Wandering Wednesday: Lake Tahoe

For the first Wandering Wednesday post of 2025, here's where we went for New Year's, a non-snowsports visit to Lake Tahoe. This picture was on the drive there, up on Echo Summit. It was a little sad to see the 2021 fire devastation that swept through there, near the Sierra at Tahoe ski resort. The story of how they prepped for the fire by utilizing the snow making machines to blow water was a memorable one.

It was an absolutely beautiful New Year's Eve day. We walked over from Nevada to California and back again. I don't know if I've ever crossed a state border on foot before. This is the dock at South Lake Tahoe.

It was pretty cold out, but we were prepared with actual cold weather wear. Honestly, we had to dig it out as it's been quite a while.

Here we are walking along the kind of snowy shore. Photo credit, to friend Jaye, who had the idea to go somewhere for New Year's instead of just out to dinner like we usually do. It was a Great Idea!

The teeny tiny black and white shells were cute, but are probably the non-native and invasive ones that are hard to control in the lake. All the boat inspections help, but once they get established it's tough to go back.

The traditional picture of my own shadow on the shore.

Finally it was time for the new year, after a lot of searching, we found a nice Italian restaurant to go to and had a lovely last meal of the year. Here's a view of the New Year's Eve fireworks at the Golden Nugget casino across the street, the lake is in the background. One of the finale rockets went horizontal on the roof, but thankfully no fire resulted. It was fun to see the fireworks from a distance.

And then on the way back home, we got to drive in some very light non-sticking snow which was kind of lovely for someone who doesn't get to see actual snow very often.

Heat Shadows

 

The curtain in our bathroom garden window is closed because of the heat wave and this shadow play made me stop and take a picture. It's lightly edited, turned into a black and white version, just because. It made me laugh because I can see the mini rubber duck shape so clearly. I like the texture of the curtain, as well as its folds. The texture achieved in black and white photos always works for me, I really enjoy that and am happy when I can approximate something close to it in my own photos.

This was a photo taken from my workroom chair, looking out the window at a little lizard with the sun coming behind it through the exterior sunshade. There's the woven texture from the sunshade, the overlaid regular grid of the window screen, and the slight distortion of the double paned window. That's so much going on between my eye and the lizard. And why was it up on there on my second story window? I really hope that it made it to safety and didn't get picked off by the birds that tend to hang out in the palm tree.

Wandering Wednesday - San Diego

Hey, here's a contemporaneous Wandering Wednesday post, live from San Diego! I really really love California, but it's so very very long. And it took us a longer than usual time to drive down to San Diego in the rain. The stopped traffic in LA allowed me to take this picture out the windshield of some very dramatic graffiti, gotta love that font.

What a way to spend our 34th anniversary, all day in the car, but we make it fun. And we got to have a great dinner out with a Very Enthusiastic waiter who insisted on taking our picture. The conference that my DH has been going to the whole time I've known him is in San Diego or LA, but next year it's in San Franciso, woohoo!

I like the symbols on the Seaport banner. Looks like a modern quilt design to me. 

I washed my very dirty SF Giants hat and it dried quickly in the sun. I may be able to score some tickets to the SF Giants vs. San Diego Padres opening day home game which is just a few blocks away. We shall see...not sure I want to go to a baseball game alone and root for the opposing team.

The foggy rainy harbor, that's the Coronado Bridge in the distance.

We have a pretty nice view out of our window for all the sunsets.

I liked the reflection of the sunset in the other tower of our hotel.

Another modern quilt looking banner. That one building looks like it's fallen over compared to the other one! Intentional? Just to be interesting?

I know I've seen something like this before probably online somewhere, but I loved this in the coffee shop where I got my latté.

The Horton Hotel is in the Gaslamp District, it's not in its original location, the city saved it and moved it here. I'm glad, because you really don't see a lot of working hotels like this any more.

The Horton is supposedly haunted and that white shrouded figure in the window is a little spooky until you realize it's just a nice marble statue of Mary.

Hello Sunshine! That's the name of the paper maché horse in the window.

The Coaster and the San Diego trolley comes through on the train tracks near our hotel. I really like this shadow picture of all the devices I took while waiting for the intersection to open.

I took this because of the super rusty mission bell, but the rest of it is cool too. Train tracks, fence, fountain that looks like a lap pool, walkway, rest of the fountain that looks like a big pool complete with floating seagulls and that beautiful blue sky.

That Old Chestnut

 

What inspires you? That was one of the many questions that Melissa de Leon Mason asked in her interesting "Quilt Your Story, Finding Inspiration in Your Culture" lecture to BAM yesterday. 

Well, how about this? A chestnut in all its green-spiked glory. This was found on the ground during a recent walk along one of the flatter streets in Boulder Creek. I'd forgotten that the Methodist church has an enormous chestnut tree and the fruits were all over the street. The shadows and color and structure and shape are all very inspiring to me. I could see basing a series of quilts exploring just those things.

But then I started thinking about chestnut trees, and how they're such a big thing in the European countries that my ancestors come from, and how they used to be a much bigger thing here in the US before an awful blight killed billions (yes with a b) of them. I started researching and found that the biggest and possibly oldest (4,000 years!) chestnut tree is in Sicily, the famous hundred horse tree. These are beautiful trees, tall, spreading, enormous and productive if grown in the right conditions. Turns our that there are people in my little mountain town that grow them, and sell the fruits in the natural foods grocery store every year.

I have family memories of chestnut recipes from both sides of my family, Sicilian and the more mixed-pan-European. There was some pistachio/chestnut dip thing we used to have that was definitely Sicilian, and then there were the cookies my great-grandma made with chestnut flour. We used to eat roasted chestnuts at both sets of my grandparent's houses on Christmas. We ourselves famously tried to roast some chestnuts one fateful December, but unfortunately didn't realize they needed to be scored open a bit. What an explosive and exciting mess that was, it makes for a good story though.

All this is to say, that Ms. de Leon Mason's lecture has definitely provoked some thoughts...

p.s. it's raining steadily, and it smells so glorious right now, very happy-making

In The Shadows

 

Here's another picture for my shadows file. I really love the slightly more transparent shape of the glass shelf. It would be fun to do a quilt of this one and play around with the different transparencies. 

This is the garden window in our upstairs bathroom where I am only able to keep succulents and cactus alive. It gets the first real direct sun of the day so it really heats up and stays hot. I've got the usually not-drawn drape drawn. But you can see a bit of the blue of the sky through this curtain, which means it's not doing much at all to help keep the room cool. It's more of a psychological thing to block out some of the sun. But, realistically, it might be time to invest in insulated curtains. Something tells me these heatwaves are not going to get better any time soon.

Two More Shadows

 Two more pictures for my shadow inspiration file.  This one is at our favorite sushi place in Felton, Sushi San.

And this one from my allergist's office.

Here it is in color, to show how much the black/white makes a difference.

Mid-Century Shadows

 When I get my allergy shot, I walk on this sidewalk, and I'm always fascinated by the shadows of the lighting fixtures.

I think it might be something to add to my proposed Shadow Series

 I like putting the color version of the photo next to the black and white version. It's amazing to notice what your eye follows and catches on in one vs. the other.

The whole doctor's office plaza development is mid-century modern through and through. This lighting structure seems like something you'd see at a Frank Lloyd Wright home.

Water Shadows

Water shadows.
Whenever I notice them, I try to get a picture.
They're always hard to photograph.
But always worth the effort to try and capture them.
I think it's the shivering of the shadow that is a reminder of how much of one's body is comprised of water.
Right here, this is a big part of what is inside you.
Isn't it lovely?