Intermission #3 Yucca whipplei in bloom

Today we went hiking at Torrey Pines State Reserve located north of San Diego, just past La Jolla.
The Torrey Pines only grow in two locations: Santa Rosa Island, off the coast of Santa Barbara, California (about 150 miles north of San Diego) and Torrey Pines State Reserve.
Once you hike up to the bluffs you can look down and out on the Pacific Ocean and the beach for quite a ways.
From up there we saw a Sea Lion swimming parallel to the shore as he moved northward out of view, and about 5 minutes later a pod of dolphins swam northward along the coast as well.  (I did get a blip, but my telephoto doesn't go quite far enough -- you can see it is a dark animal in the water with a head sticking up, or fins sticking up out of the water, but the detail is lacking -- hence no post of the wildlife this time)
The recent rains watered many of the desert plants in the reserve and there were wonderful blooms to blip. I chose this close up of the blooming flower of the Yucca whipplei. It is classified a Liliaceae - Lily Family.
Native Americans made flour of the seeds of this plant, used leaf fibers to weave cordage for nets and baskets, made a soap-like product from the roots, and roasted young flower stalks to produce a food.
I guess they stripped the flowers from the stalks and roasted them sort of like asparagus.  The flowers are stunning, and the bloom is about 10 feet above the ground and about 2 feet long and 1 foot wide. The fragrance is strong but pleasant.