Springtime In Long Beach

Last week Carolyn and I visited Sara in Long Beach. Each day I walked from Sara's house to the beach, about a mile away, for a walk along the ocean. Passing through the neighborhoods, I was struck by how varied the houses and vegetation are. On Sunday morning I took my camera with me to record some of the scenes of a Spring morning in Long Beach.

This is Sara's apartment. (The one with arched window on the lower right.) The street is lined with parrot-studded palm trees.


Yards are all well maintained and nearly everyone plants flowers.



The climate is perfect for most plants with moderate temperatures and an adequate rainfall year round.


Long Beach is lush with colors.


Flowers range from the familiar, like these roses,



pansies,


calla lily,



and nasturtiums,


... to the slightly more exotic, like the Bird of Paradise ...


... or this bush with ...


... these spiky red plumes ....


... or the bougainvillea ... (Did you know it was named after the French admiral who discovered it in the Amazon rainforest in 1768? Me neither.)


... giant jade plants or cacti of all varieties,


... or dozens of others



beautiful specimens



I admire, but ...


... can't identify.



Rose moss?



(If anyone knows, please tell me.)








Another interesting aspect of Long Beach is the variety of houses. Architectural styles and colors are as abundant as the flowers. Every block is a rainbow.


There are tropical overtones.


Midwestern influences.


Touches of New England.


American gothic


Neoclassical.


Spanish stylings ...


... of all configuations,


including with Buddhists accents,



and the truly funky. (It may have been close to Easter, but this rabbit is a year round fixture at this house.)



Long Beach is a beautiful and fascinating place to take a walk.

Sara Sails The Seas

Sara and some colleagues at Los Angeles Air Force Base recently were invited by the Navy to tour and cruise on the USS Bunker Hill in San Diego. A Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser, Bunker Hill, commissioned in 1986, is 567 feet long, speed in excess of 30 knots, and has nearly 400 crew.

Her mission is to conduct sustained combat operations at sea. Here she is firing missiles during Operation Desert Storm near Iraq in 1991.


Bunker Hill also fired the first Tomahawk missile in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003.

Sara's brief tour of duty was a bit less eventful. Bunker Hill sailed from San Diego to Los Angeles. Here she passes under Coronado Bay Bridge off San Diego.



The San Diego skyline can be seen from the harbor.



The navigator plots the course to LA.


Bob, Sara and Brian looking forward to the day's cruise.


Sara looks on while Bob checks his GPS device for the ship's course and speed.


The Bunker Hill crew prepared a great barbecue lunch for their guests on deck.

Bunker Hill employs state of the art technology. She has a phased array radar. Unlike conventional systems which track objects once every 360 degree sweep of the radar, this ship sends electromagnetic energy in all directions, to detect and track hundreds of air and surface contacts while maintaining continuous surveillance from wave top to zenith.

At the end of the afternoon, the guests were to disembark and be ferried to shore. The waves were so high, however, they could not make the transfers.

Sara and all of her collegaues were forced to spend another six hours aboard before they were able to get to shore. Still and all, it was a valuable and enjoyable experience.


(Thanks to James Lee for sharing his pictures of the USS Bunker Hill.)

Alice & Deana Bring Rain (and Bob & Ken) To The Desert

With visions of sun, warmth and Cubs spring baseball, Alice Vandersteen, Deana Welch, Bob Jensen and Ken Reinhardt headed west to Arizona on March 16th (actually Deana headed east -- coming from Hawaii, but that's another story).

The next day (sunny and warm) they took in a Cubs - Giants game in Scottsdale (the Giants' park) where they cheered the Cubs on to victory.

On Saturday, they headed up Interstate 17 to visit Carolyn and me in Prescott. We were anxious to see everyone again. We gave thought on how to use the time to show everyone our new hometown. We considered hikes in the mountains or forests, kayaking in one of the lakes or site-seeing geologic landmarks in Yavapai County.


It hadn't rained in 149 days. In fact, we are in year 11 of a prolonged drought. Nearly all winter had been short sleeve weather. So guess what happened when everyone arrived? ... Well, that was a good guess but actually it snowed.

As Alice and crew drove up from Phoenix, clouds were rolling in from California bringing precipitation that on any other day would have been gratefully welcomed.

Despite the clouds, falling temperature and a complete change of plans, we had a great visit. It was good to see IEA friends again. We spent the day taking an abbreviated tour of Prescott and surrounding areas. We walked around the downtown area and visited a few of the art galleries.


(Alice bought a painting from our favorite local artist, Charles Huckeba.)


Ken was able to photograph a hummingbird feeding at a feeder on our deck in the snow!

That evening we capped the day with dinner at one of my favorite haunts, the Iron Springs Cafe. (We spent most of the evening extolling the virtues of retirement for Ken.)



The next day we all met up at Hohokam once again to see the Cubs play the Texas Rangers.


The rain followed us to Mesa and the Cubs lost but we followed Harry Caray's advice and had "fun at the ol' ballpark" anyway.



Ken took some great shots, getting pictures of Ron Santo and ...



... and Pat Hughes who were broadcasting the game that day.


As soon as the game was over, of course, the sun broke out and it was a beautiful late afternoon.


As were were taking the picture above, Ronnie Woo Woo walked by and was gracious enough to take a picture with us.


Cub fans need no explanation of who Ronnie is but for everyone else, he is the unoffical mascot of the Cubs, often heard yelling during games, "Cubs woo! Cubs woo! Cubs woo!"

The picture above has actually been doctored. This is the original. The guy on the right (who we didn't even know) jumped into the picture when he saw Ronnie. So, I took him out.

(I took another person out of the picture too. Can you find her?)


In this version, I put myself in so I could say I had my picture taken with Ronnie Woo Woo.







The visit with Alice, Deana, Bob and Ken was all too brief. We had a great time seeing them. We loved showing them a bit of our newly adopted state. We look forward to seeing them again and all of our other IEA friends.