Nearby to San Jose

February 27, 2025February 26, 2025

Santa Cruz Beach Board Walk

The oldest running amusement park in California, is the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. In operation since 1907. It’s also a nice enjoyable place to hang around, especially with kids. There are free concerts and movies on the beach during summer, rides and games and food, and a neat feeling to walk around enjoying the ambiance. I like that you don’t need to pay to get in the park and walk around. You pay for rides and food and games, though you don’t pay to just walk around and enjoy the ambiance.

This carousel, older than the park itself and added to the Board Walk in 1911, is one of the rare carousels still operating that has a brass ring dispenser and target. Riders get to grab a ring as they go around and then throw it at the clown face, attempting to get the ring into the mouth as they go around. The ride then also becomes a game for those sitting on the outside horses.

That excellent wooden roller coaster in the background is the Giant Dipper. It will be 101 years old this year. It is the oldest operating roller coaster in California and one of the oldest in the world. It’s what you see to know you are almost at the Board Walk when walking or driving in.

December 12, 2024November 12, 2024

San Jose in Lego

Among other landmarks, you can see the San Jose Museum of Art above, and San Jose City Hall below.

You can visit San Jose, and other cities of the Bay Area, in Lego scale at the Lego Land Discovery Center in The Great Mall of Milpitas.

July 11, 2024June 26, 2024

Moss at Chitactac-Adams County Park

June 27, 2024May 31, 2024

Stanford University with a Flip Phone

That is pay phone, in a stone hall, at Stanford University. I wonder how often it is used these days. Photo taken by a flip phone of the kind that came along to make pay phones far harder to find starting several years ago.

April 25, 2024March 5, 2024

Santa Clara Murals

There are several murals at a housing development being built in the city of Santa Clara at the San Jose border next to Valley Fair Mall. These murals are by Maxfield Bala Creative mural company (https://www.maxfieldbala.com/).

I love to walk around in bare feet. And I am use to seeing signs that say you must have shoes to enter a place. This, however, is the first sign I have seen that says you must have bare feet. It is on the side of the painted silo.

April 11, 2024March 5, 2024

Bedrock Mortars

Bedrock mortars at Chitactac-Adams Heritage County Park. People used these to grind foods for thousands of years here as this particular area was inhabited for at least 3,000 years and probably longer. The mortars are right there to appreciate on a walk around the park. There are so many in various spots. I enjoy thinking about these, and the people who used them, and their descendants living in the Silicon Valley and other places today.

April 4, 2024March 5, 2024

Tree and Sky

November 23, 2023February 27, 2024

SLAC – Longest Linear Accelerator

Looking down the hall of the 2 mile long straight building at Stanford’s linear accelerator. Straight, not level. The guide said if it was level it would follow the Earth’s curve and at 2 miles long it would then be about 12 inches off of straight at the end. This building was designed to be straight because a couple of stories below ground, under this support equipment that the building is housing, is a long tube that is designed to accelerate particles very near the speed of light. And those particles go straight. You don’t get too many opportunities to look down so perfect an example of a diminishing perspective through distance.

This is the outside of the building, looking down the exact same stretch as seen in the inside photo above it. You can see highway 280 going over the linear accelerator as a bridge not too far ahead in the photo.

Our tour guide took us to a newer building added down the end of the accelerator where x-rays generated by the accelerated particles are used for modern research. The accelerator was running throughout this whole visit, and does so through most hours of most days of the year. And so, behind the tour guide in the above photo, here a few stories under ground, x-rays are flying through the labs in a horizontal tube that I pointed out with the added blue arrow. These x-rays are used in the various experiments going on in the numerous rooms of SLAC.

There is something wonderful about humans working together on huge ambitious projects to advance our understanding of the universe. And it is pretty great to get to look at these projects and to consider what they do and how they do it.

Coming back up to the surface, surrounded by California.

November 11, 2023February 27, 2024

Flip Phone Pix

Here are some fun with a flip phone photos from in and around San Jose. These photos have no added filter effects; this is just how cell phone photos use to look. They are less than 2 megapixels and sometimes look a little like computer generated paintings and sometimes like incredibly detailed versions of foggy dreams.