Tag: History


Jan
2016

A Family Trip to Monterey and More

categories: Travel
Well, hello! It's been a while since I've posted, but I'll re-kick off with some more travel blogging. On Sunday, January tenth, our family went down to Palo Alto and met up with Grandma Susie and Grandpa Bob to see the Rodin sculpture garden and gallery there and the chapel at Stanford University. On Monday, we went to the mission of San Juan Baptista, and on Tuesday to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I thought I would share photos large today rather than in collages – after all, I am very happy with my new camera and its great pictures. Please tell me in the comments which you prefer, this or collages.
 
Sunday
This is the front of the chapel at Stanford. It was really amazing to stand there looking at it and realize that that is all mosaic!
 
Although most of the Rodin statues are in the gallery/sculpture gardens, the Burghers of Calais are near the chapel.
 
I thought that the pose of this one of the Burghers is quite interesting. He appears to be wondering at the fate he has volunteered for, and almost surprised. Seeing all these statues by Rodin, I thought it was very interesting how different it is seeing such things in three dimensions, not only two. It is very neat how you can really walk around these statues, and they are almost on a level with you.
 
Here is the Thinker. Another thing that was interesting looking at Rodin's statues was how they are actually not quite perfectly proportioned. In the Thinker, as well as in the Burghers of Calais, the hands and feet are too large compared to the rest of the body. The effect is quite intentional, though, and they would not be quite the same if they were perfect. After all, you might say that that non-perfection is what Rodin's statues, so different from the classical and neoclassical statues favored at the time, are about.
 
Monday

The front of the Mission church of San Juan Baptista. It is still used as the parish church for that area, and is really doing quite well when you think that it is over two hundred and thirty years old although restoration work has been done.

The gardens at the Mission are so peaceful, even now. San Juan Baptista is now the only surviving mission with a fully enclosed courtyard.
 
I wonder what this view from the Mission hill was like, three hundred years ago? Probably nicer. Grasslands, I suppose.
 

In the afternoon, after we got back from the Mission, Grandma and Grandpa showed us how to play miniature golf at the free course in the KOA we stayed at. We all liked it, not just the little ones, but Mom only took pictures of them. All the others are mine, but I didn't take any of the miniature golf and she borrowed my camera then because she forgot hers. Aren't the Littles sweet?

 

Tuesday

Before we went to the Aquarium, we ate lunch at overlooking Monterey Bay. Where we were, there had been a beach when we were there before – but not now, as tide was up.

I saw a piece of kelp get washed around by the waves. It was interesting to see it get apparently taken up and moved but then end up at about the same place it had started from.
 
We saw a sea otter! It was a ways away, but I was able to get a decent picture.
 
I don't have very many pictures from the aquarium, partly because the lighting is not that great in there – of course they have a whole bunch of fish that are not used to nearly as much light as we are.

This fish swam right up near the edge of the kelp tank. Aren't his eyes weird?

 

They really do have a lot of fish in there.

 

Do you think the fish ever eat each other? In the other big tank, there is a big school of sardines. Every so often, a shark or other big fish would swim right through them and they would make way in all directions. It was really quite funny, and I hypothesized that maybe that was the big fish's entertainment.

That's all for now, but I have some other posts in the works and hope to be posting more often in 2016!

 


Aug
2015

Day 13 – Exploring Denali National Park near our campsite

categories: Alaska, Happenings, Travel

On Saturday, July 18, we were up and on our feet just about all day long. (Or at least it felt like it)

On a trail that we had hoped to take to the visitors’ center, we had our first real Big Animal Encounter. Fortunately, no blood was involved. We came around a curve – and saw a moose! It was very big, and had two young calves. As it was practically in the trail, there was definitely no question of continuing in that direction. Dad took some pictures, which I was unable to do since I had left my camera at camp. Although Dad had told me that we were going to be out all day, I had not brought my camera, but Dad allowed us to go back to camp and get it, as it was not much out of out way to go to the visitors’ center a different way. We ended up riding the shuttle bus to the center, which we did a fair deal of that day.

In the morning, we reserved tickets for the hike and bus ride we did the next day, and then explored the visitor center and saw a presentation, given by one of the rangers, about ravens, both mythically and actually. She also told some Athabaskan stories about Raven as a figure in their legends. Did you know that, while crows have a wingspan of up to three feet, and most ravens have a wingspan of about four feet, the ravens in Alaska have a wingspan of up to five feet?

The visitor center was quite interesting, and I definitely learned some stuff. They had trunk samples from both the black spruce and the white fir – at least I think these were the trees. Although the spruce was older, it had lived in a much less hospitable environment and was much smaller.

After lunch and finishing exploring the visitors’ center, we rode another bus out to the kennels, where we saw sled dogs, and even got to see them pull a sled with one of the rangers. The sled dogs do real work each winter, and even in the summer demonstrate daily. The ranger talked about the dogs, and also about different types of sled. The one that was used for the demo was a more historically styled sled, with the bed high above the runners, but had some wheels added as it was used on a gravel path. Now toboggan style sleds are used, which have the bed just a little above the runners. They are easier to steer, and can be used with more weight.

After this, as we were all cold and wet, and it had been raining all day and kept on till the next, we went to a small restaurant near the visitors’ center and each got some thing hot to eat or drink. Dad got beef stew and coffee, Gregory got hot cocoa, and I got seafood chowder. Based on my own experience and the reports of others, it was all delicious. 🙂

Now that I have made you do all that reading, you get to see the pictures. Unfortunately I did not have my camera when we saw the moose, but I have photos from the rest of the day.

  1. An old menu that had been laminated and put in the visitors’ center, most of which was set up as a small museum.
  2. Some fossils from the area. A label said that the small brown one near the bottom is of a fern, and the dark grey one with white bits, above it, a family of squid. I could see the fern impression on one, but the other does not look much like squid to me.
  3. This is the best I have to show you in the way of moose pictures. Aren’t they huge?
  4. A display showing some of the furs and natural materials that were used by the native americans in Alaska. Sorry the lighting here was not very good.
  5. Some Shrubby Cinquefoil that I saw on Friday
  6. Various rocks from Polychrome Mountain
  1. Dog moving! The rangers at the kennels move the dogs this way because, pound for pound, huskies are the strongest draft animals in the world – which means that if they bent over far enough, the dogs would pull their keepers over.
  2. An old sled
  3. Unharnessing the dogs
  4. This is a sled such as is used now, complete with equipment
  5. Another old sled
  6. This is as close as I got to a picture of the sled in motion. Bad timing, Emma!

 


Jul
2015

Day 4 – Alaska Museum of Science and Nature

categories: Alaska, Happenings, Travel

Yesterday our family went to the Alaska Museum of Science and Nature. It was more of nature than science, and really cool prehistoric nature at that. It had a lot of fossils and history, as well as several models of prehistoric creatures and some geology. It also talked about earthquakes and a little about the Alaskan native peoples. Most of this, however, was in two display cases showing some tools and garments that native peoples had made. There was even a gut parka, which is what it sounds like!

As usual, I have some photos to share.

1. A stuffed black bear, the white line above which shows how much bigger a polar bear would be. The brown bear shows how much bigger an Alaskan Short Faced bear would have been than even the polar bear!

2. The front of the museum.

3. The skull of an American Lion, which was much bigger than the African Lion of today is. This skull was discovered by a twelve year old boy while he was on a family canoe trip.

4. A real fossilized mammoth tusk, which we were able to touch! A sign said that the original owner of the tusk had covered it in Elmer’s Glue, but did not offer any comment on whether that was a good thing or not.

5. Selected pieces from the collection of Joe Turnbow.

6. A piece of fossilized mammoth skull. To make them light, yet strong, enough to work for the mammoth, mammoth skulls had a hollow honeycomb pattern on the inside.

7. Skull of a Zygorhiza.

8. Model of a Tylosaurus. Note the diver in the lower left side. He’s to scale. In real life, this one would have been about 45 feet long – but Tylosauri(?) could have grown to 80 feet!

9. A tree that was frozen inside a glacier for 2,000 years! It came out feeling just about like it was before it got frozen. We were able to touch it, and it felt just about like ordinary wood, though maybe a little stony. Despite its age, the tree was definitely not petrified.

 

I think that’s just about all for the museum, but I have some comments I would like to add about the blog in general.

All the photos you will see on my blog, unless otherwise specified, are ones that I have taken myself, and I have made all the collages on here also.

Please leave a comment on this post / email / message me if you would like to be texted whenever I post.

And, thank you very much for reading my blog!