What you’re seeing here is a lot of Silicon Valley, and nearly all of the San Francisco Bay, the city of SF itself slightly visible in the hazy top left, Mt Diablo to the east, at the top right of the photo. This image – looking northeast as the plane banked – and the one below were taken in sequence. With apologies for the combination of window frame and airplane wing, I include as well the image below you since you can see the full width of the peninsula with SF at the top, Half Moon Bay (open Pacific) on the western side, and the bay to the east. The “silicon valley” of legend is pretty much the eastern side of the peninsula, along the bay down to the big city of San Jose which is south of the frame of either of these photos.
No, the Sonoma County village of Sebastopol has not been invaded by godzilla. 🙂 I finally managed on this last visit to spend time wandering a street or two that I’d previously only biked or driven through in a hurry but never managed to explore more fully. Among which, this street where nearly every yard (far more yards than I could photograph) had sculptures, all or most of which I believe were made by an artist who lives and works on the street.
Apples did indeed once rule in lovely Sebastopol, but these days the noble wine grape has become both Queen and King. Still, the annual Apple Blossom Festival parade draws a good crowd and many floats, which we’ll be showing you in future posts 🙂
City & County of SF in the foreground; Marin County on the far side of the GG Bridge, and bits of at least Alameda & Contra Costa counties on the eastern side of the bay (top right).
Tomales Bay, with Point Reyes Peninsula on the other side and its mouth to Bodega Bay to the right in the second photo below. For those who don’t know the region: the San Andreas Fault runs right down the middle of this bay, and the peninsula is measurably moving away from the shore from which I took the photo by inches each year. 🙂
So yes, there’s actually an island in this photo, which you can see more clearly and easily from the other side of the lake, in the photo below :-). (Above, look for the taller pines that seem to grow from closer to or in the lake – yep, that’s the island.) The joy of my various series are that they help me see things in new ways – this is Spring Lake right near the apartment I lived in when I was in Santa Rosa, and despite many bike rides and afternoons reading on benches along its shores, I’m not sure I ever noticed the little island before!
Bottom right corner here in Mt Tamalpais and Marin County; right middle you can see the Golden Gate Bridge and SF. I’m reasonably confident that in addition to the clouds, you can also see a few lines of snow-capped Sierra Nevada mountain ranges in the middle below the couds. I’m even more confident that there are snow-capped Sierras in the distance of the photo below, which also shows Clear Lake to the north and west of my old Sonoma County home, once the skies below our plane had cleared enough for me to take photos as we approached SF nearly two weeks ago.
No, it’s not pretty – but it’s the last view I had of my Amsterdam home before the plane entered the heavy cloud layer. Below: the last photo I took before we landed about 10-1/2 hours later at SFO. Bit of a contrast, eh?
(so much world, so little time....) 