Elkhorn Slough on Saturday, (11/13/04)

A Santa Cruz friend of mine invited me to tour Elkhorn Slough by Moss Landing, just south of Santa Cruz.  We timed our arrival to coincide with a Docent Tour at 10:00 in the morning.  What a treat.  We had a tour guide all to ourselves for the entire two hour tour. 

To start with, we found out that we could check out a pair of binoculars for free.  All I had to do was leave my car keys for a deposit as insurance that we would return them.  The tour guide (Docent) also carried a high powered spotting scope on a tripod, setting it up periodically dependent on worthwhile bird viewing or not.  The Docent was provided free of charge also.

This is Elk Horn Slough, a preserve run by the California Fish and Game Department.  This trip for me was significant for a couple of reasons.  It was my first time here for starters and this is also one of my first dates after becoming separated from my wife in 2004.  Sort of like coming out of the foggy haze of divorce depression.

This is January 2008 and I am touching all of my previous web pages, cleaning them up where needed but primarily, it's raining out and has been for the last three weeks.  So make hay when the sun is shining and catch up on your web page maintenance when its raining.  To continue on:  

I also discovered a couple of very unusual  Fungi hiding in plain sight on Oak trees.  This one on the right is very  ornate, don't you think?


and this one, pretending to be a cloak.  click on either one for a full size view.

You can view this slide show for a mini tour of your own. (Requires Quicktime)  My friend (date) in a slide near the end, looking over the rail, was trying to out wit and out wait the endangered frog that was suppose to be in the middle of that little pond.  I think the frog was feeling a little intimidated and not at all sociable.

Elk Horn Slough is an unbelievable pristine wild life area.  It is very well managed and very easy to tour.  It is wheelchair and baby stroller friendly.  All this and less then 5 miles off of Highway 1 and Moss Landing.

To get there, drive south from Santa Cruz or north from Monterey on Highway 1 to Moss Landing.  Turn east at the very first intersection by the power plant (the two giant smoke stacks) that you come too and then left (north) at Elkhorn road (about five miles from Moss Landing.)  There are "Elkhorn Preserve" signs posted at both intersections.  The entrance to the preserve is very apparent after about 1 or 2 miles.

Elk Horn, Cont. December 3, 2004

This place is so fun! 

I composed another panoramic shot like the one at the top of this page, only covering four times the area of the previous panoramic shot.  Just click on the photo for a full size view.
If you are interested in how I do this, it is very easy.  This particular pan was done with five different sequential shots.  I panned from left to right making sure the horizon was at the same place and that there was about 10% horizontal overlap on each shot.  I use the cross hairs in my camera for position.  I place the horizontal bar on a horizon that I can keep as I pan from left to right, being careful to notice the scenery on the right side so that when I pan right, a small part of it remains on the left side.

I have a program provided with my camera called "Camedia".  It has a "stitch" feature which allows me to specify up to four pictures to stitch together.  I appended the fifth by using the stitched picture and the fifth picture for a second "stitch" session.

I have updated (January 2007) the panoramic shot from my Olympus with a panoramic shot from my high res. Canon.  The file size jumps from 809kb and 8155 x 1371 pixels to a 6mb file size and 17224 x 2259 pixels.  You can click back and forth between the two and observe the difference in quality from a 3.2 Mega pixel camera to an 8 Mega pixel camera.