Happy Fourth of July

There is generally a really big fireworks display on San Diego Bay every year on the Fourth of July. This year was to be no exception. They call it the Big Bay Boom, but as I type this the local news outlets are all calling it the Big Bay Bust. The website for the event predicted 500,000 people watching from various parts of the Bay, as they set off fireworks in sync to music from 4 large barges. I'm sure parking and traffic were pretty bad. My original plan was to stay home, but at the last minute I decided to grab my camera and tripod and head for someplace in or near Balboa Park, with the idea of getting some shots of the fireworks exploding over the downtown buildings. I found what looked to be a great spot, no traffic, lots of parking. 

I had the camera set up well in advance of the scheduled 9:00PM start time, pointed more or less where I expected to see the fireworks. A few minutes before 9:00 I was on the phone with Heather when I saw a flash and tripped the shutter. I had a 2-second delay set, and this is what I got.

That was also all that I got. Downtown San Diego was blanketed in thick smoke. The explosions were down low, much lower than I would have expected them to be, and lasted much longer and with more intensity than what seemed normal. After that, nothing, except for the Coronado and Imperial Beach fireworks off in the distance. As I was driving home I heard the news report - a "technical malfunction" caused the cancellation of the show. It looks like everything blew at once, just a few minutes before the scheduled start time.

Happy Fourth of July.

      

A Few From Last Weekend At The San Diego Zoo

Here are a few shots from last Saturday and Sunday at the San Diego Zoo. I spent a fews hours there on Saturday morning, then went back that evening for the Nighttime Zoo with Heather and some friends. I also stopped in for a bit on Sunday late in the afternoon.

The little gharials seem to like their new pool. The glass isn't very clean, but the light and glare is not too bad early in the day.

The baby jaguars were hanging out with their mother in the cave. 

Nindiri, the mother, went outside a few times to lounge in the sun, but the cubs stayed inside and mostly just napped in a corner.

The big lion was out.

Here's a watchful mother duck and her duckling. She never let the little one get very far away.

When we were there on Saturday evening one of my friends got a shot of a flamingo chick poking its head out from under its mother's feathers in the nest. It was a particularly good shot, and I didn't see it until after we left the Zoo, so I thought I might head over there on Sunday evening and try to get a similar shot myself.

I think I was a few hours too late.

It's been a long time since I've seen the big mandrill down by the fence. This time he was almost too close.

It took over half an hour of waiting but I did manage to get a few shots of the female fishing cat that I liked.

I got to the tigers on Sunday evening just as they were bringing the cubs in and putting their mother out for the night. The tigers get whole rabbits to eat on Sundays. Before the keeper let the tiger out into the exhibit she placed a white rabbit right up front where we could watch the tiger get it, but you'll have to click through to my gallery page for Sunday to see that picture. Here's Mek looking up between bites.

Click here to see more pictures from Saturday, June 30. 2012 at the San Diego Zoo.

      

Click here to see more pictures from Sunday, July 1, 2012 at the San Diego Zoo.

     

More Baby Jaguar Pictures - San Diego Zoo

It seems like things often take longer than you might expect, and I've found that being impatient rarely helps. This morning's trip to the Zoo was a good example. I got up to the Jaguar exhibit at about 10:00AM, and all you could see was Nindiri, the new mother, sleeping on her side in a dark doorway. The little cubs were nowhere to be seen. There were several other people there, all waiting around for something they thought should have already happened - which was the cubs coming out to play where we could see them. Tikal and Maderas, who were just born on April 26th, obviously had other ideas. So, we waited.

After almost half an hour, some sign of life from Nindiri. It didn't last long.

After a while she finally decided to go outside and sit in the sun. Still no sign of the little ones.

Finally, an hour and a half after I got there, they poked their little heads out. This is Maderas, the female.

Maderas seems to be a lot more adventurous than her brother Tikal. She was wandering all over the place checking out the new surroundings. They've only been allowed outside since Tuesday, and from talking with some friends, it sounds like this morning may have been the first time they've gotten very far from the doorway.

 

Where ever they went, mom kept a close watch on them.

Brother and sister, Tikal and Maderas.

One very protective mother.

I think this next shot has to be one of my favorites from the day. 

On my way across the Zoo at the start of the day I did stop to check out the little crocs that are in the pool that's partway down the Tiger Trail.

Click here to see a few more images from my morning walk around the San Diego Zoo.

     

Minneapolis - You Betcha!

I spent last week in downtown Minneapolis. Here are a few shots from the hotel room window.

I spent some time walking along the Stone Arch Bridge. 

A few of us had dinner at the Monte Carlo one evening. Great atmosphere, and a pretty good steak too.

Not many pictures from this trip, as I was traveling light and only took one little fixed-length lens since it wasn't a vacation trip. 

     

Sunday Morning at the San Diego Zoo - Baby Jaguars, Baby Giraffe And More

Heather wanted to see the new baby Jaguars up close, so I told her that the best way was to get there right when the Zoo opens, and head straight for their enclosure. So we got there 15 minutes before opening, and as soon as they let us in we made a beeline to the Jaguars (which are about as far from the front gate as you can get) - and then waited almost 20 minutes before something finally happened. No big deal, that's the nature of dealing with cats. Besides, this was worth waiting for.

After a bit their mother showed up as well, but there was way too much glare on the glass to get much of a picture.  The plan was for the keepers to come in and play with the babies for a while, but in order to do that they have to get the mother out of there. They needed something to distract her.

How about a giant fresh femur bone?

That should keep her distracted for a while.

With mom safely out of the way Kimberly and Jacob could now handle the cubs without worrying about being killed and eaten by a protective mother.

 

After hanging out with the Jaguars for quite a while we decided to go check out the new baby Giraffe. On the way we spotted some Meerkats.

The baby Giraffe is less than 2 weeks old.

We had a 12 Noon appointment with the Tigers (or, more accurately, an appointment with their keeper, who was going to toss them some beef heart chunks). When we first got there Christopher and Conner were way up in the back, lounging in the shadows, taking advantage of their natural camouflage, but definitely watching what was going on.

As soon as the keeper called to them they came trotting down the hill for their mid-day snacks. These 2 are starting to look pretty much full grown, but they will put on another 50 pounds or so. They've now been separated from their mother too. They're all grown up - it's hard to believe they're only a bit over 14 months old. I've watched them grow from when they were about 25 pounds, you can scroll back through this blog to see now they've progressed over the last year or so.

Click here to see a few more images from our morning walk around the San Diego Zoo on Sunday, June 17, 2012.

     

A Short Visit to Aiken, South Carolina - Horse Country

We didn't much feel like another plane change in Atlanta, and conveniently Aiken, SC is about halfway between Savannah and Atlanta, so we decided to take 2 days to travel from Savannah to Atlanta, and just board a non-stop plane home there.


It takes about 3 hours to drive to Aiken from Savannah if, like us, you take the back roads. There's not much along the way really.

At one point we thought we saw a Swamp Ape (the local equivalent of a Sasquatch or Bigfoot), but I think we may have been mistaken. We tried for a picture anyway. Other people have become famous with a lot less, so why not try.

Conveniently, some long-time friends retired to Aiken about 7 years ago, so we even had some people to visit and show us around the town a bit. These days the primary attractions to Aiken are the Savannah River Site, a nuclear research facility, and retirement, primarily by horse-people. There are several training facilities for racehorses, the oldest continually operating polo field in the U.S., and several hunt clubs. The climate is noticeably drier in Aiken than in the Low Country of Savannah and Charleston. It's hard to tell, but it was all uphill driving in from Savannah. I can see it being a very comfortable place to live.

All I know about horses is that there is a rounded end and a pointy end - and that it's generally best to stay towards the pointy end. Our friends, on the other hand, know a lot more about them.

If you have horses you have to have a stable or horse barn . . . . 

. . . . and that means a barn cat.

The town of Aiken has a very nice downtown area, with lots of good restaurants and shops, and some very wide streets with wide landscaped medians. The streets in the center of town were originally designed to be wide enough that a wagon pulled by a team of 4 horses could turn without disturbing a wagon on the other side of the street. Many of the streets are covered over with branches, giving them a tunnel effect.

We ended the last day of our trip with an evening stroll around downtown Aiken, and dinner at Davor's Cafe, which was excellent. Aiken is certainly a town we would return to for another visit.

Peaches were in season in that part of the country, and we couldn't end our trip without one last excellent dessert, in this case a fresh peach cobbler right out of the oven.

Click here to see more images from our visit to Aiken, South Carolina.


This is the last post from our June 2-9, 2012 trip to Charleston, Beaufort, Savannah and Aiken. If you would rather read them in the proper order, scroll down to the archives, find Part 1, and then click on Newer Post as you finish each one.