Blogs

California Trip - Day 2

Yesterday, we did some sight-seeing in the LA Area, and stopped in at a few stores.  Some of them were obligatory for the trip, such as Scope City and Woodland Hills Camera & Telescopes.  Others were negotiated stops such as Affliction (an interesting store to say the least), and others were out of necessity, like Target.

Gord and I snapped a lot of pretty pictures of the LA and Hollywood areas, although we inadvertantly bypassed Hollywood Hills, so haven't yet gotten a picture of the big Hollywood sign.

Later in the day, we proceeded to make our way up into the mountains to join the Riverside Astronomical Society for a star party at their observing site; the Goat Mountain Astronomical Research Station (GMARS).  Generally, the trip up the mountain into the desert was pretty uneventful.  However, as we were travelling down Highway 62, we passed through a massive wind farm.  This wasn't like the wind farm back home near St-Leon.  This wind farm had hundreds of wind mills of all sizes.  Here's a link I found on Flickr, that shows a small section of this wind farm.

Alex, one of the club directors, and the gentleman we've been in contact with since we made plans to head to California and whom we are still to meet, had made arrangements for Gord and I to bunk out on the mountain.  Gotta tell you these guys have it made; They've got a house at the top of the mountain, roughly 10 observatories, and a dozen observing pads...being dark pictures of the layout are tough, but I'm gonna snap some of them this morning.

As soon as we get back to Pasadena, I'll take a look at the images I took last night look like (I'm hopeful there's some goodies in there) and pass them along, as well as start fixing these posts to lay down some links in my posts.

Today, we're heading down the mountain back to LA/Pasadena and will be meeting up with Mike Simmons (our esteemed host for this trip) for some brunch and excellent conversation.  Gord (our cruise directory), has the itinerary all laid down, so I'm not 100% certain what's on the agenda for today...but guaranteed there will be photo ops.