When you visit the Long Beach Harbor, the magnificent Queen Mary dominates the view. A pelican soars in the foreground and the dome, once home to the ‘Spruce Goose,’ looms behind the vessel.
Taken from Pierpoint Landing adjacent to Rainbow Harbor. Click for a panoramic view of the ship.
UPDATE: Post title changed from HMS Queen Mary to RMS Queen Mary. Thanks to Jonathan for pointing out the error.
You may have noticed the “Damsel’s Water Zen” widget in the sidebar. This is the background behind it.
Damsel likes the light patterns that water makes when sunlight dances through it. Whether in a swimming pool, in a river, in a marina channel or in a shallow harbor, it doesn’t matter, she likes the shimmering ripples.
Last September (2007), we spent our anniversary, as usual, on Catalina Island. We go to Avalon every year since that’s where we got married. While we were there, we took a lot of pictures and a few movies.
While we were waiting on the Green Pier for our glass-bottom boat tour. I leaned over the rail and captured this short sequence of the rippling water in the harbor. I used my little Canon A710 IS digital camera in AVI mode. I pointed the camera straight down and captured about ten seconds of video. When I showed the preview to Damsel, she said it was relaxing like ‘Water Zen.’
So, when we got home, I converted the short video to Flash® and popped it in the sidebar as a remembrance to our time in Avalon and an opportunity to ‘gaze and relax.’
Last night, I was going through some of the pictures we took in 2007. I ran across the photos of last summer’s visit to the Grand Canyon. Today, as I sit at my desk I have the greatest urge to pack up and drive out of town to someplace like this. But, I suppose I’ll have to be patient and wait for our next vacation. Besides, I plan to retire soon – like in about 1 year, 6 months and 14 Days or so – but who’s counting?
Click on the picture below of Damsel enjoying a rainy day canyon view to see the 1024 x 768 version in the photo viewer.
It looks like we’re in for a bit of rain here in Southern California. We can use the rain, but it’s going to be showers all weekend. It reminds me of our trip to Alaska in July 2005, when it seemed to rain everyday in Anchorage and Denali. This is a shot of our train pulling into Denali station as we were getting ready to go to Fairbanks. Of course, it was pouring.
Fairbanks, thankfully, was dry when we visited there.
Last week we took a drive to the harbor area; while we were there, we stopped at the 22nd Street Red Car Station. Damsel took a photo as this holiday-decorated trolley pulled into the station.
I have a special interest in the Red Cars, since my Grandfather was a motorman during the 1930s and 1940s. On a rainy day last year, we took a ride on the red car.
It was with good foresight that we decided to archive our photo files on an external hi-capacity hard drive. The dual computer crash last week could have been a greater loss than we actually experienced. While looking at some of Damsel’s old photos, I ran across this shot of the historic Point Fermin Lighthouse in San Pedro, California. Click on the image to enlarge.
Here’s some of the lighthouse’s history from the Point Fermin Lighthouse website:
Built in 1874, the Point Fermin Lighthouse was the first navigational light into the San Pedro Bay. Phineas Banning, with the support of many local businessmen, petitioned the Federal Government and the US lighthouse Board to place a lighthouse on the point in 1854. Although the Lighthouse Board agreed funding and land disputes delayed its construction until 1874.
Paul J. Pelz, a draftsman for the US Lighthouse Board, designed the Stick Style Victorian lighthouse. The design was used for six lighthouses built between 1873 and 1874, of which three are still standing, East Brothers in San Francisco Bay, Hereford Light in New Jersey, and Point Fermin. The Stick Style is an early Victorian architectural style and is simpler in design and decoration than the later high Victorian period. It is characterized by its gabled roofs, horizontal siding, decorative cross beams and hand carved porch railings.
If you’re nerdy enough to have a pair of 3D red-blue or red-cyan glasses (like me), then you might enjoy this 3D anaglyph photo I took of the lighthouse at about the same time.
I know that we’ve been putting up a lot of images from our recent trip to Avalon, but we took over 800 pictures and many of them came out quite good (if I do say so myself). We will probably be posting these over the next few weeks in the afterglow of a wonderful island getaway.
This beautiful tile mural is over the box office in the foyer of the famous Casino in the City of Avalon on Catalina Island. She has been restored form the dark days of the 60s to the 80’s when this gorgeous structure fell into disrepair. Luckily, the whole place is looking good, although some places around the building could use a power wash. Nonetheless, this is one of the several wonderful aquatic murals in the Casino’s foyer. Click on the image below to see a larger version.
