Irrelevance Glorified

Much like last year, my Mom visited me in February. However, things were better than last year. First of all, we weren’t both sick. Second of all, she was able to stay 2 weeks instead of just 1. And third, it didn’t rain all the whole time, just part of the time.

I wasn’t really in a position to take a lot of vacation time, so there weren’t any awesome road trips, but we did manage to see some things when the weather permitted. First off, we visited the Winchester Mystery House, a interesting little tourist trap in San Jose. Basically, the heir to the Winchester Rifle fortune used her husband’s legacy to build a rambling, chaotic house. No pictures allowed, though, of the inside, so no photographic evidence.

The weekend after that, it was a rainy day, so we went to do some museuming in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, where we visited the Conservatory of Flowers, the Science Museum, the Art Museum, and a Japanese Tea Garden. And the day after, we visited a state park to see some redwoods.

Whenever I look over these pictures, I usually find that I forgot to take many pictures of actual people. That is true in this set as well. It’s quite flower-filled, at my Mom’s request. But still, hope you enjoy.

Flickr Set Here.
Slideshow Below
Pictures and Descriptions After the Jump

The forecast called for rain, but it was still clear in the morning, so we elected to hit the Conservatory of Flowers, a building dedicated to…uh…flowers. Here are some pictures from the Special Exhibit, which was a large model railroad scene of San Francisco made out of garbage. This is AT&T Park, where the San Francisco Giants play.

A closeup of the bleachers reveals that it’s made out of CD racks, with a foundation of what looks like milk crates.

Here are some models of Lombard Street and the Castro Theatre.

Here are models of the Transamerica Pyramid building and the Bently Reserve building.

Here’s a closer look at the Transamerica Pyramid. Looking closer, computer keys are a key part of the structure.

Fittingly enough, this Chinatown Gate is composed of Mahjong tiles. Perhaps stereotypically, it is also composed of cut up printed circuit boards (it looks like a motherboard).

Here’s a bit of an overview of the whole scene.

Here’s a short video of the model railroad exhibit.

This bridge is infested with monkeys.

There are going to be a lot of orchid pictures here, because that was the featured flower at the Conservatory when we visited. Very pretty, though. Here are some yellow ones.

Purple and white ones here.

This plant had an interesting pattern on its…uh…bark.

These pretty ones are lined up all in a row.

Along with all these docile orchids, there were also some of these ravenous, carnivorous plants. Here is a nice specimen of a pitcher plant.

To show how big this plant is, here it is next to my Mom.

There were a number of these small nature models around. The story behind this art form is that an ancient Chinese Emperor never wanted to leave his palace, but he wanted to see all the fantastic regions of his land. So he had people make little models of his country, in effect making his empire visit him instead of the other way around.

A bunch of pitcher plants. Or pods from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. One of the two.

Yellow AND purple this time. I’m getting pretty crazy. It must be all the flowers, making me loseWeight Exercise control!

These have a nice fractal quality to them.

It sure seems like this flower is telling me to back off.

More Penjing here. It’s pretty amazing how good these little dioramas were; if you had a good camera with a macro lens, you could probably make someone believe that it was something large.

Penjing really exists. There is proof. This placard.

After the conservatory, we headed off to the California Academy of Sciences. Right now, we’re in their little model of a rain forest, which consists of a ramp spiraling upward around the periphery of a little micro forest, complete with animals and insects and everything. At each floor, they would have a bunch of glass terrariums with animals that they didn’t want scurrying around. This one had geckos in it, just hanging out on the walls. The magic of capillarity and Van der Waals forces!!

Here is a short video of leaf cutter ants doing their thing. They put this branch and leaf source near a railing within clear view of visitors. It may be hard to see, but you should at least be able to see leaf pieces making their way up the branch.

This lizard is adorable.

Here is a poison dart frog. In nature, poisonous animals are often bright colors so as to warn potential predators to stay away. I find it unnerving, then, that I would look at this frog and be so fascinated and want to touch it. Clearly, I would have been selected against in the wild.

The Academy probably had a tough time with choosing animals for this rain forest. For one, you want animals that won’t hurt or scare visitors. They should be pretty enough to be impressive, but they can’t be too expensive or intimidating. It will also help if children aren’t tempted to smush them. So, I think the butterflies are a good choice. Nice to look at, they don’t zip around at high speed, and kids will probably not kill them. So there were a lot of butterflies around. We were asked to check ourselves for butterfly hitchhikers upon leaving.

The exit from the rain forest leads directly to the aquarium. I think the Academy tries a bit too hard, since it is a planetarium, natural history museum, aquarium, and more all in one. I think it loseWeight Exercises focus at times. However, this is a cool little area where they were having a conversation with a diver in the large tank.

I just enjoyed watching the schools of fish zipping from one end of the tank to the other.

It stopped raining, so we went up to the "Living Roof", looking across the square to the de Young Museum.

The "Living Roof" is supposed to be really environmentally friendly, saving them loads of energy. The little ports are basically skylights.

There were a lot of people milling around, blissfully unaware that my Mom was trying to set up a picture. However, she was able to get a picture at some point.

This poorly composed shot is Mom and me at the Japanese Tea Garden within Golden Gate Park, having some green tea and admiring the foliage.

This is my Mom next to a Japanese Bridge. It seems like it would be easier to just float a wagon across the river rather than drive it over this bridge.

After the Tea Garden, we headed back over to the de Young Museum because I wanted to check out the King Tut exhibit. We had to kill 90 minutes before our time slot came up, so we headed out to look at the exhibits. Here is a sculpture of a church, but the interesting thing is that it’s made out of bullets and gun parts. I appreciate that sort of detail

Here is the text that accompanies this : "In their dependence on cheap energy, consumers rarely consider the cost to nature’s flora and fauna. The number of bluebirds declined up to 70 percent during the 1970′s from loss of habitat and has only slowly recovered since then, due to conservation efforts. Walkers mutant light-bulb bluebird serves as a ceramic "canary in the coal mine," warning viewers of an impending environmental disaster. This teapot depicts an American bluebird that appears to have ingested a giant light bulb. Metal conduit runs down the bird’s spine and to its legs, suggesting that they are powered electrically. The bluebird’s tail has morphed into a metal-clad snake, a mortal enemy of birds, and its metal-pipe spine has sprouted leaves, thus supplanting nature with a man-made hybrid.d ON an image of a U.S. penny concealed on the bird’s underbelly, the motto, "IN God We Trust" has been replaced by "United States of Consume".

That is awesome. I love overly metaphorical art. Really, that whole "United States of Consume" is just the icing on the cake.

Here is my mother next to the Mother of the Forest, the tallest tree ( 329 feet) in the park.

This ~ 20 foot waterfall is something I didn’t see the first time I visited Big Basin; since I visited last June (the dry season) I didn’t think it would be very impressive. I think it turned out well, using a low ISO setting to make it a little bit more blurred and "magical".