Bisy Bakson

I have been so busy with packing, cleaning and trying to sell some furniture that was never my style in the first place that I haven't had time to write.

I will be trying a new android app for blogger, so I hope that I can send off some quick posts if I have the time. If not, enjoy these next couple of weeks.

500

I hope that you didn't get used to me having this mailing address. Time to paste in a page because in the next few months I will be moving twice.

What I am excited about is that I am moving into an apartment that served as an exterior for (500) days of summer.

And by the way this is my 500th post.

inter museum relations

One of the things I like about my job is that I have the opportunity to see a lot of exhibits before they open. Such was the case last Thursday when I went to the Natural History Museum's Dino Dance Party for the new dinosaur pavilion the night before it was revealed to the public. I wasn't much of a dancer, but I had never gone to the museum and since everyone else was shaking their tail feathers, I pretty much had the exhibits to myself. Which is my version of heaven.

I will get to the dino pavillion in a minute, but since I was a newbie I will talk about the other stuff first.




The museum featured a lot of beautiful dioramas featuring once live animals. This was before PETA and in the early 1900's where people would think:

"I would really like that in my museum"

BANG BANG
"Now this animal is in my museum"

(Which I would like to mention is conjecture by me)

To the right are Arabian Oryxes. What is hard to pick up though is how amazing the dioramas are painted and thought out. Standing there in front of these animals you are totally transported to the dunes of the Sahara. The sun, the sun's shadow, the hoof prints in the sand.

There were dioramas of Grizzly Bear, White Tailed Deer, a grand scene of elephants of all sizes w/ water buffalo and for the first time I was able to see how a giraffe drinks water (very awkward by the way), animals upon animals that I had never heard of and then there was a scene of what is in Los Angeles' back yard-which is coyote eating a house cat next to an outdoor pool. Wylie coyote.





To the left are the Walruses resting lazily on an ice float. Which was my favorite. The ice bergs were 3D I swear.

Click here for more information and there is a video on how the Natural History Museum thinks about creating a diorama and the history of dioramas. More are also featured on this site.

We wandered around to the conservation labs where you can watch them clean fossils, when through the bird section and spotted all the birds that we usually see tide pooling or on other Team Girl Trips.

We end up underneath a Fin Whale skeleton which was the whale we stalked in this post

The dinosaur pavilion was amazing as well, sheets of rock with fossils still inside, life sized dinosaurs. Which I assume are at other museums, but I don't ever remember going to those as a kid and Northern Minnesota isn't really known for its museums. I guess that is why I am here, in the land of museums.

what I have been up to-exploring the natural

It has been a while since I have talked about exploring the surrounding nature areas. Sometimes it is easy to forget that there is nature out here, with all the traffic, burger parlors, donut shops and the TMZ.

This is a composite of two visits to Solstice Canyon in Malibu in June and July. There is really a lot to explore here. As you will see from the following photos.

First things first, so that we get it out of the way, I saw my first ever snake in its natural habitat here. That is it to the left, trying to blend in with that tree. I didn't get a good shot of it, what you don't see is its head inside of a beehive, eating bees I guess. Thankfully I have a big zoom and didn't have to get too close. I think that this is a California Glossy Snake which is non-venomous, but I really wasn't going to hang around to find out. heebs, heebs, heebs.

A forest fire swept through the area in 2007, a lot of the trees have burnt trunks and have been hollowed out and are home to a lot of bees. The sound of them swarming in some areas is so loud you can't hear the person next to you.

I just realized that I am starting to make Solstice Canyon sound so scary, but once you get past those parts there is a lot of beauty here. This canyon is one of the few that have running water all year long. There is a waterfall, pictured later, that turns into a creek that runs into the ocean.

Solstice Canyon is home of the first stone house in Malibu, called the Keller house. Reports are shady on when it was built, I'll go with 1904 like the sign says. The shell is all that remains after that 2007 fire. To think, this might have looked like an actual preserved home 5 years ago.

This was not the only house built in this canyon. Tropical Terrace located up the trail a bit was once featured in Architectural Digest and in it was one of these 5 fireplaces.

This house burnt to the ground too, but it is right next to a waterfall.

Trip one we followed a trail to see where it went, unfortunately for me, where it went was teetering on the side of a mountain, almost to the tippy top where there are a lot of lizards trying to trip you up,

but the view is pretty fantastic if I do say so myself.

independence day

I hope everyone is having a safe and happy 4th.