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Family Cruise: Catalina & Ensenada (November 2023)
  Hand Coded in HTML by © W.P. Armstrong 25 Nov. 2023   
We embarked from Long Beach aboard the huge Carnival Radiance on 20 Nov. 2023. Our destinations included Catalina Island & Ensenada, Mexico. Since hundreds of excellent images were taken by everyone, the following are mostly from a scenic & informative, gee whiz (educational), biological perspective. I used an iPhone 12 and my obsolete Sony DSC-HX50 & HX60 cameras. All images were tweaked with Photoshop. A few images, such as my Catalina bison & fire ant were imported from other Wayne's Word pages.

Sunrise Images From Decks 11 & 12 on Thanksgiving Day

Sunrise heading north from Ensenada on Thanksgiving day 23 Nov. 2023.
The rising sun changed dramatically in the early morning darkness.

The Quaint Port of Ensenada

Container Ship in Ensenada Harbor

Gee Whiz Notes About Freight Trains

I have seen freight trains with 150 double stacked cars each carrying 2 shipping containers. This is a total of 300 containers. Numerous very long freight trains with 120 cars or more pass through Indio along Indio Blvd. 120 double stacked cars extend as far as the eye can see! This is equivalent to 240 tractor trailer loads. It is amazing how much power it takes to pull this load up the Banning grade from Indio. A train one mile long would take about a mile to stop at 55 mph on flat land. Of course, the stopping distance depends on the load.

A freight train with 7 large engines, 5 in front and 2 at the rear, has an enormous horsepower rating. With a conservative estimate of 5,000 horsepower per engine (large engines may have 6,000 hp), this train generates at least 35,000 hp. With engines that weigh well over 100 tons each and freight cars with load capacities of over 100 tons, this train has a potential total weight of almost 11,000 tons. I doubt if 35,000 horses could pull this load up the Banning grade! Note: The GE AC6000CW 6 axle locomotive that resembles the engines in some of my train images generates 6,000 hp and weighs about 200 tons! Many train images can be accessed at Trains Tab & Search Tab at the top of this page.

  Indio Trains, Rail Anatomy & Imported Fire Ants  

Ants Found On This Trip
During our stop on Catalina Island I only found the ubiquitous Argentine ant (Linepithema humile); however, I encountered several interesting ant species at our stop in Ensenada.

Interesting Ant Colonies In Vacant Ensenada Field

Nests & workers of native fire ant (Solenopsis xyloni): While docked in Ensenada I noticed a large field in the distance that looked ant-promising, so I decided to leave the ship a few fours before departure. I discovered numerous clusters of native fire ant nests in the soil composed of sand & seashell fragments. Digging with my hands I uncovered bicolored major (soldier) & minor workers. Although they are related to the invasive South American fire ant, this native species poses no serious problem unless you sit on their nest. They can sting! By the way, there were also some tiny black worker ants about 2 mm in length, probably in the enormous ant genus Pheidole. Unfortunately, I didn't collect a sample.

Another Ant Colony in Crack Near Boarding Gangplank

Mass of harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex: Probably P. californicus) in concrete crack near boarding/exiting gangplank. With all the people around me, I felt a little conspicuous attempting to gather a few specimens. In my humble opinion, the sting of this species is much more painful than a native fire ant. They have hair baskets (psammophores) below & around mandibles to help them pick up loose, dry sand grains without spilling out. Try grasping loose, dry sand using tweezers! See next close-up image.

Wrigley Memorial & Botanic Garden

This landmark of Catalina honors William Wrigley Jr., founder of the Wrigley Company on April 1, 1891, in Chicago, Illinois. Wrigley's gum was traditionally made of chicle, milky latex of the sapodilla tree (Manilkara zapota), a native tree of Central America. Chicle was once thought to be a good source of natural rubber. In 1866, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna brought a sample of chicle to New York. There he met Thomas Adams, a man he hoped could produce rubber from chicle. [Santa Anna was a former Mexican president and the famous general who led the Mexican troops in the battle of the Alamo in 1836.] Although Adams could not vulcanize chicle into rubber, he came up with the idea of sweetening and flavoring the chicle to make chewing gum. In fact, some chewing gums available today bear his name.

Classic chewing gums that are still available today (although they are no longer made with pure chicle gum base). The original packaging did not include bar codes on the side.

Original (old) packages of Wrigley's chewing gums ordered from Etsy.

I have a lot more information about natural plant gums & resins at the following link. I covered all this fascinating stuff in my popular online & campus course called "Plants & People" at Palomar College. After I retired it was deleted along with my website Wayne's Word. My html website still exists at Network Solutions.
  Natural Plant Gums & Resins  

Evidence of Catalina Fox Near Wrigley Memorial

Footprints & droppings (scat) from the Catalina fox, the next best image to the actual fox! I once saw a Catalina fox while hunting for an endemic wildflower near the Catalina airport. This wildflower species is labeled Brodiaea jolonensis at Catalina Botanical Garden; however, I have never seen it south of San Luis Obispo County. A photogenic population grows in Monterey County on the Fort Hunter Liggett Army Base. Many images of this beautiful wildflower can be accessed at Search Tab at top of this page.

  Wildflowers at Hunter Liggett Base in Monterey County  
Wayne's Word Index of Pages About Brodiaea Species

Catalina Bison Disclaimer

In case anyone is worried about it, the Catalina bison is still called a bison. Although it carries some cattle DNA, it is still not a true bigeneric hybrid between the bison & domestic cattle. In other words, it is not a true beefalo. In fact, beefalo bulls look more like domestic cattle, except they have larger heads and shoulders like bison. The "beefalo" is a fertile hybrid between domestic cattle (Bos taurus) and the North American bison (Bison bison). Since a bison cow is used in the cross, the hybrid offspring receive bison mitochondrial DNA from their mother. Mitochondria are passed to the offspring through the egg and not through the father's sperm. [In plants, chloroplasts are passed through the egg and not the sperm--more overwhelming evidence that life evolved on this planet!] Unlike the sterile hybrid mule between horse & donkey with different chromosome numbers of 64 & 62, bison & domestic cattle have the same diploid number of 60. In fact, the mule has an odd chromosome number of 63! This is a complex subject that is explained in the following article by Philip W. Hedrick.

  Go To The Wayne's Word Hybrid Page  

The true "beefalo" is a specific cross between a bison cow (genus Bison) and bull of domestic cattle (genus Bos). The general term "cattalo" applies to any cross between North American bison and domestic cattle. Beefalo almost always resemble the breed of cattle that is used to create them. Registered beefalo herds are a consistent 3/8 bison and 5/8 domestic bovine heritage. Since cattalo isn’t a specific breed, its appearance can vary. This is a complex subject that is explained in the following article by Philip W. Hedrick.

Philip W. Hedrick. 2009. Conservation Genetics and North American Bison (Bison bison)
Journal of Heredity Vol. 100 (4): 411-420 (doi:10.1093/jhered/esp024).                     

Museum of Art in Ensenada

This beautiful embroidery art piece on the wall of art museum (Center For The Arts) in Ensenada inspired me to take more interest in the health of my own heart and add a cardiologist to my list of physicians.