Day 1

OK, now that we're back, I'll tell the story of our Alaska trip, perhaps a day at a time.

Day 1, Thursday, Aug. 23. We get picked up 6:30am or so for a 9:45 flight. This "three hours lead time at the airport" rule is best served by ignoring it, but I have trouble doing that, so we get there early. We had the clever idea this time to reduce our luggage count and use One Big Suitcase. Suggestion for future travellers: don't do that. We get to the airport and discover that our bag is overweight (a risk we assumed might happen) and that we had to redistribute the weight. What the hell? We figured we'd be able to just pay an extra tariff or something; no such luck. So we redistribute. In the course of the redistribution, I drop the now-70-pound suitcase on my toe. Broken nail. Ugly. Painful. Ow.

But we got on the plane OK, and it was an uneventful trip, the best sort. At SFO, we dither around a bit and then find the guy to show us the way to the bus to the ship. Turns out there are four couples on the bus (for the first stretch), and three of them lived at some point in the town of Monroe, Washington. Pure coinkydink.

We get to the ship. It's an odd looking critter. Built in 1991, it was designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. Same guy who did the Pompidou Centre in Paris. The ship? Well...it's a really dumb design. There's no place to stand outside on the front of the ship! All front views are enclosed, and what's worse, the glass is treated with some real crappy ultraviolet blocking stuff that also blocks a lot of the view. What's more, there's no classical promenade around the ship. Dumb design. There's a reason Princess is retiring the Regal Princess next year; it's just not a very good ship.

Anyway, we make our way to our room, and discover, unlike everyone elses' room, ours is closed and locked. So we stand around for a half hour while they find someone with a key. For all the grousing we might do, this was the only instance in the entire cruise (not counting one ill-advised foray to the hamburger bar) that we got anything other than excellent service from the staff. (Oh, and not getting our luggage delivered until late that evening; if they'd just told us that often luggage takes several hours to make it to the rooms, we'd not have been so pissed. It does seem to be a running joke among the entertainers.)

Back

Sitting in SFO now, waiting for plane home. More later.

No beverages including shampoo

Greetings from on board the Regal Princess, en route to Juneau.

I don't know if we'll be able to post any pictures en route; connectivity is slow and expensive.

As we prepared to board the flight to San Francisco, the gate agent explained the new rules to us, including "No beverages including shampoo."

comments

ok, so I'll deal with the spam and anyone who wants can leave comments. Damned spammers.

Cops in Bakersfield

A few weeks ago we were in Bakersfield, doing the Costco-Trader Joe's run. I was feeling crappy; Roberta was driving. Suddenly we notice a police car with his red lights on. Roberta pulls over, of course. The cop walks up to the window, and says, "I notice that your Nevada registration tag reads 04. That means it's expired." I said, "Take another look. 04 is the month." He walks to the back of the car, then comes back and says "Oh, I see the 2007. Thanks for the education." and walks off. We were quite amused.

We're back in Las Vegas now...we've got some more interesting stuff to post, but first we need to wake up.

Grr. Webcam 1 is screwed up -- tilt is stuck in a real low position. So I've repositioned it and disabled pan and tilt. Sniff.

Smoke above the water

There's a fire burning in the mountains above the south side of the lake. Pinatubo sunset, Kernville style.

We've decided we need to make the "comments" section only for registered blogspot users; we were getting spam comments, several every day, far more than any comments anyone else was making. Sorry about that.

Our favorite sign

Cows are pastured on the steep hills above Kern Canyon. This sign says it all.

Webcam 3 has moved

We've moved Webcam 3 so that it now has a good look up the canyon. The top right position points to a local landmark called "Yellowjacket"; off in the distance is Baker Point. This camera's is almost out of range of the wireless connection, so reception may be spotty.

Racing snake

This is a California Striped Racer, Masticophis lateralis lateralis . I think this is a juvenile one -- adults can be four feet long.

Water, water

Here's the river going gently over the rapids, as we lose a couple hundred cubic feet of volume every day.

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This is looking up Bull Run Creek. It's quite placid now; this section is warm and barely knee deep. Some big squawfish live there now.

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And just a nice arty shot. Actually, it came out totally black, but to my surprise it contained a ton of information when I tweaked it.

Snakes on a plain

This lovely King Snake met us on our walk around the property last night. (OK, we were emptying the dog, and she pointed out the crawler to us.) He did the little "hi, I'm a rattlesnake" game, but we were not impressed by the wiggling of his little tail -- nor did his lovely brown stripes cause us to think he was a diamondback. He did entertain all of us, though, especially Stella, who had to be pulled back from a potential snack.

Waist Deep in the ...

Another back yard shot. I've been learning a bit about flyfishing -- not by doing it, but by watching it on the river and in a video a friend is making. It's delightful to watch -- and there's an obvious difference between the skills of the average and the excellent fishers. I can see how it can be a meditative sort of hobby, even without the geeky obsessiveness of fly tying.

More sights along the way

Sugar Pine cone by the side of the road, and ghost oaks
 

Rock Art

and remnant of the Stormy Fire.

Knob, dome, and needles

This view is from NF-22s10, heading toward Johnsondale. The little town of Johnsondale used to be a classic company town; when the logging business folded, Johnsondale turned into the "R Ranch", which basically is a timeshare trailer park around the log pond. If you have Google Earth, you can look at it with this -- let me know if this doesn't work.

Looking down

We went on a little drive up and around the mountains. This is up around 6500 feet; we're looking down on Kern Canyon, near Fairview.

Front Door Bun

This guy was hanging out by our front door (this is a through-the-window shot.) The bunny population here is astounding.

Meanwhile, I'm going to try tonight to get some bat pictures; turns out we have the best place in the universe to watch bats catching bugs.

A nearby friend

This one's not on our property -- it's on the other side of Lake Isabella.

A couple new links

I've added links in the left column to "Nature Alley", a nice Kern County nature site, as well as a third webcam. We're moving them around.

Bear Snax

A few days later, further down Burlando, I find this again.












It seem Mr. or Ms. Bear stopped at this idyllic little campsite by the river for a drink...












after a Garbage Day buffet up Siretta Street and Pine. 

Splish splash

No pics today -- we put on our water shoes and went hiking up Bull Run Creek. Actually, we waded aross to the island, which still has a wee bit of river flowing over it north of us, and walked north over what's river bottom sometimes and island other times, then turned west and walked down to the creek, and then in the creek back to the house -- I guess about a each way, no great distance. The creek was delightful! Warm enough to swim in (but mostly wading depth), crystal clear, full of teeny fish and little fish and a few almost big fish, little rainbow troutfish. We're going to procure a waterproof camera.

The river level is getting lower and lower every day.

The mule next door

Madison has his own paddock; the other mule and the buckskin horse have to share one.

What does the bear do in the woods?

Most of the pics here from on the property, but this one was about a half mile up the road (where Roberta runs every morning.) It's about the size of a woman's size 10 running shoe.

Quail!

A mess of quail today. One particular bunch was right in our front yard -- two sets of parents and babies, one set of 4 babies rather larger than the other set of 4 babies. Too cute. Hard to get pics of, though, because our windows are caked with some sort of residue from an overactive sprinkler system....

Parasites

A few of the trees are full of these parasites. We'll take care of them, but I haven't figured out just what they are -- anyone recognize it?

And we're here...

Feels damned good.

Here's one of our river webcams. When it's up, here's our other river webcam. And here's our Bull Run Weather Station.

Heading back!

We're heading back to K'ville tomorrow. It's hot here in LV, and it's hot in Kernville. The house in LV has great air conditioning. We'll see about the house in Kernville....

We're looking forward to being there, certainly. Coming up: a meet and greet with the other residents of Rio del Loma.

Won't be as wondrous at night, I fear, with the river so much lower.