Cali Trip

 We recently took a quick trip to California where we visited Sequoia National Park, Kings Canyon National Park, Elkhorn Slough National Estuary, Moss Landing Harbor, Monterey, and Pebble Beach. It was awesome to see so much of nature. Our main goals were to see big trees and marine animals and to have fun out of the Arizona heat.  :)

 

Standing in the hollow at the base of the sequoia.

D has muscles.

Did I mention the trees are large? This one is likely over 2000 years old. They have tannins in the wood that protects against insects and fire. Even when they hollow, they keep growing.

Perhaps the extended family could reach all the way around this tree.

Standing by a random huge sequoia

The girls at Crescent Meadow in Sequoia NP

The boys tromping on a huge sequoia that fell across the meadow long ago and still hasn't decomposed. D called it "the huge ship stuck in the mud."

The view from the van as we ascend from 600 to 6200 ft into the Sierra Nevadas. We started in desert and ended in gloriously huge forest. Even the sugar pines get 180 ft high and 10 ft diameter. And they are dwarfed by the sequoias.

The kids by the Tharp Log, a giant hollow sequoia that fell long ago and was turned into a cabin by a miner named Tharp in the 1860s. It's still pretty much how it was back then.

There were numerous trees that had been lived in. This one had a tunnel cut through it. The inside of the tunnel was about 8 feet high and this was about 40 feet from the stump of the tree.

The views from the ridge at Kings Canyon NP was incredible. Unfortunately, it would be better if it weren't for the smog that rises from the lower valleys and is killing some of the younger trees.

The Michigan Tree, a sequoia that fell a few years ago after being undermined by a spring that ran right through the middle of it. I estimated the diameter to be about 25 ft. Not surprisingly, it knocked down a lot of other trees when it fell. I wonder if it made a sound.  

E's discovery at Elkhorn Slough. She helped take lots of pictures of flowers and birds. 

N is cold, but happy to be at the beach!

She also got tired of walking and got a ride on Daddy. You can see the list of birds to find (we found about 25) and D's binoculators. It was so beautiful.

Here's a cute little bunny trying to hide from the camera.

An egret enjoy the crabs in the slough.

After leaving the 114 degree desert, the 68 degree coolness by the ocean felt heavenly to me and a bit cold to the little ones. They loved that they could see lots of birds from this overlook.

At the aquarium we saw the otters eating fish.  They are so cute!

Lots of cute penguins at the aquarium also. They did a little parade for us.

We went to the harbor at Moss Landing (shown in the movie Turner and Hooch) and saw the pelicans, cormorants, otters, sea stars, seals, and sea lions, and of course gulls. While admiring sea lions resting on the boat moors, this little boy (maybe 5), came out and showed us hot to safely pick up crabs. He is wearing authentic fishing gear because he goes with his daddy fishing every day on a very big boat in the ocean. So cute, even if a underaged employment violation. :)

N at the beach. Even though we were wearing Sunday clothes and didn't play in the water, we came back the next day and had a great time when the weather was awesome.

C laughing off the wind.

Bird Rock, covered in cormorants, seals, and sea lions. The king of the hill is a sea lion. Lots of fertilizer here.

Seal Rock, strangely covered in birds instead.

The Pebble Beach neighborhood where we stayed had access to 5 world class golf courses, including Pebble Beach and Cypress Point, but I preferred to be with my kids. I'm not much of a golfer because I prefer to enjoy my 6 hour walks. Or maybe it would be 6 hours because I'm not much of a golfer.

Em is looking very professional and elegant.

Strangely formal for a beach setting, but the lighting was perfect! Actually we had just come from church.

Ahhh, how cute.

Little French cottage on the beach. 1400 square feet. $4M.  I guess this is where pro golfers retire or have a 5th home. We didn't stay in one by the beach for obvious reasons.

D running on the beach. Shockingly didn't fall into the marsh.

Thanks for reading all the way to the end!!

Recent Pics

Audit in Israel

I just returned from a work trip to Israel to audit our factories there. While there, I did get a few chances to get out and about to see the country. Here are some pics. I took over 300, so it was hard to narrow it down.

Israel is a very small country. Here are some places I visited.

Tel Aviv

Here is a beautiful mosque in Tel Aviv, as seen from my hotel.

The spices in the market smelled great!

This is what the coastal plains look like near Qiryat Gat.

Here's a view of Tel Aviv from my hotel. The city has the largest selection of Bauhaus architecture in the world.

There are lots of modern buildings as well. 

This home was built by German "templers" in the early 1900s. These emigrants were forced out during WW!!.

 Jaffa (Yafo)
Jaffa is reportedly the oldest continuously used port in the world. It is where materials for Solomon's temple entered Israel, where Jonah left for Tarshish, and where Paul embarked for several missions.

Jaffa is said to be 60 meters deep because of all the continuous building on older layers of city over the thousands of years.

At the end of this small alley, is the home of Simon the Tanner, where the apostle Peter saw the vision of unclean beasts, which ushered in the spreading of the gospel to the world.

Excavations in Jaffa unearthed these pillars showing Egyptian ownership of Jaffa before Moses' time.

This 1800s Catholic Church was built on the site of a 4th century Christian church. 

Jaffa, has been majority Muslim for 1400 years, and is full of bakeries like this one where I bought baklava and similar sweets.

This ancient structure has been refurbished as the Museum of the Liberation of Jaffa (referring to the 1940s).

Jerusalem
I visited Jerusalem on the weekend where I saw the old city and the Holocaust Museum. I wished I would have had an added week there.

Here's the view of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives (near the BYU Jerusalem Center)

Inside the massive Church of the Holy Sepulchre, shared by the Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Coptic, Roman Catholic, and Syrian Orthodox churches. Allegedly over the spots where Christ was crucified and later resurrected. A little too hodgepodge, and "relic-y" for my taste, but cool to see a church that has evolved for 1700 years.

Amazing that they could build stuff this beautiful and have it last over a thousand years!

A random worshiper in the church. I just thought it was a good picture that captured her devotion. 

City Hall, complete with pockmarks added by Jordanian snipers between 1947-1967.

King David's tower. I have no idea how old it is or if he actually built it.

The ancient city wall had a section removed by the Ottoman Sultan in the late 1800s because of a state visit by the Kaiser Wilhelm from Germany. The Sultan was concerned because all the gates to the city were L shaped to prevent easy invasion. He was concerned that the Kaiser would want to ride through in a grand carriage and would be put out by the narrow gates, so he ordered a section of wall removed.. When the Kaiser showed up, he got out of his carriage and walked in, saying that if Jesus walked while in Jerusalem, he should too.  The Sultan was miffed. 

People all over Jerusalem find their own way to worship and are generally allowed to. This woman worshiped by playing a harp. I looked, but didn't see a donations hat, so she may have not been doing it for money.

The Armenian quarter of Jerusalem is less well known, but the Armenian community has been there for centuries, not interacting much with the outside. They are one of the oldest Christian groups.

Hagia Sion, a relatively recent church built on another ancient Byzantine church and supposedly on the spot where Mary died (or vanished, according to others).

A sculpture of King David, near his tomb.

This is the purification spot outside the tomb of David (no pictures allowed inside) No idea how old it is, but I find it hard to believe that the tomb is actually 3000 years old.

The lower you go, the older it is.  Here's a rediscovered Roman road between where Pontius Pilate's palace stood and Golgotha. Christ probably did walk this path.on his way.

The western gate of the Old City is now scarred from millenia of fighting.Most of the damage is actually from the 1940s.

Ho hum, just another explosion in Jerusalem. No one else seemed concerned by this kaboom, although it reminded me that tourist dollars do more to keep the peace than about anything else.

This is the temple mount, with the Dome of the Rock standing on the spot where the ancient temple stood. The Western or "Wailing" wall is below and is all that remains of the ancient temple complex.

Two Haredi (ultra orthodox) boys pray at the wall. Later, I asked a Haredi man on the plane about his feelings for the temple. He emphasized it's holiness and reminder of the covenant that God made to the Israelites. I asked him whether the Jewish people would rebuild a temple if the Muslims gave the land back to them. He said it would be forbidden as his people lost the priesthood authority with the destruction of the temple, but that when the Messiah comes they would rebuild it. I showed him my picture of the Mesa Arizona temple from my wallet, and he exclaimed "it's the Holy of Holies!" I said that Mormons are probably the Christians that understand the Jewish feelings on priesthood and temples best. It was a great conversation.

Jerusalem's Muslim quarter was full of visually rich markets and shops.

From on top of the site of the upper room where the last supper was held, you could see back across the city and see the BYU Jerusalem Center on the Mount of Olives, with the dome of the rock in front. Unfortunately, the picture had to be cropped to cut out hundreds of sattelite dishes.

BYU Jerusalem Center, on of my tour guides favorite buildings, although he knew next to nothing about it or the church, until he allowed me to tell the tour group about Orson Hyde's 1841 dedication of the land of Israel for the return of the Jews. He then thought it was even more interesting.

Haifa and Caesarea
My last 4 days were auditing in Haifa, at Israel's northern coast. It was a bit geographically like San Francisco, a dense city on top of Mount Carmel and on a peninsula extending out into the bay. It was more relaxed than Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. I saw the beautiful Ba'hai shrine and gardens there, but it was at night, so no good pictures. I also took a couple of hours to go to Caesarea, the ancient Roman capital of Palestina, as Israel was known.

Fisherman in the sunset, taken from my hotel window in Haifa

View from my hotel

Amazing Roman aquaduct that ran many kilometers to bring fresh water from the spring in the mountains to the city.

City wall and moat built by the crusaders in the 1100s.

Map of Caesarea

Me in front of the main gate of the city

The Roman Nymphaeum, or city fountain area dedicated to the nymphs credited with purifying the spring water.

Excavation is still slowly going on in the city. The city was owned by about 10 different dynasties, so figuring out who built what and when is tricky.

Crusader lighthouse built oh an older building

Roman marble-tiled bath house owned at one time by Herod the great.

Amazing mosaic floor of the bathhouse, still intact after 2000 years.

City streets and arches

I believe the flowers at the site are to encourage tourists to both spend money and to not do unauthorized excavating.  

This section of the hippodrome (horse race stadium) has intentionally not been excavated to show the many layers that must be worked through by archaeologists.

View from the end of the hippodrome that used to hold 10000 spectators toward the main part of the city.

An unexcavated city building with garden 

I don't know what the round building was for, but it sure is beautiful.

Remains of Pontius Pilate's palace in Caesarea. It was incredible.

Sailboats off the coast of Caesarea

Marble floor of palace

View from the upper palace looking toward the Mediterranean Sea

The theatre at Caesarea, possible largest in the middle east at the time.

Detail of Mosaic floor in Pontius Pilate's (and later Felix's) palace.

View of the remains of the lower palace, mostly eroded by the sea. It had a swimming pool in Roman times.

View from the palace toward Caesarea. The apostle Paul lived here for 2 years as a "house arrest" prisoner and guest of Felix until he made his final journey to Rome.

The Hippodrome

Remains of the theater

Marble statues from the palace and temple.  The giant foot is all that is left of a huge statue from the Roman temple. It's about 6 feet long.

Well, if you have made it this far in the post, thanks for reading. I would love to tell more stories if you're interested. Final reward for reading so far? When I called David and told him I was in Jerusalem, he eagerly asked, "Did you see Jesus?"