Steen's home of the certainly strange
Near Inverness in Northern California along the Estero Trail, there is a secret little beach littered with cetacean fossils that are roughly 7 million years old. These cetaceans were the ancestors of the modern day gray whale, and this particular area used to be their breeding ground. The whole hike is only about 9 miles round trip, and there is only a minimal amount of bushwhacking necessary to get to the fossils. Continue reading “Gray Whale Fossils in Marin”
Some buddies and I headed over to Lassen Volcanic National Park last Friday, and we just got back. None of us had ever been there, and to be honest we barely did any research. We fell back to Lassen because we decided against doing Mount Ritter again (due to weather), and we were curious about the place. It is a relatively remote park in the Cascade region near Redding, California. We just knew that we wanted to climb Lassen Peak – a volcano, of course. Continue reading “Lassen Volcanic National Park: my debut, and my review”
While boarding the Tiburon-San Francisco ferry to begin my commute home last night, a pigeon also hopped on board. As we ferried across the bay, the bird walked around the cabin investigating everything. It even hopped up onto an empty chair, and investigated the table in front of it.
Near the end of the ride, it had resigned itself to strutting back and fourth near the entrance of the cabin, and then stopped to take a poop. When it turned around after pooping (to continue with its pacing), it spotted the poop out of the corner of its eye, and plunged its head down to peck at it. Only when the bird’s face was half a centimeter away did it realize that the stuff was its own poop and not a piece of food that magically appeared during the poop break, and it recoiled. Continue reading “I just flew in from Marin, and boy are my arms tired”