Stanley's Stay
Devin is my cousin. His class is doing the Flat Stanley project and he sent Stanley to me! The following is my account of the grand adventures that we had that I will send back with Stanley (as soon as I'm able to get an ink cartridge and get to the post office!) It unfortunately does not include the brochures and business card that I mention. (Well, it COULD but that is a whole other scanning job and making sure everything is readable and makes sense and more than I'm willing to take on anyway.)
Enjoy!
Hi Devin!
Stanley and I have had a great time together these past few weeks! It started out a little boring, though, since he arrived on the first day of my spring break. We could have had some great adventures during spring break except I was sick. All week! Instead we read and played some computer games while I worked on getting over my nasty cold. Fortunately, Stanley didn’t catch my cold. That might have made the next week also boring!
Stanley came to school with me on Tuesday (March 27). My college classes are only two days a week, except for the online class that doesn’t meet at all! The first class we went to was my English class, which is a class required by the university that I should have taken many semesters ago but it never quite fit into my schedule. In class on Tuesday we analyzed a poem by Robert Frost called “The Road Not Taken.” It goes like this:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodded black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
After some lunch, we attended my next class which is a three hour long evening class titled “Remote Sensing and Image Processing.” Stanley thought it was complicated but very cool because in that class I am learning how to use satellites to collect pictures and information from space about the earth and how to use that information so that it is useful. We’ve learned how to do things like use false color to show things that the satellites pick up in wavelengths the human eye can’t see! For example, the near-infrared wavelength detects plants but since we can’t see in near-infrared, I can tell the computer to show that wavelength as red (or green or blue) which we can see!
The next day Stanley went to work with me. I think my job is really cool because I get to work outside all day. I am a Weed Warrior for Return of the Natives. What I do is I work in some of the parks in Salinas removing invasive, exotic plants. These are plants that came here from somewhere else, like South Africa or Australia, but have no natural predators here in California and because the climate is similar to where they came from these plants grow like crazy! They take over the land and crowd out native plants. They also don’t provide any food or shelter for our native animals. We try to keep an online journal updated on what we are working on (http://weed-warriors.livejournal.com/) but it is easy to fall behind!
I’ve included six different brochures that have to do with my job, just in case you were interested in learning more! The one that says “War on Weeds” has some descriptions on what we do and the six least-wanted plants in Salinas. (I wrote in a few notes of my own, too.) There is also “Don’t Plant a Pest” that gives some alternatives to planting invasive plants (since many plant invasions started because people thought a plant was pretty, put it in their garden and it escaped!) There is also a pocket version of this that I included. The “Creeks of Salinas Map” shows where I work, which is Natividad Creek and Upper Carr Lake. If you look on the big map on the inside, where I work most often is along the red dotted line in the middle, from the road that says Boronda (near Frog Pond) all the way down to the part that says Upper Carr Lake. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work in the field near Cougar Overlook. Upper Carr Lake is something that we hope will grow bigger.
Once upon a time, there used to be a very large lake in the middle of Salinas, which was called Carr Lake. It is now farmland but we hope that someday it will be a lake again where animals can live and people can relax and learn. The brochure that says “Carr Lake Regional Park” has more information about that. Finally there is one that says “Return of the Natives,” which is the group that I work for. It doesn’t have a picture of it but our headquarters is the coolest looking building on campus. Like most other buildings at CSUMB, it was converted from an old army building. It is only one story tall and everything is a little crowded inside but the outside is completely covered by a giant, colorful mural! You can see a picture of it if you go to http://watershed.csumb.edu/
The day Stanley came to work with me, we did a scouting day. I have three co-workers, Becca, Lizzie and Matt. Lizzie and Matt brought their dog, Toby, to work that day too! We walked around the park, checked areas we hadn’t been to in a while, and made plans for what we should focus on next. We saw a lot of invasive weeds, especially poison hemlock and fennel, but we also saw lots of pretty wildflowers, including California poppies, suncups, and blue-eyed grass.
Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium bellum)
California poppy (Eschscholzia californica)
Suncups (Camissonia ovata)
The real adventure started Thursday night, though, when Mitya arrived!
Mitya is a graduate student at the UC Riverside music program and I’m an environmental sciences major at CSUMB. We both like geology, especially faults! We decided to take a road trip to visit some places with interesting geology. More specifically, the San Andreas fault!
The first place we went to is actually very close to where I live. The Pinnacles have always been one of my most favorite places in the world because it is beautiful and fun to hike around in. Plus it has some interesting geology! The Pinnacles were formed by an ancient volcano in Southern California. Part of the volcano is still in Southern California, but the San Andreas fault moved the rest of it almost 200 miles to the north to where they are now, near Soledad.
Wind and water have eroded the rocks and have worn them away so that now they form strange towers and rock walls that rock climbers love. There are some caves too, called talus caves that are formed when boulders fall into deep cracks in the rock but get stuck part way down. Bats actually live in these caves! The Pinnacles are also one of the places where endangered California condors have been released into the wild.
We didn’t actually have any time to take a hike in the Pinnacles that day, but we were able to drive to a point where we could all see them. Mitya took some pictures and Stanley looked for condors in the sky but didn’t see any.
The Pinnacles
They Rock
Next, we went to Parkfield. Parkfield is famous for earthquakes and had one of magnitude 6 or greater every 22 years. Until geologists tried to predict one, that is! There are lots of scientists that visit Parkfield to learn more about faults and earthquakes. They have lots of measuring devices set up around the town, including SAFOD (San Andreas Fault Observation at Depth) which involved using a team that usually drills holes for oil to drill a hole about 4,500 feet into the fault so that the scientists could put different things down near the source of the earthquakes so they can collect data on it!
Parkfield is a very charming little town, though. It is set back in the Gabilan mountains away from cities and highways and is surrounded by ranches and rolling hills. The people and the dogs were very friendly, and according to the sign, only 18 people live there!
How many people?
A friendly doggie!
Parkfield is very proud of its earthquakes, and I think it has some of the best signs around.
Like the one in front of Parkfield Cafe
The fault looks like a dry creek bed most of the year, though there was some water in it while we were there.
Not a creek!
The bridge that crosses the creek/fault has been bent by the fault’s actions! They had to put a metal plate in the middle of the bridge to fix where it was bending.
Like so.
I took a picture with Stanley on the North American plate.
And Mitya took a picture with Stanley on the Pacific plate.
By the way, I DO hope you have learned something about tectonic plates! Essentially, they can be thought of as giant, well, plates that the oceans and continents rest upon (the lithosphere, if you want a big word!) These plates float on top of rock that is so hot that it is almost at the melting point (the asthenosphere, if you want another big word!) These plates separate, dive under each other and slide past each other. The San Andreas Fault is where the Pacific and North American plates are sliding past each other. I actually live on the Pacific plate. Sacramento and El Dorado Hills are on the North American plate.
There was a really cool sign in Parkfield that shows what the San Andreas Fault does.
Best. Sign. Ever.
The signs read…
The San Andreas Fault
This rift extends from El Centro on the south, 650 miles northwesternly the length of California to Point Arenas, where it continues seaward. The most publicized of California's geologic faults, it is the source of dozen of quakes annually. Of the three "monster quakes" recorded in the state (1857- Southern California, 1872- Owens Valley, 1906- San Francisco) two have been along this "transform fault." A surface manifestation of the tectonic forces present as the Pacific plate collides with the North American continental plate, these forces have moved the Pacific plate, 300 miles northward in the past 30 million years.
Movement continues at an annual right of approximately 2.33". The 12.4' separation between the two portions of this monument represents the fault movement that has occurred since the modern revival of the ancient order of E Clampus Vitus at the Cliff House, San Francisco, in 1931. At this rate of movement Los Angeles will slip past San Francisco in approximately 31.5 million years and Parkfield will then be a seaside community.
Erected by De la Guerra y Pacheco Chapter 1.5 Ancient and Honorable Order E CLAMPUS VITUS in the 6000th year of our Ancient Order September 24, 1995
I thought that this sign was especially nifty, not only because it was a very creative way to show what the fault does, but also because it was put into place by members of E Clampus Vitus which my grandpa (Gwinn, not BomBom) was a part of! I’ve included one of the Clamper business cards that he had.
Parkfield also had a very cool fountain.
According to Weather.com, though, Parkfield does not actually exist! Obviously this means that Parkfield is in an alternate dimension. To get there, you must avoid the teleporting kamikazi Parkfield inverse-were groundsquirrels to approach the portal, at which point you must drive across the San Andreas Fault at exactly 88 miles per hour at platform Nine and Three-Quarters. When you leave Parkfield, you might randomly end up in Korea, or possibly Arkansas. Stanley would be happy to explain what all that means.
Eventually, we had to leave Parkfield and we continued out journey. We did have a slight mishap when the “check engine” light came on in Mitya’s car and we ended up pulling over in Buttonwillow for about an hour. It turned out that the gas-cap hadn’t been screwed on tight enough, and once we figured that out we were on our way again! At one point, we were driving on a road that ran pretty much directly on top of the San Andreas Fault for a ways! We did take this road on purpose, though, since it is rather out of the way.
We had planned on driving past a famous road-cut near Palmdale where the rock has been twisted and makes these distinctive wavy lines. It was dark when we got there and Palmdale does not light up this road-cut. We were all very disappointed that we did not get to see it and we decided that from now on, Palmdale shall be called Lamedale because it does not light up the works of art that the San Andreas Fault produces! (Also, the highway exits were confusing and we were frustrated because we were hungry.)
Eventually we made it to Riverside.
The next day, the three of us met up with another friend of mine. Chris is studying mechanical engineering and we all decided that the best thing for a handful of 20-somethings and a flat kid to do would be to go to the theatre and watch “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!” First we had lunch at a Japanese restaurant where we were wowed by a teppanyaki chef! The way he prepared the food is often called hibachi-style and it was almost as much performance as preparing food! He sliced onions so that they would stack up into a small, hollow tower and then he set it on fire and pushed it around the cooking area like it was a train! I thought it was really cool because I have never had food prepared hibachi-style. Stanley was a little scared, though, which is understandable because the chef started out with setting the whole cooking area on fire!
The was a lot of fun especially since Chris, Mitya and I all used to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when we were kids. Afterwards, we decided to get icecream. I shared a little of mine with Stanley.
Mmmmmm, icecream!
Afterwards, Chris needed to head off to a birthday party for a friend.
But first Stanley wanted to try to drive Chris’s car!
We also took two group pictures. We had a hard time finding someone to take our picture for us, so Mitya took a picture of our shadows!
We are artsy!
Finally we did someone to take an actual picture for us.
Later that day, Stanley, Mitya and I decided to go looking for another fault to poke! We went to San Bernardino to find the San Jacinto Fault. State law says that houses cannot be built on an active fault and that there must be at least 50 feet of clearance on either side. So San Bernardino decided to build a housing development around the fault and leave it as a nice little park! Once again we encountered a fault posing as a stream. We knew what it REALLY was, though!
A fault in disguise!
There was a snow egret hanging around the fault and Mitya had to chase it and sneak up on it until finally he was able to take a picture of it!
…standing in the fault!
The egret wasn’t the only one! Stanley fell part of the fault! Oh no! Fortunately we were able to rescue him.
OHNOSTANLEY!!!
That night we watched the original Superman Movie. Mostly for certain special effects and land features but I won’t describe them in detail because I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone if they want to see it! Also, Mitya made me and Stanley tee-shirts that read “Blame San Andreas.” (Why? It’s an easy pun! Think about it for a second!)
Now all three of us have shirts like that!
The next day, Stanley and I took a bus and then a train and then a bus again back to Soledad. Mitya and I have decided that this summer we would like to take another fault poking trip and explore some geologic features elsewhere in the state, as well as visit San Francisco and the truly awesome Monterey Bay Aquarium. Stanley is welcome to come along! He is a very good traveler. He doesn’t eat a lot, doesn’t take up much space, complains very little, and we found out he has a lovely singing voice! We found this out when we were singing along to some Beatles songs during the last leg of the trip on Friday when we were all ready to be doing something other than sitting in a car. I would have thought that being flat might ruin some of those essential things needed for singing but Stanley has proved me wrong!
Since then it has been school and work again. We found a few salamanders at work and Stanley thought those were really cool! They actually looked like very dark worms until you look closer. Then you see that it is not a worm at all and that it has teeny, tiny little legs and a salamander face!
I had hoped to have everything ready to send Stanley back last week but of course there was homework and my printer ran out of ink! Yesterday, Saturday April 14th I went to work and did something different from the usual. Sometimes I work at public events and the city of Marina was having an Earth Day celebration. I asked Stanley if he wanted to come but I had to leave for it very early and he was too tired. It turns out that it was good that he did not go because he would have gotten very soggy! I led a group in removing iceplant and while we were working on that it started to rain. A little later our group moved on to planting some native rushes and grasses but it just kept raining harder and harder! Finally the event ended a couple hours early and I have home soaked! It was worth it to find out about a nice little park in Marina that I didn’t know about and to talk to some friends that I haven’t seen in a while.
One of those friends, Bruce, works for the Bureau of Land Management in the old Fort Ord and he does a lot of restoration work. He brought a couple of large newts and I got to hold them for a little bit while he changed the water in the bowl they were in. They were both about six inches long from their strange little faces to the ends of their finned tails. They were also very squirmy! I wish I had brought a camera and I could have taken a picture of them to share but maybe the camera would have been ruined by all of the rain anyway.
Now I am all caught up with Stanley’s adventures with me. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about it! (I know Stanley sure had fun!)
Take care, and remember to watch out for those Parkfield squirrels!
Enjoy!
Hi Devin!
Stanley and I have had a great time together these past few weeks! It started out a little boring, though, since he arrived on the first day of my spring break. We could have had some great adventures during spring break except I was sick. All week! Instead we read and played some computer games while I worked on getting over my nasty cold. Fortunately, Stanley didn’t catch my cold. That might have made the next week also boring!
Stanley came to school with me on Tuesday (March 27). My college classes are only two days a week, except for the online class that doesn’t meet at all! The first class we went to was my English class, which is a class required by the university that I should have taken many semesters ago but it never quite fit into my schedule. In class on Tuesday we analyzed a poem by Robert Frost called “The Road Not Taken.” It goes like this:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodded black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
After some lunch, we attended my next class which is a three hour long evening class titled “Remote Sensing and Image Processing.” Stanley thought it was complicated but very cool because in that class I am learning how to use satellites to collect pictures and information from space about the earth and how to use that information so that it is useful. We’ve learned how to do things like use false color to show things that the satellites pick up in wavelengths the human eye can’t see! For example, the near-infrared wavelength detects plants but since we can’t see in near-infrared, I can tell the computer to show that wavelength as red (or green or blue) which we can see!
The next day Stanley went to work with me. I think my job is really cool because I get to work outside all day. I am a Weed Warrior for Return of the Natives. What I do is I work in some of the parks in Salinas removing invasive, exotic plants. These are plants that came here from somewhere else, like South Africa or Australia, but have no natural predators here in California and because the climate is similar to where they came from these plants grow like crazy! They take over the land and crowd out native plants. They also don’t provide any food or shelter for our native animals. We try to keep an online journal updated on what we are working on (http://weed-warriors.livejournal.com/) but it is easy to fall behind!
I’ve included six different brochures that have to do with my job, just in case you were interested in learning more! The one that says “War on Weeds” has some descriptions on what we do and the six least-wanted plants in Salinas. (I wrote in a few notes of my own, too.) There is also “Don’t Plant a Pest” that gives some alternatives to planting invasive plants (since many plant invasions started because people thought a plant was pretty, put it in their garden and it escaped!) There is also a pocket version of this that I included. The “Creeks of Salinas Map” shows where I work, which is Natividad Creek and Upper Carr Lake. If you look on the big map on the inside, where I work most often is along the red dotted line in the middle, from the road that says Boronda (near Frog Pond) all the way down to the part that says Upper Carr Lake. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of work in the field near Cougar Overlook. Upper Carr Lake is something that we hope will grow bigger.
Once upon a time, there used to be a very large lake in the middle of Salinas, which was called Carr Lake. It is now farmland but we hope that someday it will be a lake again where animals can live and people can relax and learn. The brochure that says “Carr Lake Regional Park” has more information about that. Finally there is one that says “Return of the Natives,” which is the group that I work for. It doesn’t have a picture of it but our headquarters is the coolest looking building on campus. Like most other buildings at CSUMB, it was converted from an old army building. It is only one story tall and everything is a little crowded inside but the outside is completely covered by a giant, colorful mural! You can see a picture of it if you go to http://watershed.csumb.edu/
The day Stanley came to work with me, we did a scouting day. I have three co-workers, Becca, Lizzie and Matt. Lizzie and Matt brought their dog, Toby, to work that day too! We walked around the park, checked areas we hadn’t been to in a while, and made plans for what we should focus on next. We saw a lot of invasive weeds, especially poison hemlock and fennel, but we also saw lots of pretty wildflowers, including California poppies, suncups, and blue-eyed grass.
Blue-eyed Grass (Sisyrinchium bellum)
California poppy (Eschscholzia californica)
Suncups (Camissonia ovata)
The real adventure started Thursday night, though, when Mitya arrived!
Mitya is a graduate student at the UC Riverside music program and I’m an environmental sciences major at CSUMB. We both like geology, especially faults! We decided to take a road trip to visit some places with interesting geology. More specifically, the San Andreas fault!
The first place we went to is actually very close to where I live. The Pinnacles have always been one of my most favorite places in the world because it is beautiful and fun to hike around in. Plus it has some interesting geology! The Pinnacles were formed by an ancient volcano in Southern California. Part of the volcano is still in Southern California, but the San Andreas fault moved the rest of it almost 200 miles to the north to where they are now, near Soledad.
Wind and water have eroded the rocks and have worn them away so that now they form strange towers and rock walls that rock climbers love. There are some caves too, called talus caves that are formed when boulders fall into deep cracks in the rock but get stuck part way down. Bats actually live in these caves! The Pinnacles are also one of the places where endangered California condors have been released into the wild.
We didn’t actually have any time to take a hike in the Pinnacles that day, but we were able to drive to a point where we could all see them. Mitya took some pictures and Stanley looked for condors in the sky but didn’t see any.
The Pinnacles
They Rock
Next, we went to Parkfield. Parkfield is famous for earthquakes and had one of magnitude 6 or greater every 22 years. Until geologists tried to predict one, that is! There are lots of scientists that visit Parkfield to learn more about faults and earthquakes. They have lots of measuring devices set up around the town, including SAFOD (San Andreas Fault Observation at Depth) which involved using a team that usually drills holes for oil to drill a hole about 4,500 feet into the fault so that the scientists could put different things down near the source of the earthquakes so they can collect data on it!
Parkfield is a very charming little town, though. It is set back in the Gabilan mountains away from cities and highways and is surrounded by ranches and rolling hills. The people and the dogs were very friendly, and according to the sign, only 18 people live there!
How many people?
A friendly doggie!
Parkfield is very proud of its earthquakes, and I think it has some of the best signs around.
Like the one in front of Parkfield Cafe
The fault looks like a dry creek bed most of the year, though there was some water in it while we were there.
Not a creek!
The bridge that crosses the creek/fault has been bent by the fault’s actions! They had to put a metal plate in the middle of the bridge to fix where it was bending.
Like so.
I took a picture with Stanley on the North American plate.
And Mitya took a picture with Stanley on the Pacific plate.
By the way, I DO hope you have learned something about tectonic plates! Essentially, they can be thought of as giant, well, plates that the oceans and continents rest upon (the lithosphere, if you want a big word!) These plates float on top of rock that is so hot that it is almost at the melting point (the asthenosphere, if you want another big word!) These plates separate, dive under each other and slide past each other. The San Andreas Fault is where the Pacific and North American plates are sliding past each other. I actually live on the Pacific plate. Sacramento and El Dorado Hills are on the North American plate.
There was a really cool sign in Parkfield that shows what the San Andreas Fault does.
Best. Sign. Ever.
The signs read…
The San Andreas Fault
This rift extends from El Centro on the south, 650 miles northwesternly the length of California to Point Arenas, where it continues seaward. The most publicized of California's geologic faults, it is the source of dozen of quakes annually. Of the three "monster quakes" recorded in the state (1857- Southern California, 1872- Owens Valley, 1906- San Francisco) two have been along this "transform fault." A surface manifestation of the tectonic forces present as the Pacific plate collides with the North American continental plate, these forces have moved the Pacific plate, 300 miles northward in the past 30 million years.
Movement continues at an annual right of approximately 2.33". The 12.4' separation between the two portions of this monument represents the fault movement that has occurred since the modern revival of the ancient order of E Clampus Vitus at the Cliff House, San Francisco, in 1931. At this rate of movement Los Angeles will slip past San Francisco in approximately 31.5 million years and Parkfield will then be a seaside community.
Erected by De la Guerra y Pacheco Chapter 1.5 Ancient and Honorable Order E CLAMPUS VITUS in the 6000th year of our Ancient Order September 24, 1995
I thought that this sign was especially nifty, not only because it was a very creative way to show what the fault does, but also because it was put into place by members of E Clampus Vitus which my grandpa (Gwinn, not BomBom) was a part of! I’ve included one of the Clamper business cards that he had.
Parkfield also had a very cool fountain.
According to Weather.com, though, Parkfield does not actually exist! Obviously this means that Parkfield is in an alternate dimension. To get there, you must avoid the teleporting kamikazi Parkfield inverse-were groundsquirrels to approach the portal, at which point you must drive across the San Andreas Fault at exactly 88 miles per hour at platform Nine and Three-Quarters. When you leave Parkfield, you might randomly end up in Korea, or possibly Arkansas. Stanley would be happy to explain what all that means.
Eventually, we had to leave Parkfield and we continued out journey. We did have a slight mishap when the “check engine” light came on in Mitya’s car and we ended up pulling over in Buttonwillow for about an hour. It turned out that the gas-cap hadn’t been screwed on tight enough, and once we figured that out we were on our way again! At one point, we were driving on a road that ran pretty much directly on top of the San Andreas Fault for a ways! We did take this road on purpose, though, since it is rather out of the way.
We had planned on driving past a famous road-cut near Palmdale where the rock has been twisted and makes these distinctive wavy lines. It was dark when we got there and Palmdale does not light up this road-cut. We were all very disappointed that we did not get to see it and we decided that from now on, Palmdale shall be called Lamedale because it does not light up the works of art that the San Andreas Fault produces! (Also, the highway exits were confusing and we were frustrated because we were hungry.)
Eventually we made it to Riverside.
The next day, the three of us met up with another friend of mine. Chris is studying mechanical engineering and we all decided that the best thing for a handful of 20-somethings and a flat kid to do would be to go to the theatre and watch “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!” First we had lunch at a Japanese restaurant where we were wowed by a teppanyaki chef! The way he prepared the food is often called hibachi-style and it was almost as much performance as preparing food! He sliced onions so that they would stack up into a small, hollow tower and then he set it on fire and pushed it around the cooking area like it was a train! I thought it was really cool because I have never had food prepared hibachi-style. Stanley was a little scared, though, which is understandable because the chef started out with setting the whole cooking area on fire!
The was a lot of fun especially since Chris, Mitya and I all used to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when we were kids. Afterwards, we decided to get icecream. I shared a little of mine with Stanley.
Mmmmmm, icecream!
Afterwards, Chris needed to head off to a birthday party for a friend.
But first Stanley wanted to try to drive Chris’s car!
We also took two group pictures. We had a hard time finding someone to take our picture for us, so Mitya took a picture of our shadows!
We are artsy!
Finally we did someone to take an actual picture for us.
Later that day, Stanley, Mitya and I decided to go looking for another fault to poke! We went to San Bernardino to find the San Jacinto Fault. State law says that houses cannot be built on an active fault and that there must be at least 50 feet of clearance on either side. So San Bernardino decided to build a housing development around the fault and leave it as a nice little park! Once again we encountered a fault posing as a stream. We knew what it REALLY was, though!
A fault in disguise!
There was a snow egret hanging around the fault and Mitya had to chase it and sneak up on it until finally he was able to take a picture of it!
…standing in the fault!
The egret wasn’t the only one! Stanley fell part of the fault! Oh no! Fortunately we were able to rescue him.
OHNOSTANLEY!!!
That night we watched the original Superman Movie. Mostly for certain special effects and land features but I won’t describe them in detail because I don’t want to spoil the ending for anyone if they want to see it! Also, Mitya made me and Stanley tee-shirts that read “Blame San Andreas.” (Why? It’s an easy pun! Think about it for a second!)
Now all three of us have shirts like that!
The next day, Stanley and I took a bus and then a train and then a bus again back to Soledad. Mitya and I have decided that this summer we would like to take another fault poking trip and explore some geologic features elsewhere in the state, as well as visit San Francisco and the truly awesome Monterey Bay Aquarium. Stanley is welcome to come along! He is a very good traveler. He doesn’t eat a lot, doesn’t take up much space, complains very little, and we found out he has a lovely singing voice! We found this out when we were singing along to some Beatles songs during the last leg of the trip on Friday when we were all ready to be doing something other than sitting in a car. I would have thought that being flat might ruin some of those essential things needed for singing but Stanley has proved me wrong!
Since then it has been school and work again. We found a few salamanders at work and Stanley thought those were really cool! They actually looked like very dark worms until you look closer. Then you see that it is not a worm at all and that it has teeny, tiny little legs and a salamander face!
I had hoped to have everything ready to send Stanley back last week but of course there was homework and my printer ran out of ink! Yesterday, Saturday April 14th I went to work and did something different from the usual. Sometimes I work at public events and the city of Marina was having an Earth Day celebration. I asked Stanley if he wanted to come but I had to leave for it very early and he was too tired. It turns out that it was good that he did not go because he would have gotten very soggy! I led a group in removing iceplant and while we were working on that it started to rain. A little later our group moved on to planting some native rushes and grasses but it just kept raining harder and harder! Finally the event ended a couple hours early and I have home soaked! It was worth it to find out about a nice little park in Marina that I didn’t know about and to talk to some friends that I haven’t seen in a while.
One of those friends, Bruce, works for the Bureau of Land Management in the old Fort Ord and he does a lot of restoration work. He brought a couple of large newts and I got to hold them for a little bit while he changed the water in the bowl they were in. They were both about six inches long from their strange little faces to the ends of their finned tails. They were also very squirmy! I wish I had brought a camera and I could have taken a picture of them to share but maybe the camera would have been ruined by all of the rain anyway.
Now I am all caught up with Stanley’s adventures with me. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about it! (I know Stanley sure had fun!)
Take care, and remember to watch out for those Parkfield squirrels!