A Day at the Coast

A few days ago, in magical weather, I departed for the coast at Santa Cruz with Emily & Ella and Rebecca & Max. It was just a day trip but highly picturesque and entertaining. We started off in Santa Clara, traversed the coastal ranges - which took us to an altitude of perhaps 600m - before plunging towards the harbour and beach at Santa Cruz. The road skirted some of the wealthy villages like Los Gatos, home to some of the gurus of Silicon Valley.

The first stop was the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, which is an area of spectacular redwoods, some of the tallest and most impressive trees in the world. We spent a couple of hours walking the trails among spectacular vegetation and fauna. Have a look at some of the attached pictures. The first is a section of timber at the entrance to the park whose rings span a whopping 2200 years. Redwoods are long-lived! The second shows a typical tree - straight and tall. And the third shows me standing with Bec and Max beneath one of the largest trees in the park. Finally there is a picture of one of the district's enormous yellow banana slugs that inhabit the forest floor and break down timber and other decaying matter.

We then headed for the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot which comprises a patch of hillside among the Redwood trees where strange things have 'happened', the laws of physics and biology are suspended, and Armageddon awaits! Apparently a landslide caused a house to slip down the hillside and arrive at its ultimate resting place horribly misshapen. Inside the building, nothing is square, balls run up-hill, people's heights are deformed, and participants take on a several degree list. Outside, the shape of trees is deformed and branches only grow on one side or the other. Personally, I thought it all a con trick, though cleverly executed by a credulous audience.

Then we to the beach for a late lunch, watched an impromptu beach volley-ball game and witnessed some lovely scenery - as the attached photos show. All in all it was a lovely day out. Alas, after the glorious sun-set we had to travel an hour or so back in the dark.

AS

And on the Second Day

Our destination today, Monday 23 January, was ... surprise - surprise ... the Google headquarters in Mountain View, about 20km away. I reported on my trip there in the first quarter of 2011, so will not go over similar ground. However, the Googleplex is so vast that one always comes across new ideas and additions. This time, I had a close-up inspection of their wonderful conference bike pictures here and even took the liberty of sitting on it to get a feel for the great idea of having mobile and open-air conference meetings. I didn't pedal the bike because (a) its rather heavy and (b) I wouldn't be insured if I broke anything. As you can see it seats 7 people, but only one can steer direction.

The second new thing I saw this time around was the Android building with its collection of Androids in front, each representing the names of the evolving Android operating system. Here we have two that may be familiar to you if you have an Android phone. I can readily identify the Gingerbread OS and the Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) OS, the latter having emerged on the world stage last December. And the second picture shows me standing next to the ICS holding up my Android phone (The Samsung Nexus), which was recently released and is the first phone to operate the wonderful ICS OS.

Max thought the 'statues' of the operating system were wonderful and ran around them. Unfortunately, the area has had so much rain in recent days that both he and Rebecca became bogged. Max tried to eat a donut version - see below. After Google we headed to Valley Fair, a shopping centre to buy a few things. Now, imagine my surprise to discover that Dot and I actually own the shopping centre! Well, it's owned by one of the companies in which have a shareholding, Westfield. This Australian owned company is the largest owner of shopping centres in the world and, apart from down-under, has most of its holdings in the US and Britain, the latter including the massive centre at Stratford in London ... near the Olympic Stadium.We own a few bricks in all those.

AS

San Jose Children's Museum

For our first day out after our arrival in California we decided on the Children's Museum in downtown San Jose (southern end of the San Francisco Bay area). One reason for staying indoors was the awful weather on our arrival - wet and cold. But I also think some of us were jet-lagged and not functioning properly. Anyway, Max needed company of his peers after putting up with Grandpa and Mummy for 24 hours and being tied an aeroplane sea. Moreover, it was a good spot to take Ella, who was very interested in her surroundings. The blokes went to that destination by tram and the girls - Emily, Rebecca and Ella - went by car. We couldn't all travel by car as the baby seat takes up a lot of room and the car had only 5 slots for the six of us.

Max greatly enjoyed his time at the museum, which was tailor made for kids his age with a scientific or artistic bent. The first two pictures show Max dusting off Mammoth bones covered in sand - he's being a Palaeo-ontologist; and the third shows his creative side admired by cousin Ella and Aunt Emily.Ella is also watching him in the second of these photos.

The next three photos show Max (a) making an impression ... of his hand, (b) trying to place a spinning disk on a revolving platform ... to see how well it remains upright and wanders across the platform's smooth surface, and (c) plucking strings against a revolving cylinder ... watched by his mother and Aunt..

The Museum was strong on fossil bones and had wonderful displays about woolly Mammoths - including a partly complete skeleton pieced together.

All told it was a good day out. This was finished off by a visit to the Great Mall of America, also in down-town San Jose. The prices seemed so low given that $A1 now purchases $US1.05!

AS

Long Journey

I'm now 12,500km from home, a journey that took three flights and a little over 24 hours due to moderate stop-overs in Sydney and Los Angeles. rebecca and Max accompanied me from Sydney onwards, but poor Dot is left behind in Sydney. We're now in sodden Santa Clara and about to venture out into the rain to make the best of the opportunities confronting us. Why does the rain keep following me? Armidale was dry when I leftm but it was pouring with rain in Sydney and LA and it had only just stopped in Santa Clara when we got here. After brief respite, it's wet again!

Watch this space for further posts over the next two weeks!

AS

A Little More on Sub-Tropical Rain-forest

My last post mentioned the sky-walk at Dorrigo Mountain, which is shown in the first picture below.

From the end one can see lovely sweeping views out over the Dorrigo National Park and most of the vegetation is sub-tropical rain-forest. You can make out the thick canopy of trees in the next photo, all straining to reach the sun-light above.

And, in the distance, one can see the meadows alongside the Bellinger Valley, the Bellinger being one of the smaller coastal rivers in this part of the world. This valley contains part of the Waterfall Way connecting Armidale to the coast - route that we have often taken as the kids were growing up, but no longer so oftern travelled.

The closed canopy shades the ground and when we took the path down to the valley floor the light dimmed markedly, with occasional patches of speckled light like the one occupied here by young Maxwell, who is playing with one of the many vines hanging from the tall trees. On the way down he spotted some lizards and a green tree-snake, but we didn't see one the Regent Bower Birds or another Brush Turkey.

The next photo shows the density of vegetation and the huge variety of species growing together. Just look at the variegated shade of green.

And, like most rain-forests, the trees themselves are host to masses of epiphytes, which are things like  ferns, bromeliads, air plants, and orchids, some of which are shown in the next photo. Epiphytes are no parasitic and do not harm the host tree. 

All in all it's a lovely destination. Come over here and this is one place we can go.

AS

Welcome to 2012

This is my first post in what is looking like a stunning year for activity and achievement. And, I've written it after going out for a fast early morning bike ride around Armidale (6.30am, 13km, 35 minutes, 23 kph). That came about because I was reading last night that our increasingly sedentary life-styles are a major health threat!

Now for a hectic day because  we have one young Maxwell staying with us demanding to go to the skate park twice a day, out on trips to various places, shopping to buy this that and the other (so far, the major items are a new scooter and a back-pack, but there is a never end stream of requests for ice-creams, slushies, and sausage rolls), and reading Goosebumps books). By the way, why did the sausage roll? Because it saw the apple turnover. On the other hand, we have means of exacting revenge! Max has to practice his reading and arithmetic at least once a day. He's into gadgets and is particularly enamoured of my new smart-phone, the Samsung Nexus running Google's new Ice-Cream Sandwich operating system.

My first picture shows Max at his favourite Armidale haunt, the local skate park. He's one of the younger kids there, but is always trying himself out to go higher, faster, further, and more risky ... so we have to keep a close eye on proceedings. When I'm there I try to blend in by wearing my board-shorts, a singlet, and a baseball cap, which is sometimes on backwards. However, I also take along my Kindle to read or the latest issue of the Australian Financial Review, both of which are I guess a bit daggy.

Yesterday we took Max to the spectacular Dorrigo National Park, which was good fun. It lies about 120km east of Armidale and fairly close to the coast. To the west is Point Lookout at an altitude of about 1650m (5300 ft) with its remnant Antarctic Beech vegetation dated back to the last ice age. Dorrigo mountain is only half that altitude but has one of the world's best examples of subtropical rain-forest and is also a lot warmer! This photo shows Max on the right communing with one member of the park's lovely wild-life, a scrub (or brush) turkey (Alectura lathami).

One of the high points (excuse the pun) of the National Park is its forest canopy walk stretching out horizontally perhaps 100m from the mountain edge over an increasingly large drop below until one is left among the tops of the tress and presented with lovely views. The next picture shows Max pulling a face for the camera with the rain-forested slopes in the background. Note the extremely lush vegetation that results from combining warm temperatures with up to 3000mm of rain annually. That's about 120 inches of rain.

And here are Max and Dot peering over the edge of the board-walk a long way down to the forest floor.

AS

Summer has Arrived

After feeling frozen for much of a bleak and wet December, we awoke to the New Year with bright sunshine and warm temperatures. Armidale's forecast maximum for today is 27C and tomorrow we should reach 29C. Both are pleasantly warm and it's lovely seeing the bright sunshine playing on the verdant landscape! It's interesting to see how fine weather boosts the spirits and even the stick market has joined in the spirit of things by rising over 1% on the first trading day of the year. Now, there's a hypothesis for me to test!

AS