Tag: california
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Another evening in Old Town, San Diego
Since I was running low on tea, J and I headed to the coffee and tea shop in Old Town this afternoon. I found some other random things while we were there, including a small tin shop with these gorgeous tin stars. They remind me of Moravian stars from back home in North Carolina, and…
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Living Room, at last
Over the weekend, J and I finally (FINALLY!) got rid of the last of our “extra” stuff. We donated the vast majority of it (including the last of our free furniture from when we were first married) to a local group that runs three thrift stores that benefit disabled veterans– Disabled American Veteran Thrift Stores.…
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Southwestern Wildlife Spotting: Volume 1
The following are some accounts of wildlife I’ve seen since moving to California. This isn’t an exhaustive list, mostly just of those animals I’ve photographed, but there are a few I’ve ID’ed with no photo (which makes me sad… but still happy I saw them). Not all of the photos are fantastic, but they “work”…
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Hiking in Blue Sky: aka The Lake is a Lie
Maybe instead I should say the lake was not what we expected. At any rate, the other day, J and I broke out my (until then) unused Hikes of Southern California book and picked one that was relatively close to home. It was in the eastern part of the county, at a place called Blue Sky…
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Joshua Tree National Park, revisited
As it is springtime (and as he hadn’t been), I took J to Joshua Tree National Park in search of wildflowers. We seem to have arrived about a week (or maybe two) too early, but it was still beautiful and the afternoon sunlight stretching across the desert made the colors all the more vivid. The…
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Pioneertown, California: a little real and a little surreal
The day after camping at the trailer palace, J and I (and our friends who went with us) decided to drive to Pioneertown. Pioneertown is a little place in the middle of almost nowhere that has a restaurant, a post office, a motel, and some buildings that are all straight out of an Old West…
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A visit to San Juan Capistrano Mission
After visiting Old Town San Diego, J and I had an interest in visiting some of California’s famous missions. There were twenty-one founded during Spanish colonization, and many of them are still standing (in some form or another) as they are all less than 200 years old. The first we decided to visit was San…
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California Whale Watching: Gray whales, dolphins and sea lions
Last Thursday, J and I went whale watching off the coast, past Point Loma. It’s migration season for gray whales, coming up from Baja California and going back to Alaska and that region for the summer months. I’ve never seen gray whales, plus it was a chance to take a boat ride through the harbor…
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The Volavkas do L.A. Kind of.
Since our purpose in going to Los Angeles was to visit the La Brea tar pits, J and I didn’t really plan on doing much sight seeing. That was for another day, another trip. However… The two hour drive TO La Brea was over three hours BACK to San Diego (as we’d stayed at the…
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Dire Wolves and Saber Cats! (La Brea Tar Pits)
Ever since I was old enough to understand what they were, I’ve been fascinated by prehistoric animals. When I was in kindergarten, I wanted to be a piano-playing-astronaut who was a paleontologist when I wasn’t in outer space. Seriously. (And what happened with that? You’d think I’d have gone all sciencey, but instead I went all artsy.…
Joanna Volavka 