Tag: nature
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Sunset Cliffs and California Wildflowers
Last week J and I spent an afternoon at Sunset Cliffs. Our friends had recently gotten portraits done there, and the photos were beautiful, so we decided to go exploring. Sunset Cliffs Natural Park is adjacent to Point Loma Nazarene University, and consists of meandering cliff-side trails, wide spans of open space, and a long […]
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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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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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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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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. […]
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Well, I SAID I wanted to see the Sonoran Desert.
So here’s the thing. I’ve been trying to go to as many national parks (or historic sites, as the case may be) this year as possible. I’m excited about my passport stampbook (as I’ve previously posted) and especially since we now live in the half of the country with all of the huge natural areas, […]
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Casa Grande Ruins: an unexpected very neat thing
In my quest to see national parks (and collect passport stamps from them!), I’ve made it a habit to check for any that are an easy drive from a place I might already be. In this case, J and I were in Casa Grande, Arizona, for the renaissance festival, and we kept seeing signs that […]
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Driving to Arizona: No map? No problem! Unless you get detoured onto a historic highway…
In the age of the GPS, I haven’t bothered in quite a while to buy a roadmap. I haven’t needed one in a long time, and even when I’ve lost GPS signal I have been either close enough to home not to need it, or in a relatively small place where it is difficult to […]
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Seals and Sea Lions and Pelicans, oh my!
At the end of February, J and I went to the northern part of San Diego (to La Jolla) in search of the famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) seals. It wasn’t exactly hard to find them. La Jolla has a lot to offer in the way of shopping and dining, and beautiful […]
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Catching up on February, plus WHALE BABY.
I’m currently uploading a ton of photos, first to an album of random things from February that I never got around to uploading. The last month has been hectic, between finishing the unpacking process, J coming home from deployment, and then heading out to explore southern California (and Arizona!) together. J’s mom visited in mid-February […]
Joanna Volavka 