La Jolla Shores Caves
Somewhere between La Jolla Shores and La Jolla Cove are something like 7 caves. One thing I have yet to do is go on a kayak tour to explore these, but in January, there was the luck of an extremely low tide (on MLK day! what luck a holiday!), which meant that you could hike out over the rocks usually covered by water and reach the first two of the caves by dry foot, not by the usual seafaring methods. My friend Jennifer had organized a lab hike trip, and myself and another non-lab friend joined up for the adventure. And oh, was it beautiful. Well, I'll be honest, some of those places that are usually covered were bare rocks that weren't all that pretty, but lots of it was. Beautiful purple rocks, little colorful pools (like these to the left), green sea grass stuff covering rocks . . . pretty cool. Some of the rocks were slippery, so it could be a bit treacherous, but it was worth it.
Our cave destination can be seen in the above photo just left and just below of center. Cave number one (left) wasn't very deep, but it was pretty tall. And skinny, but wider than a person. You could walk inside it easily enough. And very colorful as you can see!This picture below is the cliff wall just to the right of this first cave, and looking around the corner, from the pathway we had to come to get here. I really just love the colors!
Below is a picture of cave number 2. It was not just at the cliffs edge like cave number 1. It was quite a climb up those rocks to get there. And although that opening looks small, it wasn't really. You probably can't see it, but there is a person crouched inside the opening, and the opening is probably 4x the size of the crouched person. Inside the cave, we could stand up quite nicely. And it went back further than I expected! There was a little stream flowing from the wall, but unfortunately it was too dark to get any good pictures of the inside. the cave had 2 openings though, the dry one we could climb up the rocks to get into, and this second one, which you can see opened up into some water. That was as far as we could go, but it was pretty cool nonetheless. someday, I gotta do the kayak version! I'm taking volunteers to go along. . .
Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve
The second hike was north of LA at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. I went here with another post-doc from my lab, Chen-Chen, and her husband and their friend. It was quite a drive, we got up pretty early on a Saturday to get there at a decent time, but it was well worth an early morning, and a drive!
The California Poppy, our state flower. I have also learned that this flower is what gives our state the nickname "The Golden State". And other wildflowers abound as well, especially yellow and purple flowers, which made for an incredible sight! We started getting excited and pulling off the road to take pictures before we made it to the reserve! Like kids in a candy store. . .
Along part of the hike, the poppies that were in bloom seemed to be growing right next to the path, just for us! It was cool to walk along next to the flowers of this bright and brilliant of color!
My friend Chen-Chen said there is an old Chinese poem that speaks of horses that work in the flower fields, that even their feet smell of the fragrance of the flowers, and this is what it reminded her of.
I also enjoyed seeing the flowers from a distance. They seem to grow in patches, swaths of color erupting from the green hillside, painting the landscape.
I don't know if you can see in the last one, yellow, orange, purple, and the greyish-green of the other desert plants all in one place. It was so beautiful, I think pictures or my description can't do it justice!
Here are just a few of the varieties of flowers we saw! there were several kinds of yellow and some white flowers too! And then there was this really cool thing we'd notice every now and then, which was a couple yellow poppies growing amidst all the orange one. and we wouldn't have been a good bunch of scientists if we hadn't learned why! :) apparently, these poppies have 2 color genes, yellow and orange. And the orange pigment molecules are dominant, making the flowers appear orange, but they shrink when dry or at certain pH's and then the yellow color then shows through. So cool, right?
Also, I think we visited at the beginning of the season. It supposedly gets better during March and April! I just can't imagine! There are pics online from others, if you want to imagine with me! I really had no idea the desert was capable of such a wonderful, colorful display! I have a lot to learn.
Anyway, these are my colorful adventures!
