BIG BEAR LAKE

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The Solar Observatory on the north side of Big Bear Lake.

Water's edge, Big Bear Lake.  A nice fall color palette on this cool, mid-November afternoon.

These little ducks were bobbing through the swells, honking and quacking  as I walked through thin scrub on the shore and shot a few photos.  I can hear them now.  They seemed content.  I was.

Wide angle shot of the Observatory and it's smaller brother. 






   On the backside of Big Bear Lake is a dry lake bed called Baldwin Lake.  The road heads out of Big Bear City around the northern edge of Baldwin and empties out up over the pass, and down the backside of the San Gabriel Mountains into the high desert of Lucerne Valley.  
  I came up from that side today, from the desert, and climbed past the Mitsubishi cement factory (they're shutting down operations for a while to let the construction industry catch up) up the winding road, and up top looking down into the dry gray flat of Baldwin Lake.  There's a road that crosses the end of Big Bear Lake just west of the airport, and the road skirts the north shore all the way to the damn.
  The damn is being rebuilt, and there was about a half an hour stoppage to wait for on-coming traffic to clear.  In between, I found a nice spot to access the shore of Big Bear Lake, and sneak in these shots of the Solar Observatory.  As nearly always, the natural wildlife, in this case ducks, give a nice contrast to the high-tech astronomical instruments inside their clean white domes.  The visibility at night, I'm sure, is quite spectacular at close to 6,000' and not a whole lot of ambient light coming from across the lake.
   This time of year gives a nice saturated fall color palette and I hope you can see a bit of it in the water's edge shot.
  Thanks for checking in.  
  Here's a link to the Observatory websiteBig Bear Lake Solar Observatory

Comments

mendoman said…
It's been a while, Kurt... The observatory is magnificent. Yet, it pales in comparison to the natural scenery.
November 23, 2010 at 10:06 AM
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