A visit to San Jose

This last week I was in San Jose visiting my daughter. Right after she picked me up from the airport she took me to see some awesome Christmas lights. There were two houses with lights that were hooked up to play to music on a fm wave link. Lucky for me I took my Zune, (it has fm capabilities). I gave her one ear bud and I used the other to hear the music while the lights danced. Wow a great way to get into the Christmas spirit.

On Christmas we were invited to one of her friends house for brunch. Very yummy, and they surprised us with stockings!

After Christmas we went to the Winchester house. Very impressive, once I saw the mansion it made sense why she would want so many windows. It would have been a really dark dark place without adding windows everywhere. My favorite photo is the spider web window. She had several spider web windows in the house. I was able to catch the reflected window in the shadow.






On the last day I was there we decided, spur of the moment, to go see the Monarch butterflies at the Natural Bridge park in Santa Cruz. What a beautiful place.

The Monarchs kept mostly in the high tops of the trees. You could see them in the tree tops. But my camera couldn't really get a good picture. This Monarch was on the ground.
The next picture is of a Monarch caterpillar. But it is really hard to see at the top of the plant.


This is a picture of the trees in the park. There were only around 900 butterflies at the park. They come in, in mass, starting in October. Many had already left.

This is the beach at Natural Bridge park. However the stone bridge which connected these rocks has long ago fallen into the sea. Look! It's actually sunny! A welcome sight to a snow weary seattlite.