Happy Super Moon Vernal Equinox!

(Not a perigee moon but big nonetheless. Full Moon Set over Oakland, CA, March 21, 2008. Photo by Rebecca Bond.)

Tomorrow, March 19, 2011, we will not only have a full moon, but the moon’s orbit of the earth will be at Perigee (<—click for NASA explanation webpage)—meaning the closest distance of the moon to the earth in the moon’s orbit. Full moon perigee this close to the earth only happens approximately every 18 years. If you are lucky enough to have clear skies tomorrow evening, be sure to get out your camera and be ready to shoot as the moon shows up over the horizon. It should look super huge! Well actually 14% bigger and 30% brighter according to NASA. But, once it's up in the sky it may not look that much different than a regular full moon except brighter, and unfortunately, we are predicted to have rain all weekend long in most of California, so no go for me.

But wait, there’s more! Astronomical events that is... The Vernal, or Spring, Equinox is on Sunday, March 20, 2011, meaning the sun will be directly above the equator and daylight will be about 12 hours. A better explanation can be found at timeanddate.com.

Here’s a youtube video from NASAScience explaining the “Super Full Moon”:

Happy Winter Solstice 2009!

Happy Winter! The solstice officially happened this morning at 9:47 a.m. Pacific Time in the northern hemisphere. The time of the winter solstice refers to the point at which the hemisphere you live in is tilted farthest away from the sun. I posted a slightly more specific definition from Wikipedia here last year.

These pictures are from a few weeks ago when the snow level in Oakland dropped down to about 500 feet above sea level. That’s a really rare occurrence here in the San Francisco Bay Area. The picture was taken at about 1,500 feet elevation in the hills above Oakland at Sibley Volcanic Regional Park. I was able to get up to the hills after my reading tutor volunteering gig by late-morning. The snow was melting fast, but I was lucky to capture some photos of it. You can view the album on flickr. Here is the link to the the flickr map view.

Berkeley Fall Geocaching Bike Ride

K.G. riding “red bike of unknown label” under a golden canopy.

I went on a nice little bike ride today with a friend that lives in Berkeley to do some Geocaching. We were in the fancy part of town with lots of golden deciduous trees displaying their autumn finery. One of the highlights was discovering a park named Monkey Island Park. Who names a park in a fancy residential area Monkey Island Park?!

We found three caches: two “micro” caches (basically film canisters with a paper log inside) and one medium cache that I took a trackable “geocoin” out of with plans on relocating it in a different cache this weekend. Trackable items are things that the owner wants the finder to log the item’s journey and sometimes it has a mission of reaching a certain place or traveling a certain number of miles.

What the heck is geocaching you ask? Well it’s a coordinate based treasure hunt often employing a GPS receiver. “Geocaches” (i.e. treasure chests) are listed and logged on the internet. To find out more about what this geocaching business is about visit www.geocaching.com.

Berkeley Fall Geocache Bike Ride at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail:GPS Trail Maps

Geocaching Walk to Marcom Rose Garden

I went for a walk today in the Grand Lake neighborhood of Oakland to view the Marcom Rose Garden (a.k.a. Oakland Municipal Rose Garden; a.k.a. Marcom Amphitheatre of Roses) and do some geocaching. There is a geocache located in the park and on the way home I found a second lovely little geocache on a hidden stairway “street” called Davidson Way. Along my route I picked up a nice sandwich at Jenny's Cafe and took some pictures of the local sites including my favorite local coffee shop/hot dog stand: Day of the Dead, the historic Grandlake Theatre, and The Alley—a wonderful dive piano bar.

Learn more at Friends of the Marcom Rose Garden here.

p.s. I'm also playing with posting to EveryTrail so the results are below. Click on the red bubble pins to see the associated photo:

Geocaching with Roses in Oakland at EveryTrail

Map created by EveryTrail: GPS Trail Maps

Hike #3 Trails Challenge ’09

Yours Truly in front of San Leandro Bay with the Oakland hills to the north behind her.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline Bike Ride For my third Trails Challenge 2009 “hike” (See original post about EBRPD's Trails Challenge) I didn't do a hike at all—I did a bike ride. Not all of the trails in EBRPD are just for travel by foot. Quite a few are available to wheeled users as well. Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline is one of these wheel-friendly parks as it has many paved pathways. I used this paved opportunity to take my bike out for a sunny Easter Sunday ride along the waterfront from Lake Merritt to MLK Jr. Reg. Shoreline including parts of Bay Farm Island & Alameda. Since only seven of the seventeen round trip miles where in the Trails Challenge Guide I've only included those seven miles in my Trails Challenge total. View all of my photos from this hike on flickr. Trails Challenge “Hike” #3 Stats: Date Completed: April 12, 2009 Location: CA, Oakland, Alameda, & Bay Farm Island, Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline Mileage: 7 trails challenge; ~17 mi trip total Elevation: Sea Level Trails Challenge Total Miles: 28

Google Earth image of my route. Click for larger view.

Topographic map of my route. Click for a larger view. (The yellow line is the “Trails Challenge” portion of my route. The red line is my route to the regional shoreline, and the blue is my return route.) More Information: Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline official site My previous post(s) about MLK, Jr. Reg. Shoreline All of my Trails Challenge 2009 posts

Hike #1 Trails Challenge ’09

Western Hound's Tongue (Cynoglossum grande) seen on French Trail.
Roberts Regional Recreation Area & Redwood Regional Park Loop As I wrote a couple weeks ago the East Bay Regional Park District is hosting its annual Trails Challenge. Last Thursday I hiked my first official challenge trail of 2009. I chose a “summer” recommended hike as it was a nice warm sunny spring day and this route would be shaded by redwoods and oak woodland most of the way with just a smidge of chaparral and grassland. Being midweek I had the first half all to myself, but later in the afternoon I was joined by equestrians, mountain bikers, and dog walkers. Along the route, I was pleasantly greeted by plentiful wildflowers and a “serpentine prairie” right here in Oakland. Date Completed: March 26, 2009 Location: CA, Oakland, Roberts Regional Recreation Area & Redwood Regional Park Mileage: ~7.1 mi round trip Elevation: +/-1700'; lo pt 822'; hi pt 1,535' Trails Challenge Total Miles: 7
	California tortoiseshell butterfly (Nymphalis californica). It briefly landed on Dunn Trail in the Serpentine Prairie Preserve part of Redwood Regional Park.
Links: View all my photos from this hike Read more about the Trails Challenge Learn more about the serpentine prairie Roberts Regional Recreation Area official website Redwood Regional Park official website
	Backlit sword fern on Graham Trail in Roberts Regional Recreation Area.
Topographic map of my route. Click for a larger view.

Springtime in Oakland

Daffodil amongst the Nasturtiums on Newton, March 7, 2009.

Oakland has had a lot of dark news the past few months due to a sad slew of high-profile shootings. In a feeble attempt to brighten the mood, I thought I’d show a tiny bit o’ O-town seasonal color. The pictures above and below where taken on my way to deposit the ol’ unemployment check at the Patelco in “Uptown” Oakland, I spied this sprightly daffodil blooming amongst various layers of nasturtium foliage in my neighborhood and the purple magnolia(???) tree dwarfed amongst the high-rises near the new Catholic church— Cathedral of Christ the Light. ‎

Magenta blooms on a tree with high-rise, March 7, 2009.

Happy Winter!

PC110202. "holiday" lights on the bandstand fountain, Lake Merritt.

Since we are having some seriously cold winter weather here in "sunny" California, I thought I'd post this festive photo and a little note about the coming shortest day of the year here in the northern hemisphere. I like this Wikipedia entry for the Winter Solstice:

The winter solstice occurs at the instant when the Sun's position in the sky is at its greatest angular distance on the other side of the equatorial plane from the observer.

This year it happens at 4:04 A.M. (PST) on December 21st, 2008. In the United States this is the official start of Winter. So Happy Winter!

A Swan at Lake Merritt

I've never seen a real-life swan until this year at "The Lake". They are HUGE, bigger than geese. According to my copy of The Audobon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, Western Region this is a mute swan:

Mute Swan (Cygnus olor), an introduced species and a tame pond bird, is smaller [than a Trumpeter Swan] with a black knob at the base of its orange bill. Mute Swans hold their necks in a graceful curve with bill pointing down.

It swam right up to me probably thinking my camera was something tasty I was going to offer it to eat. I don't know what it is doing at the lake because apparently we are too far south of the normal range.

Many people don't know that Oakland's Lake Merritt was the first wildlife refuge to be established in North America (proposed 1869, instituted 1870).

• More about Mute Swans at Cornell Lab of Ornithology
  
• More about Lake Merritt at Lake Merritt Institute

View more photos here at flickr.

Planting Natives with Save The Bay

One of the reasons I love and have stayed in the bay area is the wonderful mix between the urban and the wild. For instance this mingling is what makes the Golden Gate Bridge THE Golden Gate Bridge—a giant painted-orange steel engineering marvel wedged between dramatic eroding sea cliffs standing high above the churning currents of the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay with amazing views of the natural and manufactured extending every which way (as long as it isn't foggy of course), with seals and sea gulls barking swimming diving and flying above and below while four-wheeled, motored cages whiz buy at 50 MPH. This contrast of the man-made and the natural creates—what is to me—an exotic texture that most of the rest of strip-mall, track-home California lacks.
	One of our leaders giving us the marching orders for the day.
Saving the Bay One Plant at a Time To show my appreciation to mother nature (and yes even my fellow man) for creating this wonderfully mixed-up urban wild thing we humans call the San Francisco Bay, and give a leg up to the natural side of this equation that is ever at risk of being annihilated by the over-producing / consuming side (90% of the bay wetlands have been turned into real estate since the 1850s), I decided to spend a few hours of my free-time planting California native species here in Oakland with a non-profit organization called Save The Bay.
	Interpretive map of the area on the paved trail to our work location next to the slough.
I Learn Something New Every Day: Slough is Not Pronounced Sloff When I arrived at the Save The Bay nursery located at Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline park, everybody was gathered around to receive a brief lesson about the bay wetlands and why they are important. We were also given our assignment for the day. We would be planting a few native plants next to Damon Slough (pronounced SLEW). Thankfully the leader pronounced it before I ever had the opportunity to publicly embarrass myself. Damon Slough is a channel that feeds runoff to the Oakland Estuary and from there to the San Francisco Bay. It's not a natural slough. Long ago the natural streams of the East Oakland watershed were concreted up into man made storm drains and forced underground to make room for "progress" and then made to resurface here and spill out into the estuary.
	Me getting down and dirty with my Western Goldenrods.
	A baby Coyote Brush (Baccharis pilularis) I planted.
The Natives are Restless Sometimes the volunteering involves working in the nursery planting seeds or picking up trash along the shore after a storm, but this day we planted four California native species that needed to be put into the ground before the rainy season really kicks in: Meadow Barley (Hordeum brachyantherum) Western Goldenrod (Euthamia occidentalis) Sticky Monkey Flower (Mimulus aurantiacus) Coyote Brush (Baccharis pilularis) One of these days I'm going to volunteer for one of their paddle-in locations where you get to canoe or kayak into a bay wetland area to do restoration work.
	Damon Slough draining into the Oakland Estuary in the afternoon at Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland
Volunteer San Francisco Save The Bay Visit Martin Luther King, Jr. Regional Shoreline View a few more photos at flickr.