Stairway to Somewhere or Other

In the Mendocino Headlands, just west of Mendocino Village.

Travel Thursday: Up in the Air

Downtown Chicago.

In an airplane, you can be everywhere at once when you aren't anywhere at all. These are some shots I took on a flight from Boston to San Francisco a few weeks ago.

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Salt ponds in San Francisco Bay.


Somerset Power Plant, Niagara County, NY.


Green River, Utah.


Eastern shore of Lake Huron.


Collegiate Peaks area of the Sawatch Range, Colorado.

Travel Thursday: Middle O'Nowhere, Sonoma County

Haupt Creek Bridge (originally built 1907, rebuilt 1939), on the Stewarts Point-Skaggs Springs Road running from Highway 1 to the Highway 101 area (sign just off 1: "No services next 47 miles"). It's a great little winding two (sometimes 1.5) lane road through classic north coast forest and river canyons, country so remote it's hard to believe it's within a few hours of San Francisco. Also: wildflowers. Amazing wildflowers.

And then somewhere in the middle of it all I turned a bend and there were rocks in the road I couldn't avoid and when I stopped it looked okay but then the next time I stopped to shoot some flowers and I started up the tire pressure warning was on and I realized I was on the rim. In the middle of nowhere.

So I figured out how to change a tire, put the spare on, and then drove carefully and slowly over to the relative civilization of the Highway 101 corridor, and wound up spending another two hours looking for a place that a) was open on Sunday (Sonoma is not exactly a 7-day county) and b) had my tire (Wal-Mart and Sears did not). Got it fixed eventually, and got home safely and all. So now I can again appreciate the beauty and coolness of the ride.

Travel Thursday: Albany Bulb

A couple weeks back, I went to the East Bay to check out the Albany Bulb with my friend Larry, who lives in nearby Richmond. The Bulb is a wild area of landfill and overgrown bushes jutting out into the bay just north of Berkeley, strewn with broken pieces of concrete, metal and other detritus. There is a lot of graffiti and street art and sculpture there; also a fairly sizable population of homeless people. Here are just a few shots from that excursion. As is my wont, I took a few hundred pictures on our walk, and I'm still only about two-thirds of the way through processing them.

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Travel Thursday: Fire Dancers in Moscow

Fire dancers on Arbat Street, monochrome version.

Travel Thursday: Pierce Point Ranch

The old schoolhouse at Pierce Point Ranch on the Tomales Peninsula, Point Reyes.

Travel Thursday: Summer Palace, Beijing

Long time no China pictures. Here's one.

Travel Thursday: 12 Galaxies

Thanks to a notice on SFist from fellow photographer Troy Holden, I was able to attend the 50th birthday celebration of San Francisco's own Frank Chu last night at the Palace Hotel. Frank is a legend in his own time, a modern-day Emperor Norton of a sort. About 25 people showed up to help him celebrate. He drank Budweiser on the rocks, ate a hamburger, and had a small cheesecake with a candle in it delivered to him by the wait staff. We all sang Happy Birthday to him and wished him well in his galactic travels.

Travel Thursday: Melson's Corner

Last weekend I visited my son up in rural El Dorado County. Couple more pics below the fold...
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Travel Thursday: Swanton

Found this on an old building off Swanton Road, just off Highway 1 between Pescadero and Davenport.

Travel Thursday: Bridgeport

This was taken on the same trip as the Death Valley pictures. I drove from there up to Reno, and stopped here on the road just long enough to snap a couple shots of our familiar meadow covered in snow.

Travel Thursday: Death Valley

I took this shot using a Yashica double-lens reflex loaded with 120 film about seven years ago. I just got the film developed last week, and my friend Bill was good enough to scan a few of the negatives in. This is Zabriskie Point, looking north-ish.

Maybe I'll start shooting more film again...

Travel Thursday: Pomona

Carnival rides light up the night in the Fun Zone at the Los Angeles County Fair.

Travel Thursday: Florence

Bell Tower at Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence.

(I've been sick all week, thus limited online presence. Starting to rebound today, thankfully.)

Travel Thursday: Moscow

Bridge over the Moskva River and the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer.

Travel Thursday: Mexico in San Francisco

Aztec Window, SF.

Travel Thursday: Route 66 Liquor Store

Seen in Upland, California, when I was down there earlier this year.

Travel Thursday: Lake Tahoe

The last time we were all together--all four brothers and our folks (plus SOs & my niece)--was in 2006, when we rented a big condo in South Lake Tahoe. The dates overlapped by a couple of days with my Monarch Divide trip, so I got home from Kings Canyon and the next morning we set out for Tahoe. Coming from the farthest reaches of the middle of nowhere to the sprawl and traffic and crowds of Lake Tahoe was a bit of a shock. I kept thinking: to a lot of Northern Californians, this is the Sierra.

Disorientation aside, though, it was a great time. We went on a paddle-wheel cruise; we went up to Eagle Falls; we went to a casino; the usual stuff, I guess. And when you look past the crowds and the overdevelopment and all, it really is a beautiful lake. And of course I have to remember it fondly, because it was the last in a series of family vacations that began (for me) 40 years before.

This was shot at a big old estate west of town, now a park of some kind.

Travel Thursday: Paris

Glass player making music on the street.

Travel Thursday: Stinson Beach

Stinson Beach is a huge, popular stretch of coastline with a cute little town just west of Mt. Tamalpais in Marin County. In the summer, it's jammed, and the line of cars trying to get there stretches for miles and miles back to 101. On a beautiful November Sunday, though, it was easy to get to and not crowded at all.

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