Category Archives: Panorama

October 19, 2025 · 23:17

Inland Empire 2025 Work Event

As noted, I work for the ALS Network, a non-profit organization that supports those living with ALS and their families, as well as raising awareness and funds for research. As part of those efforts, we have events all over California and Hawaii. In the past I’ve posted pictures and talked about events in Los Angeles & Ventura Counties – now that I live in the “Inland Empire” (i.e., Riverside & San Bernardino Counties), I’m attending the annual IE event.

The weather today was ideal, which always helps, and our turnout was fantastic.

The Long-Suffering Wife also came along to volunteer and we ended up working the registration station most of the day.

We ended up missing the Chiefs’ game, but it was for an excellent cause. (Given that the Chiefs gave a good old fashioned ass whooping to the hated Raiders, 31-0, it was fine.)

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Filed under ALS Network, Panorama, Photography

September 1, 2025 · 23:22

The Mesa Panorama

Blow it up to all of its full sized glory, I’m giving you the raw file, not a compressed version.

This is from a spot across from the Hesperia airport and the BNSF main line train tracks, overlooking one of the dry river beds that lead down from the Victor Valley (Hesperia, Victorville, Apple Valley) into the Mesa, which leads downhill through Cajon Pass into the Inland Empire region between Los Angeles and Palm Springs.

Way, way over on the right you can see a small, yellow building – that’s Don Reyes Airport Cafe, which was pretty stinkin’ good.

Just to the right of center you can see houses, streets, and whole developments down in the gulch at the bottom of the dry river bed. That can’t be a good place to be when the rains come…

That mountain that I was talking about yesterday is just to the left of center. Looking at the “All Trails” hiking app with its topo maps, I’m wondering if that might be Luna Mountain, with Round Mountain the similarly sized mountain to its left. We’ll see.

The plants filling that gulch? I think the taller, more angular ones are yucca trees, while the more squat and bushy ones dotting the scene everywhere are creosote. And the small, scraggly ones in the immediate foreground are tumbleweeds.

Are there rattlesnakes and critters out there? I did not go looking to see. Let’s just assume that there were and I’ll leave them alone if they’ll do the same for me. I’m not a fan of the more venomous reptiles, fine with sticking with the Freds and Bubbas of the fence lizard worlds.

 

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Filed under Forever Home, Panorama, Photography

July 24, 2025 · 23:29

Forever Home – July 24th

One final morning waking up at the West Hills home where we’ve been living for the past 7+ years.

Tonight, after yet another exhausting and very long day, I’m at home in our Forever Home. It’s a little odd still since all of the furniture and dishes and clothing and STUFF is in various trucks and containers and storage, but we’ll be pulling things back into shape starting tomorrow.

Today was a good news day. The PODS containers got picked up and delivered successfully. Tomorrow I start to unpack.

The movers showed up and got all of the “big stuff” into their trucks, and they’ll be here delivering and re-assembling starting at 07:00.

The holes in the front yard which exposed the septic system for inspection ten days ago got filled back in and the landscaping was (more or less) repaired.

Tomorrow I also need to get my office and computers back online. Yes, I know I’m an “addict” to my electronic access, but it’s really a pain trying to do tasks that take 45 seconds on my desktop but 45 minutes to do on my phone with a really slow connection.

And as tired as I am, I took five minutes to go out in the back, look at the stars, and listen to the trains about a mile away. There’s so much less light pollution here. It’s not Joshua Tree or Bryce, but it’s a BIG step up from Los Angeles!

To tomorrow.

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Filed under Astronomy, Forever Home, Panorama, Photography

March 6, 2025 · 22:01

Red Sky At Night

That moment when you’re walking from the back bedrooms to the kitchen and as you come out of the hallway you see the translucent glass in the front door glowing pinkish-orange like neon and you immediately do a hard right turn to go out and see the sunset, because you just know…

It might not be the absolute best I’ve seen from this location in the almost seven years we’ve lived here, but it’s on the short list, probably a Top Ten choice! And it was so spread out from side to side, even if there wasn’t so much color up away from the horizon.

(Click on that one to blow it up to full screen, it’s tasty!)

Off the top of my head, the best ever from here was probably this one from about six months after we moved in. (It was incredibly vivid, the pictures don’t do it justice.)

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Sunsets

November 8, 2024 · 23:34

Happy Place Panorama

It would be nice to get back again this year, but that’s unlikely. One trip a year is about all I can get away with.

Enjoy the full-sized file – click on it and blow it up. My son’s truck with the flags is over to the left.

For this weekend, there’s more work, more deadlines (I can sort of see the light at the end of the tunnel? Ish?) and taking down the Halloween decorations.

It’s also getting close to decision time and I know where it’s going, I’m just not happy about it. (Just add it to the list…) I had really hoped to be putting up a ton of Christmas lights at the Forever Home this year and setting the place up to make it easy to put up a ton of lights every year in the future. That’s also very unlikely to happen, so in two weeks it will be time to start decorating here, at the rental house again. I’m also coming up on the end of my current set of weight training lessons, which I was also hoping would be the last one because I would be living elsewhere, but again…

So frustrated. So tired. It’s that whole middle-of-the-marathon feeling and the only way out is through.

One foot in front of the other. You too?

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Filed under Christmas Lights, Forever Home, KC Chiefs, Panorama, Photography

July 6, 2024 · 23:32

Two Honkin’ Huge Panoramas From Ascutney

Normally I post reduced sized files on this site, just because I’m paying for storage space, I’ve been posting for a long time, and I don’t want to use up all that I’m already paying for. But today, because I love these two images so much and want to share them with you so badly, I’m going to give you the full-sized files of the two panoramic views I took from the top of the observation tower on Mount Ascutney three weeks ago. Where normally I’ll post files between 1MB and 2MB in size, these are 16M and 17MB files. Click on them, blow them up, go looking at them in all of their glorious detail.

This covers about a 300º field of view. On the far left, the microwave towers are to the southwest of the observation tower. Moving to the right in the image, we’re looking toward the east, over the Connecticut River valley into southern and central New Hampshire. You can see all of the ski trails on Mt. Sunapee, and the small town is Claremont, NH. Moving to the right hand side, the Franconia Range of mountains is visible in the far, far distance beyond the foreground northern shoulder of Ascutney. On the far right side of the image we’re looking back to the west into Vermont.

Again, about a 300º field of view, so there’s a lot of overlap between this picture and the first one, with the view to the west on the far left of this image and the far right of the upper image, the microwave towers to the south in the middle of this image, and the view to the east into New Hampshire on the far right here.

I could have sat up there with a pair of binoculars and a backpack full of cameras all day long.

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Travel

April 28, 2024 · 23:47

Skyscapes – New Mexico

Having lost all sense of time, in regards to what day it is or what time of day it is, I’m still “mining” the ton of pictures that I took on the eclipse trip to Texas earlier this month.

This panorama was taken from a rest stop in New Mexico, just to the east of Las Cruces, where I was about to head into that thunderstorm, which indeed did have high winds, lightning, thunder, heavy rain, and light hail. It was spectacular!

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Weather

April 12, 2024 · 23:50

Road Weather

Two days back home and this weekend I’m going to try to go through the eclipse photos and see what’s good. There’s got to be at least one or two, right? Statistical fluctuations and all of that!

In the meantime, because I like pictures of clouds and storms and potentially violent weather, enjoy these pictures from Tuesday on the trip from Kerrville to Tucson.

Here are some mammatus clouds. They’re supposed to be a sign of particularly violent weather, the boiling bottom of a big thunderhead cell. (These were, no “supposed to be” about it.)

This panoramic view of a freaking huge thunderstorm supercell should have been like Gandalf standing there, blocking the road, bellowing, “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” I passed anyway.

As for the eclipse photos that I need to sort through and clean up, I suspect that the videos might be better than the still photos. Mistakes were made.

On the other hand, remember the T-shirt that I was wearing? (Picture here.) I may crop that a little, find a place that does custom T-shirts, and have this image of me printed on there with a caption that says, “Hello DORKness, My Old Friend!” I mean, if the shoe fits!

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Filed under Panorama, Paul, Photography, Travel, Weather

March 13, 2024 · 22:15

Flaming Sunset – March 13th

I had another post and pictures all set up and ready to go. Then the sun set.

Holy freakin’ guacamole, Batman!

If you’re lucky you might get one or two sunsets a year in this part of the world that are this colorful, saturated, vibrant, and amazing.

Tonight was that night. Complete with a thin, fingernail of a three-day old crescent moon in the upper left.

Neighbors were driving by and stopping to stare with us. And why not? If you see this going on and you don’t notice or don’t care, please check for a pulse!

This spectacular display went on for over ten minutes. I even had time to shoot some panoramas.

While the purples started to fade to black up high, the reds and oranges near the horizon just got brighter and more vibrant.

All things are transient, none so much as a sunset. The planet’s just going to keep on spinning, which in the big picture is probably a good thing.

One last gasp, then the stars started popping out. Jupiter came out just above the wires, over at the left edge of the picture. Orion is high up to the left, the easiest constellation to pick out. The Plieades cluster is close to the Moon. Somewhere out there is that comet I talked about yesterday.

Spectacular!

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Sunsets

March 7, 2024 · 23:35

Ominous

Yet another one of those days when the forecast did not include rain. And yet…

Those are not puffy, happy, “fair weather” clouds. If those are in the Midwest, there are tornado warning sirens going off.

And it stretched across a good stretch of the sky. 30 seconds later it was raining pretty hard.

Not nearly as hard as it was raining to the east of us where that BIG storm was.

And when it was over…

It wasn’t a full rainbow. Over to the right it was black as night as that thunderstorm had moved a bit south. But to the north, for a minute…

Yeah. It’s that whole “hope” thing.

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Filed under Panorama, Photography, Weather