Back into the Polar Vortex

Lots of Mexican pottery

One of the many rusty animals. A mile away, another shop sells similar stuff

Steve in the land of dinosaurs

For MSU and Notre Dame fans

Pulgas water monument

cedars

A cultivar of the ice plant

Stevein a cave

Mustard planted to enrich soil

We leave in a few hours. Tomorrows temp will be minus nine.  Maybe it gets as cold as the high forties by the time I go for a run here so it will be a disappointment to see spring didn't come while we were gone.
On Monday we went to the Pulgas water monument  at the Hetch Hetchy reservoir . Both names crack me up along with the road Alameda de las Pulgas. The first time I saw it, I read avenue of the pugs but Pulgas  means fleas. Apparently there were lots of them for the early settlers to enjoy.

We made it to one of the two places of rusty giant animal sculptures. When I gain access to a computer (I am using an iPad) you will see how silly these things are.

For the last two days, we did lots of runs, at least I did, and hikes mainly along beaches.  It's been nice. Last night on the other side of the mountain, we had a Hong Kong style many dish dinner with dishes served very differently than I've seen before. Interesting. Shrimp covered with mayonnaise served with sugared sesame walnuts for one.
We went to a larger branch of Ranch 99 in search of the devil hot pepper plum rice wine but no luck. They had durian, huge bumpy yellow fruit, that supposedly smell very bad but these didn't seem too bad. I do have supplies now to make my own bubble tea.
Since our falcon experience, I've been reading about falconry. Why would these birds hunt for humans? A useful way to hunt before guns I suppose. Only the females are considered falcons. The male falcons are tencels. Females are 30% bigger though it wasn't obvious in that tangle of feathers during the mid afternoon quickie photographed Sunday. Hawks and golden eagles are used also in falconry but they have a different name for that. Apparently falconry is so popular, particularly among the Rich, that there are huge falcon hospitals to mend the birds.

I think no where else in the US is there such a gap between the rich and the poor than in the Bay Area. Where do the working poor live? California has laws giving everyone access to the ocean. Locally some rich guy bought up lots of beachfront and managed to find some obscure law that enabled him to grab the beach for himself. Lots of protests about that.

Back to Michigan where a 1000 sq foot house is well under a million.