Only A Year And A Day

So a year ago yesterday (sorry, a day late doing this) (and some, because it’s taken me much of the day to go through pictures in between being too sick to function), the Monterrey monsoon was over, and it was a fine day for driving from Gilroy back to Fresno, via some stops.

Marina Beach was one of those.  San Juan Bautista was another.  Plus Donut Nation in Los Banos, but no pictures of that.  At the risk of tastelessness due to current world events, here are some pictures.

As always, click for larger versions.  The beach pictures were inherently smaller and so the larger size is the original full size, less than 800 pixels wide.  Older camera.  The Bautista pictures are a full 800 in the larger size.  A lot of it is simply scenic, perhaps not anything outrageously special.

This is before you scramble down to the beach, looking roughly west toward the peninsula.  The water in all of these is rougher and colored differently than it might have had there not just been such a storm…

I was impressed with the surf.  This was my first encounter with the Pacific.  I waded in the Gulf of Mexico in 1988 or so, in Galveston.  And of course I grew up near the Atlantic.

It didn’t seem to bother the duck, or whatever type of bird it was:

Sometimes you just have to get wet.  Luckily there was a convenient place to change pants…

Finally, the obligatory pictures of each of us, including one in which Deb appears to be fleeing the big waves…

San Juan Bautista was one of the early missions, many of them setup by one intensely dedicated priest.  It’s noted for being right on the San Andreas and yet… being there still.  I am enough into the geology thing that seeing the San Andreas was more of a thrill than it would be for most of the population.

Here are the bells as they appear from the vicinity of the San Andreas exhibit…

Here’s a plaque on a rock about the San Andreas exhibit, most readable if you click for the 800 pixel wide version…

The nicer looking of the two directions down the walk that goes right along the fault…

Another look down at the fault, along the line of brush where the land drops off on the other side of the walk.  It’s really not much to look at, but it doesn’t need to be to command respect…

Finally, some pictures in the gardens behind the mission and its exhibits.  The second one is fuzzy, but still nice in an almost impressionist sort of way…

And that’s it for a year ago December 30th.  We did nothing special the 31st, and on the first we bought the rings:

At least that’s the day we think we remember doing it.  We were trying to get to the jewelry stores before everything closed early that day.  We checked one we’d been recommended, that was not in a mall, and it was actually closed for the day.  At least we had some idea what we wanted, having started looking at rings online long before I went out there.

There you have it, a bit of boring history and some relatively cool pictures.  No doubt there will be more along these lines Sunday, so watch out.

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.

<< Back to main

Powered by ExpressionEngine