Monty's 2001 Trip to California!

North Along the Coast...
Sunrise at Jenner

I got up early today, very early, very, very early. I usually do not get to bed back home until 3 to 5am, sometimes even later (earlier?) and may sleep past noon. That's the advantage of being self employed. However, that is not very conducive to traveling and taking photographs so I have become somewhat of a morning person on this trip and today that would be a very early morning person ;-) Got up at 6 am to try to make it to the coast to catch the sunrise. Unfortunately it was overcast and foggy, but I felt it was worth making the trip anyway because you never know what you may get. The road I took followed the Russian River. A beautiful area with quite a lot of interesting folk - much different than just about anywhere else in the world, well, anywhere outside California - still very 60's hippy like. However, not much to see in the dark...

As I approached the coast the fog began to break, right over the Russian River. I was able to get some really nice foggy river pre dawn photos. I continued on to Jenner, where the Russian enters the Pacific Ocean and there the fog lifted completely. The sunrise was spectacular, a perfectly beautiful Sunday morning sunrise :-)



			OK, so I went a bit nuts here with photos, but it was sooo cool that the fog cleared and the sun came through like that. I just could not help myself. Even traveling a bit up the coast, looking back, the hazy coast with the rising sun created such fantastic landscapes. I just could not help myself :-)

Driving up the coast a bit I came across stump beach. Curiosity lead me down the short road and parking lot. I'm not sure why it was called stump beach for there were no stumps there, but there were a couple vultures flying about and I managed to capture one with the digital camera. The beach was a nice cove, almost tropical in it's feel, well, minus any tropical trees, but hey, it felt tropical anyway ;-) There may have been no stumps on the beach, but there was a cool forest of pines which I had fun photographing. I love pine forests. I especially love their bark. Bark is cool :-)