Last week we took a lovely hike through Tennessee Valley. It is located North of San Francisco in Marin County. The valley and cove are named after the Steamship Tennessee who ran aground there in 1853. Remnants of the ship can still be seen at low tide.
Continue reading “Tennessee Valley, a Cove and a Shipwreck”
As I mentioned before, Lastech is now working a graveyard shift and we’re adjusting. It’s not a bad thing. 🙂 Lastech has managed to come home with some very nice pics. Here are a few of them. ALL pics in this post were taken by him.
Now for the bonus pics. Lastech was driving through the neighborhood on his way home from work and had a WTF moment. He couldn’t resist taking pics of the lawn mowers in action.
Here are a couple of humorous videos for your viewing pleasure.
The California Palace of the Legion of Honor is known around here as The Legion of Honor. It is a three-quarter scale adaptation of the 18th-century Palais de la Legion d’Honneur in Paris.
An American example of Beaux-Arts architecture, it is located in Lincoln Park in the Northwest corner of The City. It was built to honor the soldiers of WWI and is home to a beautiful collection of fine art. The museum houses about 4000 years of ancient and European art. It also has a fine Rodin collection.
Adjacent to the museum, The Holocaust, a memorial sculpture by George Segal can be found.
The museum wasn’t open when we were there, but that’s because we arrived at sunrise. Instead, we were treated to the sight of a coyote trotting through the golf course and a lovely view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
It’s time for the boys to shine.
This morning, we went out well before sunrise. We saw this lovely coyote (canis latrans) loping through the Lincoln Park Golf Course. 🙂
One of our favorite places in San Francisco is Golden Gate Park. We go there as often as we can. This year, we got there in time to see the offspring of the Canadian Geese that live around Stow Lake. Once we saw the first batch of goslings, we made a point of going back more often.
This was the first batch that we saw. There were 8 goslings in total. I shall refer to them as No. 1. 🙂
The next week, we went back. We not only saw group No. 1, but we saw a new group, No. 2. They were quite small and still bright yellow. There were four of them.
Group No. 1 had already grown a bit. All 8 were still there.
A week or so later, we drove by again. This time, I saw a creche and I hopped out of the car to count geese and take pics. Group 2 was there. They had grown a lot. I thought the others were group 1, but there were 9 goslings. It turns out that it was a 3rd group. In all, I saw 21 goslings that day as I found group 1 a short distance away. Groups 1 and 2 had grown so much that they were almost done molting.
Just a few days ago, we drove by one more time to check on geese. Holy Cow! They had grown up! This is what we found.
The Star Wars theme strikes again. 🙂
In our travels the other day, I got lucky enough to find a couple of beautiful birds. I found one at Golden Gate Park. I found the other one at the Palace of Fine Arts.
In our travels around the city of San Francisco, we have come across wonderful examples of architecture.
This temple is said to be one of the first Hindu temples in the Western Hemisphere. Built in 1905 it served as a temple until 1959 when it outgrew the small building and was replaced by a much larger temple a few blocks away. The old temple now serves as the headquarters for the Vedanta Society of Northern California.
According to the Vedanta Society of Northern California:
Vedanta is the source of one of the world’s oldest major living religions, Hinduism. It is based on the philosophical books known as the Upanishads, which form the concluding portions of the ancient Indo-Aryan scriptures, the Vedas. The word “Vedanta” is, in fact, another word for the Upanishads. It means, literally, the end (anta) of the Vedas; it also means the culmination of spiritual knowledge (veda).
The history of the temple begins at the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1893. The fair held a World Parliament of Religions. Swami Vivekananda visited San Francisco after attending the conference. Here, he attracted a good many people to his lectures. They formed the Vedanta Society in 1900.
An early pamphlet published by the Society noted that the Temple
“…may be considered a Hindu temple, a Christian church, a Mohammedan mosque and a Hindu …monastery.”
In 1907-08, the temple was topped with four domes and a crenelated tower. On Webster Street, the crenelated tower represents Christianity. On the corner, is the double bulb. This one is patterned after a Hindu temple in the Bengal region of India.
On the Filbert Street side starting on the left (East end), is a two-stage octagon. It’s patterned after a Shivite temple in India. Interestingly, it’s topped with an Islamic crescent, which, in turn, is topped with a trident. The next dome looks like Heshey Kisses. It is a miniature replica of a temple in Benares, India. The dome on the end is a copy of the architecture of the Taj Mahal.
Well, here we are and it’s another Friday. 🙂
