The long way home

It's been a long week or two or actually a long month at work this month, and since we all did jolly well our boss kicked us out of the office early.  For me that is a blessing and a curse, facing 30 miles of rush hour I-880 can take it out of you.  So I decided to take 130 home instead.

130 will take you past some interesting sights, like this tree that a woodpecker had taken a fancy to.  The holes are not restricted to the upper levels either, this was comfortably taken at my height.

So after looking at this tree and wondering at majesty of nature I also noticed that I was getting close enough to get meaningful snapshots of the observatory on top of Mt Hamilton.  This is one of the places mentioned in H.G. Well's "The War Of The Worlds".  I did also stroll a little distance to see over a ridge, looking to see if I could see The Bay, I couldn't, but I did see a coyote, first one in 12 years, and never one this close before.  Sorry, no photo, he was too quick, I did get pictures of blurry grass though.

And I got a self portrait, maybe replace my Skype avatar with this one.

So the rest of the drive was wonderful, I got a view from near the top - the observatory was closed for a special function.  However I did get to see the Bay.  It looks like a silvery cloud in this picture.

I also got to see parts of the observatory.

The rest of the drive was a pleasant valley, seeing an hawk of some sort, wild quail, which was a first for me, an another coyote, this time from the car.  In the 60 miles only one person overtook me and I only saw about 6 vehicles.  Fantastic, but it took about 3 hours by the time I made it through Livermore, and over the Dublin Grade back home.


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