People in England have always been adventurous. Even before they were human. Thanks to Joe Curran who sent me this BBC piece on a 400,000 year-old elephant kill site in Kent. This is pre Homo sapiens and has been attributed to H. heidelbergensis. It is the earliest elephant kill site in Britain. Nice to think …
Author: Reid Farmer
Santa Barbara Whale
Inspired by Pluvialis’ post on the finback whale skeleton exhibited at Cambridge, I took this picture of a blue whale mounted in front of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. Blue whales are the largest animals ever to have lived on this planet. I have been fortunate enough to see several from boats in …
Overnighter Continued
Blogger limits the amount of material you can put in a post, so lately we have been breaking up some photo-heavy posts to get everything in. This will conclude a post I started last week. Sorry for the break. I was up the next morning to fix coffee, break camp, and head down the hill. …
Overnighter
A week ago Saturday, I decided to make a quick overnight camping trip up in the Los Padres National Forest. I hadn’t been out in a while (too much work) and I enjoy taking regular campouts, just car-camping. I’m fortunate in that there are some beautiful campgrounds along the Santa Ynez River about 15 – …
Artichokes in the Wild
Connie and I are somewhat strange (maybe it comes from growing up in Oklahome and Tennessee?) in that when we drive cross-country we spend an inordinate amount of time discussing what crops are growing in the fields and orchards we can see. California always blows me away in that there are such a huge variety …
The Lost City of DeMille – Continued
I was up in the area last week and took this picture of what the “Lost City” looks like today from the entry road. This shot shows a little better the scatter of boards, rusted nails and plaster of paris fragments that are the surface manifestation of the site. The area is closed both to …
The Lost City of DeMille
In 1923, the silent movie classic “The Ten Commandments” was filmed by Cecil B. DeMille in the Guadalupe Dunes area of northern Santa Barbara County. It had the largest production budget of any movie made up to that time, with huge costs incurred building the massive sets (see the above still) and hiring and supporting …
Prairiemary, Blackfeet and Fossil Legends
Mary Scriver e-mailed me a couple of weeks ago, telling me of a large and powerful mythic creature from Blackfoot legend known as a “water bull.” Mary suggested that it might have its origins in tribal memories of mammoths from the Pleistocene and asked what I thought. I replied that was possible, but also to …
Coso Rock Art Blogging
As I posted on here and here, the prehistoric people at Coso, up in Inyo County, were obsessed with big-horn sheep. I like this image of sheep in the rain.
Bird Rock Art Blogging
A prehistoric Chumash pictograph of a hummingbird. From CA-SBA-550 at Honda Ridge on Vandenberg AFB here in Santa Barbara County.