Darlene and I dropped in to see the Polynesian Festival and Outrigger Races at the Santa Cruz Wharf on Sunday morning. Apparently anyone can sign up as teams in advance and compete in the races. We also stopped into the free Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary Visitor Center. It’s a small center with some nice exhibits and videos, including a tank where you can drive around a remote-operated submersible.
Hoan and Quyen came up to visit for a few days with their kids Samantha, Sebastien and Sarah. We went to Moss Landing to kayak on Elkhorn Slough, to the Santa Cruz wharf and boardwalk, to the farmer’s market in Aptos (plus a quick stop to see the dancing chickens at the Glaum Egg Ranch), to hike in Big Basin and then hang out at Four Mile Beach in Wilder Ranch State Park.
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Darlene and I made an overnight visit to Pinnacles National Monument last Thursday to catch the Perseids in a clear dark sky again. While enjoying the show, I took a few long exposures and caught a couple of meteors:
Pictures and video from this year’s annual Pirates of Cache Creek event with the Outdoor Adventure Club – click through for the full gallery:
And a short video montage of the weekend:
Click through for a gallery of pictures from a visit with Darlene’s family in Wisconsin/Minnesota earlier this month, including some hiking, canoeing, riding some fat tire bikes for the first time, visiting the Santa Maria and Pinta replicas that happened to be docked on the Mississippi while we were in Winona and recording our successful cracking of another “escape room”, this time in LaCrosse:
Pictures from a visit of Darlene’s friend Kathy and her daughter Jordan and friend Adrienne – we went kayaking at Moss Landing/Elkhorn Slough, visited the Santa Cruz wharf and boardwalk and visited the redwoods at Big Basin State Park. Click through for the gallery:
A bit of video from this year’s Bay Area Maker Faire:
Two weeks ago, Darlene and I enjoyed a weekend stay at the Vision Quest Ranch in Salinas, CA. It’s a facility that keeps and cares for a host of 100+ various exotic and domestic animals. Their prime business used to be training and providing animals for use in the film and television industry, but with the increasing use of computer-generated, all-digital animals, they’ve turned more to adopting at-risk or retired animals, doing more educational programs and training programs and transforming the facility into a fully, open-to-the-public zoo, “The Monterey Zoo”. This effort is still in progress and so they’re now only open for short, daily, guided tours while they build out larger, more engaging enclosures for their animals. However, they also run a bed and breakfast service based on several cabin-like tents situated on the property and provide a number of up close encounters with various animals, particularly a couple of retired circus elephants who greet you at your cabin as your breakfast is served.
You can read more about the history of the facility, stories about their numerous animals and information about their various educational efforts on their web site.
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