Jelly Fishes @ Monterey Bay Aquarium

049/366 Jelly Fishes are very interesting creatures which does not have specialized digestive system, centralized nervous system or circulatory system. These invertebrates are umbrella shaped & are found in almost all seas & oceans. Their are wide varieties of Jellyfishes and are abundantly available from surface to bottom...
They have loosely connected nerves & some Jellyfishes can identify light...

Pic shows Jelllyfish - "Black sea nettle" commonly found in Pacific Ocean.

More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellyfish
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animals/AnimalDetails.aspx?enc=n3f4wmcSJaPtVSwhJyzu9w%3D%3D
— at Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Venice Beach near LA

046/366 Venice, originally called "Venice of America," was founded by tobacco millionaire Abbot Kinney in 1905 as a beach resort town. This town has small canals, which mimics canals of Venice.
Venice, which is close to Los Angelese is famous for its beach, boardwalk.

Giant Sequoia trees @ Kings Canyon

044/366 Giant Sequoia trees @ Kings Canyon National Park


Giant Sequoia trees (sequoiadendron giagnteum) are amongst oldest trees in the world.
Age of these trees can be estimated based on its height.
Approximate age of a tree of height 250 ft will be 2500 years!
Base diameter for these giants can be as large as 40 feet in diameter!
They can grow up to 300+ feet heigh and can weigh 2.7 million pounds!

Many people incorrectly consider these Sequoia trees are same as Redwood trees as both have cinnamon-colored bark & grows very tall.
But they differ from the Redwood trees in many aspects. Redwood trees are usually found closer to coast in California.


Read interesting comparison between Sequoia and Redwood Trees here:
http://www.visitsequoia.com/redwoods-and-sequoias.aspx

Mono Lake - Mirror Lake of Tufa

043/366 Mono Lake, California

What you get to see in the pic is off Calcium Carbonate formation - a type of lime stone.
Lake bottom contains calcium rich springs, which bonds with carbonates in lake water.

These are called "Tufa". These constant formations stop when water level recedes.
If one observes lake water carefully, one can see fresh water swirling up like vegetable oil in Salty water.
These are delicate and fragile formation.

Mono Lake is huge and spread over 150 sq km.
360 degree view of Mono Lake can be seen here:
http://www.airpano.com/360Degree-VirtualTour.php?3D=Mono-Lake-California-USA

California's Old Faithful, Calistoga

036/366 California's Old Faithful, Calistoga


This geyser is located Calistoga, in Napa Valley, California.
Geyser errupts upto 30-35 feet above the ground fairly regularly at 15-30 minutes interval and lasts for about a minute or two.
Since water contains high amount of boron, it smells awful and reminds of Hydrogen Sulphide.

This place also houses few Llamas and Goats.

Note: Entry fee is quite high (around 8$) for what we get to see.

More info:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/12648
www.oldfaithfulgeyser.com

Parking woes - New York City

027/366 New York City, New York

There is an aura about this most populous city of USA.
Instead of showing rosy picture of NY, I thought of showing pain point of this huge city :-)
Finding free Parking Space is almost impossible & charges for paid parking is atrotious, which will definitely burn your pockets.
Looking at the sign board of a busy street in NY seen in pic, one can imagine the fine for violation.

I also felt NY is the 'dirtiest' city amongst the cities which I have visited in US.

Other beautiful pics of NY seen through my camera are here.

1903 Wright Flyer, Washington DC

024/366 On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the Wright Flyer became the first powered, heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard.

We have been reaping rewards of Wright Brother's invention for good long time now.
I had this great oppurtunity to get close view of first successful flight "1903 Wright Flyer" in Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum, Washington DC.

I am sure you all know about this masterpiece, if you are still interested, read here:
http://www.nasm.si.edu/wrightbrothers/index_full.cfm

Bird's view of flyover, San Jose

10/366 Sharing this fly-over pic from archive...

Birds view of one of the fly-overs in San Jose, CA was caught during the journey to Watsonwille, CA with my collegues.
My ex-colleauge was pilot by hobby and he took us around to get exciting views in 4-seater Cessna 172 Skyhawk


I also had pleasure of sitting as "Co-Pilot" and controlling the directions of this small flight for brief period :-)

Stanford University, Palo Alto

5/366 Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, US

Picking this pic from my old albums taken almost 8 years back...
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Leland Stanford, a Californian railroad tycoon & politician, founded the university in 1891 in honor of his son, Leland Stanford, Jr., who died of typhoid two months before his 16th birthday.
Stanford University is one of the world's leading research and teaching institutions. It is located in Palo Alto, California.

The university is organized into seven schools including academic schools of Humanities and Sciences and Earth Sciences as well as professional schools of Business, Education, Engineering, Law, and Medicine.
Some of the famous inventions from Stanford students include Digital Sound synthesis, DSL lines, search engine by Google, Genome Sequencing.

Stanford faculty & alumni have founded many prominent technology companies including Cisco Systems, Google, Hewlett-Packard, LinkedIn, Rambus, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems, Varian Associates, and Yahoo!

http://www.stanford.edu/