave Desert. Deserts have personalities – the Arizona Desert (Sonora) is sort of a cowboys and Indians desert; Nevada, sagebrush and wild horses; the Mojave, Repoman and flying saucers, Charlie Manson, and -it turns out – spaceflight. In the distance is the gateway to the desert – the town, using the term very loosely – of Mojave.

The Town of Mojave is an interesting place. Because it is dry and close to the – former? – aircraft production and research center of Los Angeles, Edwards Airbase, and a rocket testing range; it is the center for alot of airplane related nonsense. That is nonsense to me, but probably not to the guys doing it. This is where the first non-stop, non-refueling, round the world flight started and ended. This is where Paul Allen’s SpaceShipOne took off and landed.

This is where Branson’s SpaceShipTwo is built. It is the airport – now called a Spaceport –  and, presumably, if you book a flight into space; this is where you will take off and, presumably again, land.

It is also a graveyard for discarded jets that may, or may not, be recycled into what we used to call the third world.

Beyond Mojave, the desert gets increasingly mountainous with vast valleys and iconic endless roads diminishing into a perspective lesson. We came from a road on the right and actually turned left towards Trona where we plan on leaving the paved road. If you double click on the photo, you can read the sign.

To be continued….

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We got this email from a neighbor – a neighbor that lives at least a mile away, though – yesterday and I am both horrified and thrilled.

We had a mountain lion kill a deer on our back porch, and it almost broke our sliding glass window.

(See the photograph below.)

It was very early in the morning, around 4-5am. The deer appears (footprints) to have gone to the watering hole. The mountain lion appears to have been in stalking mode on the stairs. It attacked the deer as it was moving along the back porch to the hillside.

The lion slammed the deer against the back slidingdoor, almost breaking it, then started eating a few feet away.It feasted in one abdominal, and butt area, without biting the neck or adding other wounds; it discarded the stomach and some green organs. My turning on the lights and shouting at it frightened it away. I dragged the carcass;300 feet to the eucalyptus tree line.

Upon returning 30 minutes later, I discovered something had been eating the bowels that fell out of the carcass, including the liver and possibly the heart. It could have been a cat, but also the mountain lion since Animal Control advised that it may still be in the vicinity. It may be feasting on the carcass right now.

Blue jays are squawking because lots of red-tailed hawks are swooping in for a feast on the kill. We can expect a lot of carnivore predators out tonight; bobcat, coyotes, mountain lion, etc.… I’ve called the neighbors to advise keeping their dogs indoors tonight.

I’d seen a mountain lion once at or near the house, and it was not very afraid of me when I cornered it next to a big bush/rock. It moved away, but not really fast, when I jumped and yelled. I have many photographs of bobcats which did not do this sort of damage. Also photos of coyotes which hunt in packs and bite the neck of the prey, dragging it down.

Animal Control may put out an alert for Portola Valley, suggested I keep a shotgun in the house, in case they break through the window the next time. We have a lot of windows around the porch, from which I have photographed a lot of bobcats, boars, and deer, but never a kill.

Portola Valley awaits you… with a carnivorous hummmmm……

Horrified because the whole thing seems much more violent that I thought it would be – not that I had thought about it very much – and I can now easily imagine a writhing deer/mountain lion combination breaking through our back door and rolling around the livingroom.  All I have is a 16" ruler to fend them off. Thrilled because the email came through the PV Garden Club which now seems much cooler; the writer seems so nonchalant, and thrilled because  we live in a town where they aren't scrambling helicopters and SWAT teams over this.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a meeting of the Northern California Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers – asmp NorCal, to you. In one of the handouts, was an article on Photo Apps by Lee Foster.
Using a book he wrote on where and how – presumably, I haven't seen the book – to photograph in San Francisco, Foster goes through the numbers on the book and an app.

The book retails for $14.95, but typically sells through Amazon at a hefty 55% discount. So, his publisher gets $6.73 of which he gets 15% – that is $1.01. He is now converting the book to an app which will sell for $1.99. In the app world, the author typically gets 30%, the developer gets 30%, and – in the case of the iPhone – Apple gets 30%. The remaining 10% is for overhead and – I guess – gets beamed up to some unknown place. So, for the sale of two apps at $1.99, Foster gets $1.19.

He thinks that there is a better chance of two people paying $1.99 for an app than one person popping for $14.95 for the book. I think he is right. Even a casual visitor to San Francisco would probably be willing to pay $1.99 but, paying $14.95 for the book that you would then have to pack and carry to be of any use, is much more problematic.

And the app could be much better. In Foster's case, the book has about 70 photos, but the app has 100 photos. And he expects the next app to have 500 photos. It could also have interactive maps and videos.

I sort of assume that everybody has seen at least one parody of Hitler in the bunker ranting from The Downfall. If you haven’t seen The Downfall, itself, I recommend it; it is totally engrossing and very creepy. If you haven’t seen a parody, as it is explained on Ranker.com, 

usually the video clip starts with someone informing him of something
horrible, Hitler brushes it off as a solvable problem. Full of fear, his
commanders tell him that his solution is not possible. He tells
everyone who isn’t important to leave and then goes on a huge tirade
about something. Of course, this meme has always been in German, so
people replace the subtitles in the original German film to make Hitler
rant about pretty much anything. Examples include everything from Disney
buying Marvel, to random movie reviews, to the lack of new features in a
new tech product. 

Now the producers of The Downfall are using copyright protection to have these parodies removed. Too bad.

Last Sunday – OK, last Sunday in the Bay Area – maybe only the south Bay Area – was Native Plant Day. Every year, the Native Plant Society  hosts a series of open houses for gardens that are planted with Native Plants. Actually, because there are so many tempting plants that grow here if they only had year around water, usually these gardens have more than Native Plants.

The gardens seem to fall into three categories: true natives only which are very rare, natives with other plants that don't take much water, and, the most common of all, regular gardens or old gardens with some natives added.Either way, I always enjoy going to gardens where people are interested in plants. As an added bonus, these kind of gardens are often owned by plant people who are more than a little crazy anyway.

When I see a front yard like this, with a nice dry creek, I get very inspired to rip out our whole backyard.

And I am probably not the only one. Talking to fellow enthusiasts are what makes garden tours fun. Oh! and looking at nice natives like Iris douglasiana

 or these very colorful mesembryanthemums from South Africa.