Moments in Dirt and Ink

Sketches for the month while hanging in the wild, except the couple noted. The view from one of the wind caves in Gaviota State Park . A tree in Agra (from a photo from Nov. 2010.) A climbing wall in Rattlesnake Canyon . View of the layers of mountains from along the Rattlesnake connector , almost to Tunnel trail. One of the zoo's flamingos and its chick.  (From a photo.) Stopping along the 1 "north" of Ventura and looking back along the coast on a blustery good day for kite boarding. A redwood at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History that helped keep some at the Art Walk cool.

Sketching materials are generally some pens and a book of paper that isn't too horrible. Unfortunately, I don't really want anything to do with a ball point pen. Fountain pens are now my preferred writing tool, especially Pilots, but they are new things for me and I still haven't gotten to trying to sketch with them. I had a halting attempt at a dip pen, which supposedly give a very responsive line, but trying to find a good ink well for traveling has come up with nothing. There are various pastels and even crayons and felt tipped markers of various sorts, all not quite what I want when I am sketching. What I really like is the brush. Nothing is more responsive. Most people seem to find them too responsive and so refer to this as "fidgety" instead. Drawing a brush across a page can lead to surprises, but I love the surprises. Well, most of them, anyway. I learned that there are brush pens that actually have bristles on the end. Not markers with long, soft felt t...

The space shuttle Endeavour on its very last flight ever is set to take a very long route fromEdward'sto Los Angeles heading all the way up to Sacramento and San Francisco, which are not exactly on the way. It is also hitting Vandenberg, so it seems it must go right overhead on the way. Already late for the Vandenberg flyover, I head down to Shoreline Park for that extremely open sky for the maximum chance of seeing it. It's already been delayed a bit worrying about fog in the bay area, so I'm not expecting it to be anything like on schedule. Getting to the park, I take a very casual stroll along the cliff. There's not many people in the park, but there's a few who are suspiciously scanning the mountains instead of the usual ocean facing behavior. There's quite a few paddle boarders out in the ocean as well. A guy who has been talking on a phone and poking at an iPad heads over to a group and informs them that it'll be about 10 more minutes. Fog is making ...

Skofield Park, Santa Barbara front country Map link. The Rattlesnake Canyon Trail starts at Skofield Park and reaches into the National Forest behind before popping up on Gibraltar Road. A connector runs from it over to Tunnel Trail, so routes to the top exist by either the road or the trail. I decide to head up it thinking I might go to the road, which has a good view of the city but the air has been hazy for weeks. I might go up to Mission Fall but it is as dry as always since it takes more even water to flow than cleaning up the haze requires. I might just poke at things. I find a place to park on the east side of the one lane bridge at Skofield and drop into the dry drainage along some use trail to cross over to the big sign where the trail presumably starts. I found some graffiti under the bridge at Skofield Park. I turn up the trail and soon cross over flowing creek and climb along a couple switchbacks with multiple deep shortcuts to a good trail at the top comi...

One "hike" that is sure to find a lot of animals is a trip to the zoo. Now set up so that you enter through the gift shop instead of hiking up the hill beside the swans, but there are no animals along the new entry route unless you count the microscopic pond scum that is being cultivated. We spot some cute and very furry new world monkeys with a sign saying they can't really grasp things with their tails. The greatness of the new world monkey tail shattered socallously! Not a good start. We head over to the elephants, who are determined not to do much of anything in the day's heat, then turn to the penguins that have replaced the sea lions. A few of them are determined to do quite a lot of swimming.

Gaviota State Park Locate the trail head. The icons that indicate the predicted weather all turned to thunder storms the day before and were now promising rain, as was, if I'm honest, the sky. I drove toward the south end of Gaviota State Park, and right into the rain. Nothing particularly hard, but definitely rain and not mist. I drove out the other side of it, too. Strips of blue sky can be seen out over the point, but not quite in a way that implies clearing. It is dry as I start down the paved fire road that starts off the route to the wind caves. Starting off down the paved fire road, the trail twisting along the hill beyond. A few small paths lead through the thick growth beside the pavement and up the hill, some heading back to the main road and some heading up toward the ridge. They are likely to be deer trails, at least originally. Eventually a large path leads through the growth and I turn down it. It snakes up the hill in a way that is a bit too stee...