Big Sur Magic

One of my favorite places on earth, and yes, the water really is that beautiful turquoise color.

Photo by Enchanted Seashells

McWay Falls is an 80-foot-tall waterfall on the coast of Big Sur in central California that flows year-round into the Pacific Ocean from McWay Creek in Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park, about thirty-seven miles south of Carmel.

During high tide, it’s a tidefall, a waterfall that empties directly into the ocean.

The waterfall poured directly into the ocean until a massive fire, landslide, and highway reconstruction project near the area in 1983-84 filled the cove with enough material to form a sandy beach several dozen feet out.

The falls, creek, and canyon are named after Christopher McWay, an early settler and farmer from New York state who arrived in the area with his son Christopher Jr. around 1874.

The park itself is named after Julia Pfeiffer Burns (1868-1928), a local and legendary early pioneer and resident who impressed Helen Brown and had run a ranch in McWay canyon with her husband, John B. Burns.

#WordlessWednesday

Silent Sunday: November 1

Some pics from today’s sky and last night’s hazy sunset and full moon.

Pinnacles National Park

Pinnacles National Park is an American national park protecting a mountainous area located east of the Salinas Valley in Central California, eighty miles southeast of San Jose.

Could the sky have been any more blue?

#WordlessWednesday

…to an infinite degree

Did you think I was referring to love? I could have been, but nope, not this time.

While this isn’t my photo, it’s worth sharing. In a cool social media twistyturny kind of way, I was chatting with a fractal artist on Twitter and shared my previous fractal post with him, Fractals Freak Me Out.

Here’s a link to Dan’s site and a post about fractals:
https://www.redideostudio.com/what-in-the-heck-is-a-fractal-why-should-i-care/

His book of fractal art is soon to be published and he kindly shared a photo with me, so here it is for a very wordy #WordlessWednesday. I am sooo jelly of creative people.

I wish you every success in your awesome endeavors!

Daniel Travers
Multimedia Producer & Artist
www.redideostudio.com

Fractals Freak Me Out

 

 

AfterGlow

There is nothing so beautiful as the glow of late afternoon sun through bright orange Birds of Paradise.

I spent the day digging out a tree and stubborn roots that should never have been planted so close to the house. That left a big hole that was crying to be filled in.

My Birds of Paradise were ready to be divided, so I worked and worked and worked at it until I could separate a section to fill in the empty space.

I like to fill in the empty spaces—in gardens, in conversations, and in sad hearts, too.

When I finished, I looked up and was rewarded with a beautiful sunglow behind the Birds of Paradise.

Paradise, right?

Sky Fire

Last night.

#WordlessWednesday

Red Moon Rising

Waxing Gibbous.

I’m not sure if it’s red because of the fires or because of a planetary shadow or if it’s some sort of blood moon, but it was super cool, no matter what the reason.

Here’s what NASA says: “The air molecules from Earth’s atmosphere scatter out most of the blue light. The remaining light reflects onto the Moon’s surface with a red glow, making the Moon appear red in the night sky. The name “blood moon” is also sometimes used for a Moon that appears reddish because of dust, smoke or haze in the sky.”

Taken at 9:30 p.m. with my Canon Rebel T3i. No filters. This is the true color.

Goodnight, moon.

Me and My Shadow

Cool Canyon hike. Anza-Borrego desert, California. #WordlessWednesday

Hungry?

Just a hungry scrub jay hanging out on the deck. They LOVE raw peanuts. I still find a few empty shells hidden in the garden nine years later..

One of my favorite photos from September 2011.

First there was one, then another, and for a while, there were about four jays who hung out and let me hand feed them.

Did you know that scrub jays are very intelligent?

From Wiki: Recent research has suggested that western scrub jays, along with several other corvids, are among the most intelligent of animals. The brain-to-body mass ratio of adult scrub jays rivals that of chimpanzees and cetaceans, and is dwarfed only by that of humans. Scrub jays are also the only non-primate or non-dolphin shown to plan ahead for the future (known as metacognition), which was previously thought of as a uniquely human trait Other studies have shown that they can remember locations of over 200 food caches, as well as the food item in each cache and its rate of decay. To protect their caches from pilfering conspecifics, scrub jays will choose locations out of sight of their competitors, or re-cache caches once they are alone, suggesting that they can take into account the perspective of others. According to new research from the University of California @ Davis, scrub jays also summon others to screech over the body of a dead jay. The birds’ cacophonous “funerals” can last for up to half an hour.

#ThrowbackThursday