Carrizo Plain

Location: Carrizo Plain National Monument - Maricopa, CA

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The image above was taken at Carrizo Plain around Maricopa, CA - as you can see it was in full bloom. I've never seen so many flowers in one place, it looked like a massive yellow uneven carpet that stretched for miles toward the base of the hills.

This location in the Central Valley of California is a large grassland home to elks, antelopes, kit foxes, squirrels, owls, rattlesnakes, birds, and lizards.

In addition to the animals, it has some interesting geological features, like the San Andreas Fault:

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Our group hiked onto an island split and walked to the end of it for this view between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates. This would be a great spot to fly a drone for an aerial view.

Here's Astro Bandit making the most of a sunset.


Later that night we camped out and had a little guitar session. I had no idea my friend Evan was a human jukebox - we brought a great bluetooth speaker but never used it bc he was always killing it on the guitar!

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That night we drank some whiskey and then I thought of drawing a space-martini with my Night-Writer to add to my Food series - this photo had an added bonus directly above the martini when I was looking at a zoomed-in version of it on the computer screen.

It looks like I captured a small meteor or something:


Here's a 130 sec exposure of the brightest star in the sky that night, taken with my Vixen Polarie Star-tracker. Click the image for a large view, it's worth seeing on a big screen.

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On our way back to Los Angeles, we saw a 'sundog', a rainbow reflecting through the clouds.