Timeline: Photos

Photo Slideshows

Slide 1 of 18. 28-Feb-2022. Fiscalini Ranch Preserve is north of Morro Bay along Highway 1. You can read all about it if you click on the above image. That will give you a larger image that can be read. We went there to see birds and plants of the California seashore. Please enjoy the slides that follow.

Slide 2 of 18. View to the North from the northwest corner of Fiscalini. In the lower right, it looks like a patch of ice plant with its pink flowers. The small yellow plants dotting the land may be wild radish. I'm no expert.

Slide 3 of 18. I think that is ice plant, also known as sea fig, Carpobrotus edulis according to the Fiscalini illustrated plant list Website. I understand that various ice plants are used along the California coast to stabilize the top soil against erosion. That may be its purpose here. It is not native and is considered intrusive. In some places in California it is actively removed, though, apparently, it is welcome here.

Slide 4 of 18. This is moving south along the bluff trail. Only part of it is covered like this although it's all wheelchair accessible.

Slide 5 of 18. Along the boardwalk we find a western fence lizard, Scleroporus occidentalis, from iNaturalist.org (accessible from Friends of the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve Flora, Fauna & Birds Website.

Slide 6 of 18. There are several kinds of squirrels in the preserve. I think this one is your standard California ground squirrels, Otospermophilus beecheyi, according to Friends of the Fiscalini Ranch Preserve Flora, Fauna & Birds Website. He, or she, is sitting up on bush lupin surveying his domain.

Slide 7 of 18. I think this is Bermuda buttercup, Oxalis pes-caprae, or sour grass, according to Microsoft's Bing Name That Plant visual search. There are lots of pretty patches of this.

Slide 8 of 18. I think this is Armeria maritima supbspecies californica, also known as California sea pink. How do I know? I looked it up.

Slide 9 of 18. According to the usual Websites, this is Astragalus nutallii. It has other names; loco weed, Nuttall's milkvetch, ocean bluff milkvetch, Morro milkvetch, and curtipes. No wonder biologists prefer the scientific name! I'm wondering about "loco weed". What's the story there?

Slide 10 of 18. Along the bluff trail looking back north. There's a patch of fleabane in the foreground. Looks a lot like daisies. The genus is Erigeron, if that helps.

Slide 11 of 18. A bee on the Erigeron glaucus, or seaside daisy, or seaside fleabane.

Slide 12 of 18. This is a variety of California poppy, Eschscholzia californica variety californica. Also known as the Kernville poppy. Frankly, I'm confused as to which poppy is which.

Slide 13 of 18. Looking west - inland - up the hill. There's a lot of bush lupin and other plants. This is squirrel country. Click on the image to get a giant view with lots of detail. There are poppies mingled with the bushes.

Slide 14 of 18. Again looking west from further down the bluff trail, we can see the far of stands of Monterey pines, which we won't be visiting. As before, click on the picture for a much higher resolution view.

Slide 15 of 18. There are plenty of places to rest. They've made benches from local materials. This one is made mostly from driftwood. It is really pleasant here. Lenore is looking out to the ocean.

Slide 16 of 18. Okay, so birds. This is a song sparrow, I think. It may be Melospiza melodia, which, funny enough, means "sparrow song".

Slide 17 of 18. And this is a white crowned sparrow, I'm pretty sure. It's big name is Zonotrichia leucophrys. Very handsome.

Slide 18 of 18. Just one more slide. This is the beautiful stemless evening primrose, officially known and Oenothera triloba, as far as I can tell. It seems a delicate flower on top of those broad green leaves it puts out to the sides.

Well, that's the slide show. I hope you enjoyed it. Send me money if you want.

Slide 1 of 22. 3-Dec-2017. Sutter Creek, California, is a small old gold country town just south of Placerville which is where the California gold rush started. Visit suttercreek.org. The old knight Foundary is great place to visit. You can see many historic pics at knightfoundary.com. The following slides are some pics I took just walking around the place.

Slide 2 of 22. Foundary buildings are all along the road on both sides. Old equipment, too old to be of any value other thant historical, is strewn everywhere. It's about a thousand feet of interesting junk. Ahead on the left are historical plaques and information put there by the site's care-takers.

Slide 3 of 22. Shown in the center of the monument is the famous Knight Wheel, invented by Samuel Knight. It was a significant improvement in hydro-electric power generation. Thus Knight's foundry was powered by electricity. The wheel was further improved by others, like Lester Allan Pelton. We'll see below a fully improved hydro-electric generation unit.

Slide 4 of 22. I'll let you read the plaque.

Slide 5 of 22. Another plaque to read, albeit with not great syntax.

Slide 6 of 22. On the far left are the remains of wooden casting flasks. You can read about the cast iron process here in Wikipedia. There are various and sundry buildings of seemingly haphazard shape and construction all over the site.

Slide 7 of 22. Casting flasks rusting and greying in the sunny Sutter Creek days. Not to mention cracking foundations.

Slide 8 of 22. The large building is, I guess, the large machine shop where patterns were made or maybe casting was done. That is a massive iron casting rusting there. I wonder what is was for.

Slide 9 of 22. Anybody know what this is? Looks like a truck for moving massive castings.

Slide 10 of 22. The big shop again. Looks like an attempt was made to board the windows. The workers seem to have neglected to plan ahead and didn't nail the tops down. Weather and all, you know.

Slide 11 of 22. These gear things look like some sort of rolling or forming equipment.

Slide 12 of 22. This looks like a ball mill. It was probably used to grind a mixture of sand, seacoal, and clay into a fine sand that was then used in the sand-casting process for iron. You put beach stones, or something like them, in it to do the grinding. Then with all the ingredients in, the drum is rotated to produce a finer sand for casting. It looks like there was a provision for heating the mixture.

Slide 13 of 22. This small building really is leaning a lot. It's shored up in places to keep it from collapsing. Note the misalignment of the central pair of doors.

Slide 14 of 22. Same building as previous slide. Here's where it's shored up. Note the tree growing out of one window. Obviously, a dirt floor.

Slide 15 of 22. More casting flasks, I guess. Some are wood some are iron.

Slide 16 of 22. This is a generating station. The water wheel, on the right, looks like a Pelton wheel or very similar. The large caged thing in the middle is the generator itself. The smaller looking generator on the left is a generator whose purpose is the excite the field windings of the main generator.

Slide 17 of 22. This looks like a kind of Pelton wheel. A powerful jet of water strikes the cups to turn the shaft. That's it, not that complicated. Hydrodynamics and all.

Slide 18 of 22. View looking back down the street, back towards Sutter Creek town. It's pretty much all foundry on both sides.

Slide 19 of 22. I think what we're seeing here is some local frustration with tourists. Plus humor.

Slide 20 of 22. This is still a working garage, though the pumps are not working, obviously.

Slide 21 of 22. Note that the money tally on these antique pumps has room for only three digits. I think that means a full tank of gas cost less than $10 in those days. Inflation, right?

Slide 22 of 22. A really old streetlight outside of Cap's garage. Note the rusting old National Automobile Club sign. The National Automobile Club was founded in, what, 1927?