Friday, September 24, 2010

sunrise ~ 09/24/10 ~ at home

cruise ship coming into the bay
September 24, 2010

This is probably the quickest I've ever loaded a pic from the camera to Nature ID. It looks like it's going to be a gorgeous day here on the coast. We haven't seen cruise ships for a while, but when they do come into the bay, they always seem to arrive right at sunrise. We chuckle that most people on the ships are probably still sleeping off the previous night's heavy buffet and miss the spectacular sunrises. For whatever reason, I have rarely had a desire to do a cruise; once I was tempted to do a river cruise in Europe. Mainly, we've been seeing military ships and squid boats out on the bay this year.

The vertical line of red dots on the mountain in the background is a tower located on Mt. Madonna. For the longest time I couldn't figure out the location of the mystery dots as I still get disoriented where things are across the Monterey Bay. A couple friends moved to the mountain right below the tower last year, so we finally figured it out.

Oh, here's a shout out to my uncle, aunt, and cousins who are heading to San Pedro, CA this morning for a 14-day cruise through the Panama Canal to Miami, FL. I can't wait to see their pictures!

ps 09/20/12 - There's another cruise ship coming through this morning.  I thought it'd be interesting to log when I see them, and sure enough as I looked up this post it's almost at the same time of year!

pss 10/02/12 - Today there was another cruise ship.  When it first came in this morning like shown above, it made an unusual turn towards Moss Landing.  Later in the day it was anchored in the usual spot just outside of the Monterey Harbor.  I'm starting to wonder if the only reason I see these hard to miss massive cruise ships this time of year is because the summer fog has cleared away.  As a side note that I'd like to remember, cruise ship season = local termite swarms.  This evening I ran into a friend, almost quite literally as he was running across the street from his tri-pod camera to his car.  I turned around and jumped out to chat with him for a bit.  As the cruise ship was leaving the bay at sunset, large numbers of termites were flying around us.  With the low lighting, he thought they might be oak moths, but I caught one and confirmed they were indeed winged termites.