Joshua Tree National Park in California. A video by Daniel Wolfert.

In 2008 I visited my Cousin Shelia and her boy Jimmy. They live in the Sierra Nevada Mountains east of Stockton, CA. We did some sightseeing to California Caverns and Big Tree State Park.

Here are some video clips of some OHHHHH so cute baby elephants and their parents, that live at the San Diego Wild Animal Park in California.

The song is “Baby Elephant Walk” by Henry Mancini, which was   more...the song made famous by the John Wayne/Red Buttons movie “Hatari” that was released in 1962, and the scene in the movie that uses this song is HILARIOUS, as a baby elephant runs amok. Although I was only eleven when I saw the movie in ‘62 on the big screen at a drive-in theater, I had SUCH a crush on female wildlife photographer “Anna” in the movie, played by BEAUUUTIFUL Italian actress Elsa Martinelli . . . the “minor” point being that she was 27!!! in 1962, so there was a HUGE age difference, but that didn’t seem to MATTER to me at the time! LOL (NOR did the age difference topic seem to matter to the producers and director of the movie, when they cast John Wayne as Elsa’s potential love interest “Sean Mercer” in the movie, considering that John was 55!! at the time! LOL).  less

I went on a trip to Yosemite Park in 2002. Yosemite Park is very close to the border between California and Nevada, and close to Area 51. In the evening, on my way out of the park, I was driving down   more...a winding road, when I saw a small ball of light high up in the sky, with a large halo of light surrounding it, and a long twirled trail behind it. I video taped it for a few seconds, and then I grapped my camera to take some photos as well, in case the video camera didn't capture it well enough. Unfortunately it was too dark for the photo camera, so the pictures didn't come out. All I have is the video I took before and after I took the photos.

The ball of light with the huge halo moved across the sky, leaving a trail. After about 2 minutes the ball of light disappeared, and only the trail remained. The trail was illuminated and still brightly visible even when the surrounding sky was already pitch black.

A few minutes later several Air Force jets appeared and circled in the sky where the light had disappeared.  less

My friends and I went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park today, so here are some video clips of this great looking lion we saw. (I guess you COULD say this is SORT of a continuation of my "Lion"   more...series, since my last video was about SEA Lions! LOL)

The song is “The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)” by The Tokens, which came out WAYYYY back when I was eleven LOL (I SOOOOO remember when this song came out!). Here is some interesting bio on the song and the group, that I found on Amazon.com:

“The song, "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," was based on an South African Zulu folk song "Wimoweh" made popular by the classic folk group the Weavers in the 1950s. However, the Weavers were political in the best sense of the folk tradition, and fell out of favor among the common folk who thought them Communist sympathizers of varying hues along the spectrum of the color red. However, younger music listeners might remember Robert John's version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which made it to #3 on the Pop charts in 1972 and was included on the soundtrack for "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective."

“The group, The Tokens, was a doo wop group out of Brooklyn, who originally included Neil Sedaka when they were known as the Linc-Tones (they were students at Lincoln High School). In the early 1960s the group was reformed by Hank Medress with Phil Margo, Mitch Margo, Joe Venneri, and Jay Siegel as The Tokens. In 1962, The Tokens recorded "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," which hit #1 on the Billboard Pop charts. It was far and away the biggest hit The Tokens ever had, and this CD-Single basically includes the two songs that are arguably the best of the rest of their inventory. "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and "La Bamba" were both off of The Token's debut album.”  less

BARCELONA GREAT COMMERCIAL

Lindsay and I went to Ashland. I love it there. The video clips were very random so I decided to just put music over it all...
No Cars Go - Arcade Fire

Here are a bunch of vid clips highlighting our Fowl Feathered Friends :) I took the video clips recently at the San Diego Wild Animal Park in California.

The song choice is “Sea Lion Woman” by Feist.   more... This video has NUTHIN’ to do with sea lions (unlike some of my OTHER vids LOL), but I love how the long necked birds in the video seem to be rockin’ out to this song!! LOL (For those not familiar with Feist, it was her music video for her song "1,2,3,4" that was a part of the Apple iPod TV commercials.)  less

I've been to Yosemite over fifty times now; my most favorite place on earth . . . I'm still in total awe of Yosemite's beauty . . . here are photos I've taken over the years at Yosemite in various seasons,   more...including times with Yosemite Falls at full strength, and times when the falls have NO water at all. It's amazing walking around the remote, hard to reach base of the Yosemite Upper Falls at the dry times, exploring the cave areas created by the pounding water, and seeing the granite there that has been intensely polished over thousands of years by the millions of tons of water that typically pound down on that area . . . also shown in the photos are the cables used by high country hikers to ascend to the top of the 8,837 foot high Half Dome mountain, and there's also a photo of adrenaline junkie/idiot me standing at the top of Half Dome, at the edge of the 4,871 foot dropoff to the Valley floor below.

The song is "For the First Time" by Kenny Loggins.  less

Here are more video clips taken during one of my motorcycle trips through Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. The Giant Sequoias, located in both of these national parks, are the world's largest   more...trees, the world’s fastest growing trees, and the oldest known Giant Sequoia is approximately 3,500 years old. Sequoia bark can sometimes reach 4 feet in thickness. Even standing right next to these magnificent trees, it’s still difficult to fully grasp the sheer ENORMITY of these trees.

The video includes scenes of the two largest Giant Sequoias. General Sherman, the world’s largest tree, is 276 feet tall, 32 feet in diameter, has a circumference of 103 feet, with an estimated wood volume of over 52,500 cubic feet, and finally, the tree weighs approximately 1,385 tons. General Grant is the world’s second largest tree, at 270 feet tall, 34 feet in diameter, and an estimated volume of almost 47,000 cubic feet. The tallest redwood tree is around 367 feet tall, which is higher than the Giant Sequoias, but the wood volume within the tall redwood trees is dwarfed by that within the Giant Sequoias.

In the video sequence showing the vehicles going through a fallen tree trunk, you’ll probably notice a pronounced jiggle of the camcorder in the middle of that video segment . . . . that’s because I was swatting away a very large, VERY annoying bumblebee at that exact moment! LOL, but I managed to keep filming anyway (and who says “guys can’t multitask”!?? LOL)


The song for the video is “Colors of the Wind”, sung by Vanessa Williams.  less

3.5 million people visit Yosemite National Park every year; most of those people never get more than a quarter of a mile from their cars while they’re in the Park!!! The highlight of their visit is usually   more...to get a view from the valley of Yosemite Falls above, the world’s fifth tallest waterfall. Yosemite Falls consists of 1,430 foot high Upper Yosemite Falls, where the water falls down to the “Cascades” section which drops the water another 675 feet. 320 foot high Lower Yosemite Falls completes this incredibly beautiful waterfall system.

During the Spring snow melt season, an astounding 2,400 gallons of water descend the falls EVERY SECOND! Approximately 50 square miles of land drain down to Yosemite Falls.

I’ve now been to Yosemite around fifty times in my life, and have enjoyed exploring many areas not normally seen by people. One of those areas rarely ever seen by visitors is the “Cascades” section of the waterfall (between the Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls). During the DRY season which occurs in the early Autumn most years, it’s possible to work your way over to this area to see the highly polished granite and explore the large cave there and the large empty water channel that, for much of the year, has massive amounts of water raging loudly through it.

It’s always an amazing experience to sit in quiet solitude at the base of Upper Yosemite Falls and realize that water has been carving the channel around me for millions of years. It's also a surreal experience, knowing that, simultaneously to me sitting there, busloads and carloads of people are continuously photographing Yosemite Falls from the valley below, as I sit contemplating in this "hidden" part of the Falls above them that they will never see. If you ever want to explore this area in person, just be careful to look out for the rattlesnakes that inhabit the underbrush areas! I’ve included a couple of photos of a BIG four foot long rattlesnake I walked by on my latest visit to the Cascades area.

I hope you enjoy looking at these photos I took at a place almost none of the visitors to Yosemite will ever see in person.

The song is “In My Life - If We Never Meet Again” by Selah (This is a song that combines two different songs into one song; I only used the “In My Life” portion, and “looped” it to play twice. The lyrics of “There are places I remember, all my life” TRULY applies to how I feel about Yosemite :) :) )

Here is the link to another of my Yosemite videos: http://www.livevideo.com/video/05D4CA30F6F1439F877638A36840AD81/-yosemite-national-park-california-.aspx  less

We camped at Yosemite for a week at the Tuolumne Campgrounds, roughing it in a tent and sleeping bags. This is a compilation of that trip.

Who says women cannot park????

San diego "Padres" vs Boston "Red sox"
Game was O.K. The place was really fun!!!!

a March 2008 ride in Disneyland in California

Here are some of the many video clips I took of the park on a recent motorcycle trip. Kings Canyon is located south of Yosemite, and east of Fresno, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I’ll also be doing   more...a YouTube video of the Giant Sequoia trees at some point, with video footage I took of the MASSIVE old trees inside Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks.

The song for this video is “Ballad of Easy Rider” performed by The Byrds, from the counterculture 1969 biker movie “Easy Rider” starring Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, with a 32 year old Jack Nicholson in a highly entertaining role as an alcoholic lawyer, for which Jack got nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. It was arguably this movie role that got Jack his “big break” in Hollywood, and spring boarded him to later fame and fortune . . . but, I’m obviously now digressing from the topic of this video! LOL  less

Yosemite is my favorite National Park, and I’ve probably now been there over sixty times in my life, and I never tire of the beauty of the scenery there, so when I was motorcycling from the San Francisco   more...Bay Area eastward on my recent trip around the Southwest, it was a no brainer type decision for me that I’d go through Yosemite once again, and take Tioga Pass Road over the summit, and on down to Lee Vining at Mono Lake, California. Tioga Pass Road had only recently been cleared of winter snow and opened for traffic again, so it was great seeing all the snow and seasonal waterfalls beside the road.

The song choice is “Gravity” by Alison Krauss and Union Station, which I relate to really well, ‘cause I’ve had wanderlust all my life, and have always wanted to know what was over the next mountain, or around the next bend in the road.  less

Here are a few of the hundreds of photos I've taken as I've done my typically aimless wanderings around San Francisco, from the various times I've lived in the S.F. Bay Area . . . the fairly recent "bow   more...and arrow" sculpture in one of the photos in this video, is probably THE most atypical, TOTALLY incongruous sculpture I've ever seen on the Embarcadero (near the Ferry Building) in S.F.!! LOL

The sea lions at Pier 39 (near Fisherman's Wharf) have become QUITE the tourist attraction in that area, so every day hundreds of sea lions watch thousands of tourists watching THEM!

The song is "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" by Scott McKenzie, which became the unofficial "anthem" for what became known around the world as the "Summer of Love" in 1967 . . . I was an older teen back then, and grew UP just south of San Francisco . . . not only was there NO "Summer of Love" in '67 or drug use happenin' with ANY of the hundreds of teens I knew outside of the tiny world of the Haight-Ashbury area of S.F.!!, but the MAIN thing any of us young males was worried about was whether or not we'd be drafted and killed in Vietnam . . . but it WAS fun wandering around Haight-Ashbury back in the late 60s, and seein' that "Tune in, Turn on, Drop out" counter-culture firsthand, and watching as mainstream tour bus companies would literally have bus tours cruise slowly by "The Haight", because the companies back then would include that area as one of the "colorful" local tourist attractions!!, so it was surreal watching the tourists in the buses frantically taking photos of real, live S.F. "Hippies" LOL . . . but anyway . . . I digress . . . somethin' I do a LOT . . . so yeah, anyway . . . this song is always the main song that reminds me of that particular summer "wayyyyy back when" :) :)

. . . and OH!! . . . if you ever visit San Francisco IN the summer . . . bring a COAT!!! . . . the summer's wind driven fog OFTEN rolls in, and it's COLD!! . . . the best time to visit is mid-September thru' mid-October during "Indian Summer" when the fog is usually absent . . . . . . . . . . and no . . . I'm not a travel agent! LOL  less

Opposite lock in a compact roadster is always fun, but hitting cones in the process adds a little extra flare.

Installment two of the Mazdaspeed 6 challenge. This time, no cones were knocked down in pursuit of the fastest time of the day for the four of us. Mission accomplished. This mid-size car has the best   more...feel of all its competitors.  less

Wednesday 14 October Terramaini park

Pictures I took in Golden Gate Park (Botanical Gardens) In San Francisco, California.

Happy Birthday Mom!!

Music: "Racecar" Paul Berget
Creative Commons License (more)

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