The Scorpion Submarine

 On the same day in Long Beach that we clambered around the Queen Mary, we also took in a tour of the Russian Scorpion Submarine. While there are interenet rumors that it was submarine which The Hunt for Red October was based on (and the portrait of Sean Connery in the gift shop does nothing to dissuade that idea), the truth is a little less cinematic. It was actually decommissioned by the Russian military during the collapse of the Soviet Union and sold to a group of Australian investors.

 Being right beside the Queen Mary gives you a nice opportunity to see it from above as well and appreciate the size and shape of the whole craft. This photo also shows the entry and exit ramps tp reach the ship and the edge of the gift shop in the lower left corner.

 The inside is a great spot for photographers who like to combine low light with tubes, gauges, and valves. Once again I put my trusty fisheye lens to the test and got some nice pictures of the interior, my favorite of which is Kathryn crouched at the end of this array of torpedo tubes. Scorpion had 4 at the front and back, along with elaborate winches for loading the next shot in. There were also a number of round doors to crawl/sling your way through and an active periscope on the bridge.

Strange sightings in the sky around LA

 We saw quite a few strange things up in the skies of Los Angeles, like this Ultralight craft which looks far too big and heavy to me to be supported by what looks like such a small wing. That said, they were contentedly soaring across the ocean and clearly know what they were doing, so it's clearly a viable vehicle.

 We've seen the Good Year blimp both times we've been in LA, but I particularly like the marquee in this picture. As far as I can tell, the pilot was just fine and we just had good luck in the timing of the photo... though being L.A. its equally likely that there was a superspy chase culminating in a zeppelin battle which we were totally unaware of.

 I'm not sure if it was because President Obama was in town that weekend, or if I'm just not used to seeing military aircraft randomly, but this helicopter was an unexpected sight. There were quite a few traffic and civilian choppers as well, but this one in particular looks a little more warlike, though I could be completely misunderstanding its mission. Either way a neat sighting.

Aboard the Queen Mary

The RMS Queen Mary served as an ocean liner from the 30s to the late 60s as everything from a luxury liner to a WW2 troop transport until its retirement as a tourist attraction/hotel in Long Beach. Kathryn and I initially weren't too keen on what we thought would be a kitchy tribute to excess, but changed our minds and thoroughly enjoyed our time onboard.

 We had free roam of most of the ship (which ones again, is a great place to bring a wide angle lens) and also took a behind-the-scenes ghost tour. I continue to not believe in ghosts, but our guide had excellent delivery and knew his stuff. It was also a great opportunity to peer around some creepy bits of the ship like the old pool and where the boilers used to be. (Part of the contract to keep the ship in Long Beach involved a guarantee to remove any transportation functionality, so the enormous furnaces that once powered it were removed).

 Its been awhile since I shared a fisheye planet with everyone, and I was particularly pleased with the way this one from the front of the ship turned out. Having lots of wires running overhead forced a particularly interesting perspective to avoid cutting anything out and I very much enjoy the binary feel the final image has.

 

As a quirky aside for this picture, near the bottom left there is a large white dome (click on the image to enlarge, as always) which once housed Howard Hughes's "Spruce Goose"

California Marine Mammal Assortment

 We saw quite a few different marine mammals in California and want to share a few highlights in a single post. Starting off, Grey Whales were making their annual migration from Mexico to the Arctic and all along the coastal highway we could see the puffs of their breath as small groups passed us by. Kathryn was quite delighted to look for them for hours and while they were hard to photograph or see very closesly, it was enthralling to look out for their plumes of exhalation. This was a new species for us both and an exciting opportunity.

 We have seen Sea Otters in the Aquarium numerous times, but both hoped to maybe catch a glimpse of one in the distance. They are very rare in B.C. so we assumed they would be rare elsewhere, but in California they seem to be doing just fine. We saw groups of them at least half a dozen times, including this heap of mothers with sleeping babies on their tummies all rafted in kelp near Monterey.

California Sea Lions were certainly the easiest of all our marine mammals to spot as they congregate in large numbers on piers and beaches across the state. They also grunt at each other 24/7 so they are pretty easy to locate but still very charming to see them lounge around on land or dash about in the water.

Hearst Castle Interiors

Much like the exterior, the interior of Hearst Castle was an amazing collection of repurposed European art and furniture. Below is the view of the dining room with a full antique table, mideval tapestries, and engraved ceiling. This photo was taken near the enormous fireplace at one end of the room and apparently as guests stayed longer throughout the week, if they became less interesting to the hosts, they were seated closer and closer to the fire in one of the least subtle dining arrangements ever.

 The billiars room was similarly adorned with antique tapestries and carpets. Its hard to see from the photo below, but the ceiling was being restored to reveal its original etchings and paintwork which had been damaged by decades of smoke and the general passage of time.

 We showed you the Neptune pool in our view of exteriors, but there is also another indoor pool at the far end of the property. To ensure that the "over-the-top" per square foot of the property was maintained, the floor and walls of the indoor pool area were inlaid with gold.

Hearst Castle Exteriors

 William Randolph "Citizen Kane" Hearst was a newspaper magnate back in the 20's when you could spend 30 years building a mansion full of centuries old artworks in the back hills of California and then surround it with exotic imported animals. It was a simpler time when you could ship your wife off to New York so you could live with your mistress, invite the Marx Brothers over for the weekend, and raise zebras in your 240,000 acre backyard.

 Not only did Hearst live in a time when having Charlie Chaplin over for bootlegged rum was a social event and not a fever dream, he also lived when modern antiquities trafficking was called "redecorating". The entire grounds are covered with various greek and roman treasures but I found this Egyptian statue of of Sekmet a particularly unlikely purchase to try and make in the 21st century.

 The "Neptune Pool" occupies a sizeable area with a network of walkways and guest houses around it. Since California is having a water crisis and the pool has a "leak" (of apparently several thousand gallons a day) the area was drained and under repairs, but is still a striking place to have a walk around.

 

The grounds of Hearst Castle are absolutely amazing to explore, and I would heartily endorse anyone wanting to visit to bring a wide-angle or fisheye lens with them as the photographic opportunities are incredible.

Beauty and the Beach

 LA may have its share of snarled slow moving traffic and urban sprawl, but it also has amazing and lovely beaches that go for miles and miles and miles. On our last full day in the city we took a morning trip to Playa del Rey to enjoy the sun and surf. There were a handful of dolphins hunting nearby and though we chose not to try and swim out to them, it was very fun to see their fins in the water.

 Kathryn is a particular delight to watch play in the waves, and I'm sure most photographers would agree that the true reason burst mode was developed for cameras was to get just the right picture of a lovely girl in a bikini splashing through the water ;)

 The beach also had a derelict boat which had washed ashore years ago which had anything valuable stripped out and the rest was covered in graffiti. The waves and current have a strange suction at this beach and even standing on the waterline you can feel the sand pulled out from under your feet with every wave, so its no great surprise that the wreck is half full of sand and would be a huge pain to move.

Santa Barbara Mission

 On our drive from Los Angeles to Monterey, we stopped in the town of Santa Barbara to visit their Franciscan mission (click on the image below to enlarge it). Various iterations and improvements on this place of worship have been underway since 1786 and it represents just one of the missions dotting along the California coast.

 The main courtyard houses an enormous fig tree which really benefits from a wide angle lens to try and capture just how completely it fills the area and provides a delightful cooling shade. This courtyard was also home to several species of birds and a number of small lizards which could be found sunning themselves on trees or rocks.

 This side gate was a small feature of the entire mission, but for me captured more of what I had expected from an early-settlement California "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" sort of holy place. While the modern mission is very appealing, this part of the wall felt a bit like looking through time to the original building of long ago.

Elephant Seals of San Simeon

Another major highlight of our California holiday was our timing to see Elephant Seals in large numbers on a beach near San Simeon. As long-time readers may well remember, we have seen elephant seals a few times in recent years, but only females. It has certainly been special to see the females, but when the males are 2.5 times as big (up to 5,100lbs) and have giant weird noses, they are certainly a sight worth seeking out. While the southern elephant seal is apparently even larger, elephant seals in general are the largest seals so they are as big and crazy as a pinniped can get!

The pupping and breeding season was in February, so we missed most of the action, but these things are pretty incredible just to see having a nap. The older a male gets, the more enormous his nose and they have an intense rivalry for females which trims down their lifespan quite a bit. Females often live for 22 years while a male will hit full maturity by 8 and typically die well before age 14.

 The whole focus of the males and females meeting up on these beaches of course is to produce pups, and as the trio below can attest, they are pretty darn cute. These little guys have a pretty extreme childhood as well; their mothers feed them 50% fat milk for 4-5 weeks and then abandon them. Figuring out life as they go, they typically stay near the beaches where they were born for another 12 weeks and then head out to sea until next year.

Space Shuttle Endeavour

As part of our recent trip to California, we visited the California Science Center which is home to the Endeavour, one of the 3 retired space shuttles. While the craft itself is placed out of reach and far more fragile than you would expect, they do have a small area where you can touch the original wheels as Kathryn is demonstrating below. I don't typically go for touch exhibits, but I made the effort here since its not often you get to feel something that people sent into orbit and back.

I recall when Columbia blew up in re-entry that it was caused by damage to the tiles on the exterior but, until I saw the vehicle up close, I had no real context for what that meant. The majority of the craft is covered in incredibly particular tiles which are coloured to reflect or absorb heat at key points, and can individually expand or contract as needed to maintain the condition of the ship in space. It's hard to tell from the picture, but each tile is about the size of an a tea saucer, composed mostly of silica, and would apparently crumble in your hands if you made the effort.

 The hangar that stores Endeavour is certainly an ideal spot for panoramas (or a wide angle lens at the very least) and I was content to shoot more than a few pictures in there. This was one of my top 3 target spots for our visit and it most certainly delivered the excitement I was hoping for. Carl Sagan has explained how we're all made of star stuff, but its truly humbling to see one of the pinnacles of human achievement that got us back out into space.

(Click on the image above to enlarge it to soak in its full majesty)

La Brea

Back in 2008, Kathryn and I were down in LA visiting her brother and seized the opportunity to check out the La Brea Tar Pits. Because after years in the movie industry, when I think of Hollywood, I think of a terrified and witless brute thrashing itself to death in several meters of steaming waste. The pits themselves are a bit of a shock to find as the city is so built up around them that you simply come to a green area full of puddles and pools of tar. Apparently there is so much tar in the area that its not uncommon for it to start seeping through people's basement foundations.
The on-site museum had an excellent selection of bones for Kathryn to admire and enjoy along with a lab for analysing bone and pollen samples and the like. One of the strangest displays was a rack of dire wolf skulls several times the number shown in the picture below. Being pack hunters with a strong alpha leadership system it was apparently not uncommon for whole packs to get caught in the tar following their top dogs. And with so many large animals in the tar as well its not surprising that wolf packs would get greedy about the chance for so much fresh meat.
Speaking of tar just popping up out of the ground, there were frequent pools at random throughout the grounds. Kathryn and her brother Steven were totally hypnotized by this and spent many happy minutes poking in the tar with sticks and generally making a mess.