The coast of California!

What a neat idea! Spend your retirement documenting the coastline of California. The result? Being sued by Barbra Streisand (entertainer, movie star, political activist and now shrinking violet). Here's the S.F. Chronicle story that caught my interest. A bit later I found much more on the Smoking Gun (perhaps she'd like to see her current exposure?) along with several other views on www.californiacoastline.org.

Streisand is wrong about this issue and I hope the court finds against her.

Wouldn't anyone with any kind of interest in California history want to see this? Think about it this way. Wouldn't you love to see the coastline in the same way from twenty, fifty and a hundred years ago? I know I sure would, especially Southern California. We can't fix that, but someone has taken it upon themselves to get it all together now and make it available to all, and that makes it a significant document from a historical perspective. I'm hopeful that they'll get the photos from the 70's up soon.

Instead, Barbra is worrying about someone seeing her house as it's seen daily by people in helicopters, airplanes and those who process various satellite photos. She's famous and people want to see where she lives, just like the other famous people around the world. Her location opens her up to aerial photo from public space. The world is now 3D, imagine! Bab's needs to learn to live with it as do most owners of beachfront property.

After finishing the screed above, I started at the bottom of the state where I've spent all my time (having lived in San Diego, Los Angeles and Ventura counties). The following are interesting to me...

The southern end of California (that's the fence at the Mexico border there and last time I checked [which was a long time ago], that's a bull fighting stadium on the other side). The Tijuana River, the reason the beach at Imperial Beach was closed so often when we lived there nearly twenty years ago. Just a great picture of the San Diego "South Bay" with the submarine communication cage foremost and the Silver Strand visible behind. The 1984 Olympics torch run came down the strand and wrapped around the bay on Palm Avenue heading east before going up to LA.

Moving north, we reach San Onefre Reactor 1 during decommissioning and another with I-5 clearly seen in the background. I can't say why exactly, but I like this picture of Dana Point. And here's my friend Phil's house. He's got a great southern view (much like Barbra) when the weather cooperates.

A good sea view of LAX overall (with the old north side terminals) and on the south side. The big white building is 100 Wilshire in Santa Monica, where the Norton Group lived for a time before being purchased by Symantec (we later moved inland about a mile -- it's visible in the big pictures -- to what's now known as MGM Plaza).

Pepperdine University and the very bottom of Malibu Canyon Road. The goat path (aka Highway 23 South) at Pacific Coast Highway. Point Magu just has to be seen from PCH to be believed (too bad they didn't get a better picture from afar). It's not as crazy as The Rock (which amazes me anew each time I see it), but impressive none the less. Onto Point Magu NAS.

Oops, I forgot Barb's house! We live about 10 miles due north and here's something else I'd forgotten.

The caption here is wrong, I believe it's the Heuneme Pier (pronounced why-nee-me). They get it right here. And here is Port Heuneme.

We're now at the Channel Islands Harbor, and again. And the Santa Clara River, Ventura Harbor, and again. Which leads to the Ventura River Basin where we have problems from time to time with the hardier homeless settling into makeshift camps. The problems arise when we try to chase/fish them out before/after big storms. It happens on the Santa Clara river, but less often.

I like this shot of Mussel Shoals and the mountains behind.

Hmm... check out this oil processing plant that they hid in the hills south of Rincon (now I know what Sarah was talking about when she said that she'd seen something burning up there).

Finishing up this tour, we hit Fess Parker's Double Tree Resort (Sarah and I stayed there last fall on a night away from the kids) and Hendry's Beach (a nice place to go have breakfast).

One of these days, I do want to see Diablo Canyon but we by-passed it this last trip. I've been reading about it for most of my adult life and still have a lot of friends in the nuclear power industry.