Lighthouses, Lighthouses, and more Lighthouses

We left San Francisco Saturday morning under beautiful blue skies and sunshine. It was on the way to being hot. As we were leaving the city the thermometer in the car read 91 degrees, but by the time we reach Pacifica, a mere ten miles away, we were rolling up windows and feeling right at home as the temperature dropped quickly to a comfortable 61. Thirty degrees in ten minutes! The first day of our drive down Highway 1, remember we went to San Francisco via I-5, was practically a lighthouse scavenger hunt.
The first stop was about ten miles north of Half Moon Bay at Point Montara. This is a small lighthouse and was getting a new paint job during our stop. If you look closely, you can the USCG on the back of the painter's coveralls. I guess there was no need for search and rescue that day.About 25 miles north of Santa Cruz, we found what may be our new favorite, Pigeon Point Lighthouse. You can see it from several angles. My favorite was this wide open shot from the north.Dave always likes to look at lighthouses from the most western point. (My respect/fear of high places prevents me from doing that.)There are two lighthouses in Santa Cruz. This small brick one serves as the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum.Out by the marina, is the Santa Cruz Breakwater Lighthouse. We could have stayed here forever. Dave is ready to relocate, but last count the power company didn't have an office in Santa Cruz.We stopped in Monterey for the night and went looking for the last lighthouse of the day. It sits in the middle of the munincipal golf course. The grounds were closed when we got there and weren't to reopen until Sunday afternoon. We have no problems leaning over fences to take pictures. The challenge is waiting "patiently" for golfers to play through. I wish we could have gotten closer, but I have a feeling we'll return to this part of the California coast again.As we walked back to the car, we heard a man ask his wife if she wanted to stay and watch the flash. The only thing he could have been referencing was the green flash that sometimes occurs when the sun drops below the horizon in the lower latitudes. I always thought it sounded like something out of a Jimmy Buffet song, but it's for real. (Just google 'green flash' to learn more.) We didn't see the green flash, but we did have lovely end to our lovely day.

A Day in the City by the Bay

Dave's first day in San Francisco in thirty five years and my first day ever was a beautiful one. Blue skies and sunshine most everywhere except the Golden Gate Bridge in the morning.Flowers are blooming all over the city and there are places where it smells like a perfume factory because the scent is so strong. I think it's the smell of jasmine in bloom. We found a small field of calla lillies blooming in Golden Gate Park.Fisherman's Wharf was on Dave's short list. We found the crab bread that Mel and Brad told us about last year. At twelve dollars a pound for live crab and twenty dollars for crab in sourdough form, we'll wait until later in the summer when we can catch our own to enjoy any Dungeness.We walked up to the cable car terminal to take a ride to downtown, but were too close to rush hour to get there and back before our meter expired.I couldn't walk past these unique glass sculptures that were sparkling in the sunlight in our walk along the way.The clouds cleared in the afternoon, so we spent the rest of the day on a quest for the best place to photograph the Golden Gate Bridge. We took pictures from the north, the south, the east, and the west. We got below it and shot up and above it and shot down. This is one of our favorites, but we'll spare you the other 75 to 100 shots.We have a little time tomorrow to see some other things, but there's so much to do and so much to see, I guess we're just going to have to come back another time.

One Season Ends and Another Begins--FINALLY!!!

It was beginning to look like it was going to be deep into the summer before we ever got a dry weekend to put the sailboat in the water that we were in town or not previously obligated to something else. Wouldn’t you know it--it was Mother’s Day weekend. I just hate this activity and Dave’s response is always simply, “I know you do. . .” The translation of that is that it doesn’t matter if I don’t like it or not, it has to be done and heaven knows it would have been a lot less fun to be down at the marina shoveling 16” of snow off of it everyday this winter than it is to take it out every fall and put it back in every spring.
This year didn’t seem too bad though--maybe that was because I didn’t have to assist in the mast stepping process except to take pictures. My part, of which there are no pictures, was to reload all the cushions, life jackets, sails, and other paraphemalia. We learned the hard way the first year we stored it outside that if ANY water leaks in, the cabin is a moldy mess that takes hours of clorox and elbow grease to clean up--also my job. That happened once and now we strip EVERYTHING out of the cabin before we put it away. I was just sure that it would be a mess this year with all the snow we had last winter, but it was as clean inside as it was the day we put it away.

Saturday morning we met Ashley and Scott at the boat launch about nine and the hefty part of the task began--stepping the mast. The three of them climbed onboard and commenced the unwinding and untangling of the six metal shrouds, forestay, and backstay required to keep a 27 foot mast upright.Ashley connects the shrouds and then Scott helps Dave raise it. Scott connects the backstay and Ashley scurries up front to connect the forestay.Voile! The hard part is done!Pull out the rudder and attach it to the back. Lift the motor up to the mount and tighten it down.Attach the tiller and it’s go time.This was one of our least eventful spring commisionings.YEAH!!! Before you know it, you’re back in the marina. Home Sweet Home
You’d think there would be sailing pictures accompanying this post, but there’s still some fine tuning to do after it’s in the water and the rains came back the next evening. In addition to that, we’re not home.
It’s road trip time! The fact that you’re reading this indicates that we’re in the Bay Area with a successful wifi connection. We’ll be taking the next four days to drive down Hiway 1 to Long Beach. Here’s hoping for clear skies and smooth sailing.

Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens

Spring is in full bloom in this part of the northwest. We have some cool, damp days. We have days like yesterday when it just pours at times. And then we have days when it’s 75 degrees and sunny with a light northwest breeze off the river—absolutely perfect in my book. Days like that make me want to grab my camera and run, not walk, to the nearest flower garden. I noticed a few lilac bushes starting to bloom around the neighborhood last week. It was a distinct possibility that the lilacs were beginning to bloom in the Hulda Klager Lilac Gardens in Woodland.The lilacs weren’t in full bloom, but with only a two dollar admissions fee and a fifteen minute drive, it was worth checking out. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of lilacs. I always thought of them as very small purple flowers, but there are so many more.
There are white ones.There are pink ones.There are pink and white ones.Of course there are lots of purple ones. I was surprised to see how VERY different the buds were from the color the flowers were when they opened.But most are just waiting to burst forth.The gardens are only open until Mother’s Day. I’m hoping another of those perfect days will fall on a Monday or Friday so I can leisurely return. The aroma in the gardens makes taking macro photographs of lilacs nearly intoxicating. These were taken on a breezy afternoon so you can imagine how strong the scent was. I'll go again if the south winds subside by the end of the week, but if not, I'll just have to wait until next year. Thanks, Hulda for sharing your gardens with us.

One More Time-Win or Go Home

I was troubled when I doubled checked our blog the other day to see that the horseshoe I posted was upside down. Anyone who knows anything about the tradition of horseshoes being good luck, knows that your horseshoe needs to be hung like a "U" so that all the luck is held in. If it's upside down, the luck spills out and you don't have any. The Blazers lost both games in Houston by a total of FOUR points. They refer to those games on ESPN as heartbreakers. They should be coming home up 3-1 in the series and instead, they're coming back to Portland down 3-1. Here's hoping the Portland Trailblazers hold on to some luck tonight! No matter when the season ends this year, it will have been a fun one. It has been great to have three dates a week during the dark, rainy evenings of a northwest winter. We're excited to do it again next year. GO BLAZERS!!!

Game 4 Portland vs. Houston

A must win! Go Blazers!!!

Blazer Victory in Game 2

Rip City was born in 1970, the Trailblazers first season in Portland, when radio play by play announcer Bill Schonely exclaimed "Rip City!" in a game against the Los Angeles Lakers to describe a great shot made by one of the Blazer players. Other members of the broadcast team encouraged Schonely to continue to use the term. The term went into semi-retirement during the last six years when the Blazers had players who were less than model citizens and the team went though a stretch of not playing good basketball and not making the playoffs.In a larger context it has come to mean (in the Portland area anyway) anything good that happens.
The 2009 NBA playoffs started on April 18 and the Blazers earned home court advantage, so we had a game that night. The atmosphere both inside and outside the Rose Garden (AKA the RG) was festive to say the least.A band was playing,Trailblazer team president, Larry Miller, was in the crowd.Fans who are shown on the big screen in the RG were being interviewed by the media and photographed.Game 1 was everything the Blazers had feared and probably more as they ran into a red hot Houston Rockets team (so much for the home court advantage in the friendly confines of the RG).Game 2 was completely different, as the Blazers played well and tied the series at 1-1 headed to Houston for games 3 and 4.About 2,000 tickets for game 5 went on sale at 10:00am the morning after the Game 2 victory and were sold out in ten minutes. Looks like Rip City! is back in Portland!

A Second Trip to the Fields

Monday was a taste of summer. It was 83 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. Ashley and I went back to the tulip fields after she got off work at noon.It was a completely different day than when Dave and I went. On Friday, the fields were muddy and it was more of a challenge to get in close to get to tulips that were still tight, but not on Monday.Monday, the fields were dry and dusty and there were tons of people there. I had thought we might have the place to ourselves, but a sunny afternoon brought everyone out. You had to work hard and be VERY patient to get pictures without people in them, especially around this tractor.I finally just got up close and personal with it.Some of the tulips were over opened because of the warm weekend. It looked as though they had gone through the fields and taken out a lot of the ones that were looking shabby. That made it easier to get single tulips in the foreground with lots of color in the background. I was so surprised when I looked at this shot closely and saw what appears to be a brushstroke-like background. I've only ever seen that on post processing programs, but this came straight from the camera with no adjustments.
The festival continues until May 3rd, but with Blazer playoffs and a boat to launch, I probably won't make it back. They do open the fields again in the fall though. . .

All Caught Up--Part 4

Blogging was on my to do list all last week, but laundry, dishes, unpacking, yard work, piano, etc. kept pushing to the top. I thought I was going to sit down Friday afternoon and get to it when Dave called. He was taking the afternoon off. It's supposed to be near 80 today, so I had planned to take the Monday and drive to Woodburn and check out the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival, but with Dave home, why not go together. So we did.I've always wanted to go in years past, but it's so packed on the weekends.We didn't have the whole place to ourselves on Friday, but sometimes it felt like it. We usually have the boat in the water by this time too and sunny Saturdays are spent on the water, not in muddy tulip fields.This was the first nice weekend we've had and you can see the dark clouds in the background. We drove through several heavy cloud bursts on the way south.Ashley is only working a half day today and I have no piano lessons, so we're going to wander back to the fields this afternoon.Maybe we will have the whole place to ourselves today.I think this catches us up to date and I hope to never get this far behind ever again. We took the camera to the Blazers' first playoff game in six years last night, but I think I'll pass on posting that nearly thirty point blowout by the Rockets at this time. I'll save them for a Wednesday post after a Blazer victory in game 2 on Tuesday night. Here's hoping. Win, lose, or draw, the city is in party mode. Blazermania is back and Rip City is on the rise.