southern CA

Michael Faraday invented the electric motor in the 1830s.  That has nothing to do with anything here, other than it happened even longer ago than my last blog post.

I was in CA for 3 days, mostly work, plus some exploring on my own.  Since my co-worker Ron and I were on the road so much, can you guess what you'll see alot of today?  Yes, roads.

Picture below is Day 3 near Bakersfield, in the Central Valley.  A few years ago I worked in the northern end of the valley near S.F.  So now you're seeing the southern end. The central valley is enormous and alot of produce comes from there. To the right is an almond orchard.

Below is the semi-arid desert south of the central valley, where we're doing work.

Driving over the San Andreas Fault

That yellow line is the route we took.  Upper left of our loop goes into the valley. The valley is that bowl-shaped thing with green at the bottom, see what I mean?

Above is my first night there, view from hotel at Burbank Airport.  It is just outside Los Angeles.

Day 1. Below is where we are working. The land used to be ranches for growing alfalfa and other crops.  They stopped farming decades ago because they ran out of water.  Farmers pumped water from the wells faster than rain could replenish the supply. Can you tell it doesn't rain much there?  That white thing below is an old abandoned well.

Picture above shows a salt flat. The salt flat is that white plain in the distance.   Water from the mountains flows into the valley then evaporates, leaving salt and minerals behind.

Several people were there, all for the project we were working on.

Day 2, palms at hotel in Bakersfield

Above and below, you can see a water channel.  The water supply in southern California comes from northern California, since it rains more up north in the mountains.  There are hundreds of miles of aqueducts made of pipes and man-made water channels to carry the water.

Water channel

Visitors center devoted to water supply system. See that round door? It is to show the diameter of one of the aqueducts, thirteen feet.

Warner Bros. studios, Hollywood, which is near Burbank and Los Angeles

In my spare time I drove through the Santa Monica Mountains, which offer views of Los Angeles and surrounding cities.

Here you can see L.A. near sunset.

Stars

There is no way to rotate these stars on the blog. Data in the picture file tells the computer which end  of the photograph is up. The computer is confused because the pictures were taken straight down.

Chinese Theater

L.A. freeways are often packed. Traffic there is legendary. 

Below, the architecture looked interesting, something airy about it.

Above, driving along the Pacific coast.  I went through Santa Monica and Malibu which are beach communities known for surfing.  There wasn't much I found interesting there so I didn't stop for long.  Picture below is my rented convertible overlooking Malibu.

Above is Glendale, a ciity outside L.A.   There is a large pedestrian mall downtown.  Our office there is on the 17th floor. Picture below is the view looking north.

Route 110 through downtown L.A. 

Santa Monica Mountains, Mulholland Drive

View to north from Santa Monica Mountains

Below are shots from the Hollywood Bowl overlook, on Mulholland Drive just outside Hollywood.  Downdown L.A. is in the distance.  I stuck around until dark, wouldn't you say it was worth it?  The hollywood sign is out of the pictures to the left.

 

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