No Really, Many Drops.

Yeah, it was pretty wet.

So once again, we're not really sure what we're going to post here next week, so we may wind up with another tactical pause. But we'll be back with something or other soon!

Many Drops

Again, we humbly submit that it's worth looking at a closer version to see the image in the drops. Or not. Up to you.

Leaf

Even a pocket camera can take a decent photo from time to time.

One Drop

If you have a moment, we would recommend checking this one out big enough to get a look at the drop on the tip of the flower. As with all the pictures this week, taken with a point-and-shoot pocket camera. The mist probably wouldn't have been good for the big SLR, but it might have been worth it to get a little closer. Ah, well.

Misty

Northern California is basically "the Pacific Northwest." As illustration, this week we offer five pictures of water on the plants along the coast. It wasn't quite raining, but it was sort of violently misting.

Bluff

One of the few landscape shots we have from Russian Gulch. Too many cool details were absorbing our attention.

X Marks the Spot

A couple more from the same fence. We found the thick metal wire holding the fence together irresistible.

The DMZ

An obscure mold that grows only on other molds. Well -- these molds are only occasionally growing on each other -- but it made the editors here think of the notorious DMZ. Not so much we can say about moldy fenceposts, other than that we thought they were photogenic though sometimes resistant to classic photo composition, as seen here.

Fenceposts

The staff photographer was quite taken by the awesome varieties of mold growing on a fence at the Russian Gulch State Park, which fence was perhaps designed to help prevent you from falling in The Russian Gulch.

Russian Gulch State Park

I believe we will be showing you a bunch of pictures from Russian Gulch just north of Mendocino. It is, like most of the Northern California coastline, pretty spectacular.

Caterpillar Obstacle Course

This crazy fuzzy caterpillar easily navigated the table-top obstacle course we set up for it. (That's it for the creepy-crawly stuff. One slug and one caterpillar is enough, and I hope has given us enough time to get some more interesting pictures ready to go starting next!)

Old Stuff: Banana Slug

So we paused to gather our thoughts and before we knew it, the Holla had been dark for over two weeks. Our humble apologies to our small but loyal readership!

So here's the deal: This blog is mostly about travel photography. We take pictures we like, sometimes with stories or semi-trenchant observations, as the Foreign Service and our own whims take us around the world. Unlike a lot of Foreign Service blogs, we're not real worried about keeping anyone up-to-date on our personal/family events. We also take a pretty leisurely approach, so most of the content here is not about stuff that happened today or even yesterday. But eventually, when we're assigned to the U.S. for work and/or training, since we don't put baby pictures or birthday party pictures or whatever up here, we run out of travel stories and photos to share.

However, when we were heading to Afghanistan, we were just too busy to worry about posting anything. So there's some good stuff (reasonable opinions could differ) from 2010 that has just been clogging our hard drive, unshared with our adoring public! Among that stock is record of our time in Northern California in 2010. We've already posted 30 pictures from Northern California in 2011. But these are different. So, here they come, starting for no good reason with this less-than-amazing picture of a banana slug. Wildlife! The pictures are going to get better, we assure you, but hey, banana slugs are cool.