I am always a fan of photos of Our Lord's Candle, the flowering stalk of a yucca plant. This was taken in the summer of 2011 near the top of Mount Pico Blanco. The ocean is about 3500' below. Something unique about the northern Santa Lucia Mountains, the range that Pico Blanco lies in, is that it is home to the northernmost yucca, a Southern Californian plant, and the southernmost Coast Redwoods, a Northern Californian plant, making the region botanically Central California. This phenomenon creates a very unique ecosystem in that there are large, open, warm slopes rising above cool redwood canyons.