Searching for Goat Rock
Spent the day catching up with Katie Masleid, an old friend from Pflugerville, TX who now lives south of San Jose. Met up with her and her boy Rob, got a little lunch in Los Gatos at a cafe called Sweet Pea’s that makes sweet and savory crepes. I went with savory: shrimp and avocado.
From there we travelled to Castle Rock State Park. The big hit along the way (at least for me) was the fancy GPS navigation system. So cool.
We hiked around for a few hours, got a look at some cool rock formations, of which the photo above is one—the “HR Giger-esque” underside of a formation known as “Castle Rock.” The white spots are chalk left behind by rock climbers. We got to watch a few guys trying to climb a different overhang with only a few pads they’d brought in (and each other) to break their falls. And they did fall. We left when one appeared to have wrenched his ankle pretty bad.
Finally we got out to what we think was the “Goat Rock.” We saw many creatures in the rock formations during the hike, (turtles, dinosaurs) but I had a hard time finding a goat in the rock that I took this picture on, of what I believe are the Santa Cruz Mountains in the distance.
After the hike we got back and grilled some pre-marinated tri-tip (think mini-brisket), corn on the cob, asparagus, and we gorged on chips and salsa. It was all wunderbar. And so nice to see someone I hadn’t seen in over 7 years.
The first photograph reminds me of the inside of a Walnut shell.
The first photo reminds me of a movie called “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control” (which by the way I recommend highly! Very Highly!) The movie deals with a robot designer, a gardner, a lion tamer and a biologist who is studying Mole Rats. It bounces between each of the four people, sometimes mixing the sound from one talking about their profession from the images of another involved in their profession. It is kind of a documentry, kind of a video art work; open, somewhat non-linear and something diserving many many repeated viewings, which reminds me I must watch it again, sometime soon. In the sections about Mole Rats they show the lairs of these bizzare creatures and they look, to me, a lot like this first image.
I don’t know if I understand the first image. Is it looking at the ceiling or at a wall? Also I can’t figure out the scale, is it massive where each white spot is about a arm’s width, or have you zoomed into a small area?
Dad, each white spot is about the size of a hand, and I believe the perspective is such that I’m looking at the place where the back wall of the overhang meets the roof.
Enda, thanks for the recommendation, I just added it to my Netflix queue. Turns out it was directed by Errol Morris, who also directed “The Fog of War” which I just saw.
The white spots are chalk marks from people climbing in the cave. The chalk is for drying your hands. The smooth spot at the bottom is the roof of the cave and the bigger rougher area at the top is actually the lower part of the cave (the picture is “upsidedown”).