Thursday, November 22, 2007

Day 11, Amphitheater Backdrop at Dos Lagos

In direct opposition to my post yesterday, this is not old, unless you think a year is old. For Thanksgiving, I thought that I would post some pics that I have been thinking about taking for a year. Last year we were home for thanksgiving with all of my familiy visiting and staying at our house. I come from a family of six kids, so start adding in all our children and it is starting to get big. So I went for a morning ride with one of my best friends (see Day X) and we went on a route that we have never done.

Cajalco is a small, windy, two lane road and we are afraid of due to the traffic. So here we are barreling down the the 800 foot drop in less then 3 miles on Thanksgiving day with the road all to ourselves and we come to the new development, Dos Lagos. It is a retail center with a man made lake. The lake is on two levels with a little 10 foot waterfall right beside a cool walkway that bisects the two little lakes. The developer built a little ampitheater. There is nothing particularly speacial about it, it is an outdoor space with a modernistic backdrop. As I was walking around the new development, The ampitheater is out of place with this backdrop since the shopping complex is built in the "established" or "Main Street" style. The shops and area are built to look like like it has been around for awhile even though it is new.

This is the hard part of living on the West Coast, there is no sense of History. We build developments to look old, when they are new. There are not Civil or Revolutionary war era memorials or buildings. The cities don't have the sense of place that comes from history. This particular development was Orange Groves 5 years ago. Now it one of the places that we spend a lot of our entertainment time. In fact, another development out here that we love to go to is Vicotoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga. It has the feel of up scale main street from 50 years ago. Of course it isn't 50 years old, it was a vinyard until they bulldozed it under 3 years ago.

LA is a great big freeway and each city is distinguished by how many off ramps they have. As Southern California has grown, all that has happened is that the gaps in the freeway have come closer together to make the spawl even bigger. Don't get me wrong, I love it out here. I love the weather and the people are great. Life seems to run at a different pace. But it is hard to see the orange groves that I have grown up around disappearing.

_____________________________________


Camera:
Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi
Exposure:
1/4000 sec
Aperture:
f/5.6
Focal Length:
51 mm
ISO Speed:
800
Exposure Bias:
0/3 EV

No comments:

Post a Comment