Homeward Bound

March 11, 2013

Today dawned clear and bright -- a good day for our final push back to Seattle.  As on so many days this trip there was little time for photos.  As we headed down the hill to the highway we stopped for one last photo of lovely Ashland.

And then we were off -- homeward bound.  It was a great trip!

Death Valley Seems Like a Dream To Me Now

March 10, 2013

Today was our last day in Ashland.  Tomorrow we head back to Seattle.  But first, a bit of snow.  Sister Deb and her family, along with niece Sarah and Cy, had gone skiing, and we were invited to meet them for lunch.  Mt. Ashland is a half hour from their home.  It's a wonderful resource and made our time in Death Valley seem very far away.

Here's the gang:

And here's the place.  It was fun to see the snow and the skiers, on this glorious day, and to remember how much fun we used to have skiing back when it seemed a reasonable thing to do.

On our way home from Mt. Ashland, Nancy and I stopped at the vineyard owed by Pat and Paula, sister Mary's ex-husband and his wife.  Back when we were just getting started on this trip and stopped for lunch in Portland with Pat and Mary's son Ryan he had mentioned his dad had opened a tasting room.  We thought we had better check it out.

The vineyard is lovely and the wine was delicious.  As we chatted with Pat and Paula the realization sank in that running a vineyard is a lot of work and an endless drain on funds. It rather reminded me of owning a boat.

In the evening was a birthday party for Deb and Jerry's son Nick.  Nick is working hard in pursuit of  his goal of becoming a firefighter.  As he blew out his birthday candles I couldn't help but think he was well of his way to that goal :-).

It was a good day.  Tomorrow, back to Seattle.

On to Oregon

March 9, 2013

Today was another long day of driving, from Oakland to Ashland, and, therefore, one without a lot of photos.  I did manage to get a couple.  The first is the one I posted on my daily blog.  We stopped for gas in the mountains south of Mt. Shasta, in a little out of the way place called Pollard Flat.  It seems to consist of nothing but a restaurant/general store/gas station.  The pumps have no ability to read credit cards and the read outs on the pumps are unreadable as well.  Inside, the walls are covered with license plates from everywhere.  And to top it all off, upon walking into the unisex restroom, all urgent and unsuspecting, I was greeted by this.

The rest of our drive into Ashland was, in comparison, uneventful.  I just had time to take this photo of the farm implement in the yard across the street from Deb and Jerry's home before we were swept off to drinks and family dinner.  Its working days are long since past.  Ashland now is a hip, upscale college community and retirement mecca for rich Californians.  I take this old, broken down farm implement as a reminder that everything changes.  Nothing stays the same.

A Baby and a Bar

March 8, 2013

After a leisurely breakfast to let the morning rush hour clear we headed north once more.  Our goal was to spend another night in Oakland with Peter, but before going there we headed for San Rafael to have lunch and see Addison, Thomas and Bella's beautiful baby girl.  We had just been there the first week in January, but then Addison had not yet been born.  Thomas is certainly handsome and Bella is beautiful, so it's not surprising Addison is a beautiful baby.

After leaving San Rafael we headed down to Oakland to check in and then meet Peter for dinner.  We met at Hawker Fare, a restaurant specializing in Southeast Asian street food of all things.  Here Peter is showing Nancy a book made for him by the children in the class he volunteers at.  He, of course, rides his bike there, deep into the part of Oakland where all the houses have large fences and barred windows.  The food, by the way, was delicious.

After dinner we visited one of the few piano bars remaining in Oakland, The Alley.  It's been open since the 30's

and has thousands of business cards stapled to the walls.  Apparently they are sprayed with fire retardant to meet building codes.

The piano is played by Rod Dibble who started in 1960.  He knows over 4,000 songs by heart and can change keys as needed.

There are a couple of mikes and people can sing.  It's a wonderful place.

Peter loves Oakland.  We're beginning to see why.

We got to bed much later than we had intended.  That's what happens when you're having a good time.  Tomorrow, after Peter and Nancy do some estate sale shopping we will be off to Ashland.

Old Friends

March 7, 2013

Today was a driving day with essentially no time for photos.  I had decided yesterday we would go to Santa Cruz today if Michael and Jean were in town and able to meet us.  By email they said they were and they could so off we went.  As I wrote in my daily blog post, Nancy and I got to know Jean and Michael at my 50th high school reunion last fall. They are delightful people and contributed greatly to the wonderful time we had at that event.  We met them for drinks and stayed for dinner.  It was a good evening. Tomorrow we're off to Oakland.

Death Valley - Day 3

March 6, 2013

Today would be our last in Death Valley.  We were feeling a bit slowed down, plus I needed to figure out where we would go next and where we would stay.  It all took some time, and we didn't leave our room until mid-afternoon.

We first stopped at the sand dunes to recreate a photo from the last time I had been here, 51 or 52 years ago.  Here's the photo from then:

And here's the photo from now:

It's not clear to me I'm improving as a photographer, but in Nancy's and my defense we did have to work fast to keep the letters from blowing away before the photo was taken.

For our last Death Valley experience we decided to hike into Mosaic Canyon.  The canyon was formed by water running in flash floods through faults in the rock.  The rock, in turn, was formed from the remains of sea creatures that lived in the ocean that covered this area a few hundred million years ago.

The hike is in the stream bed and begins wide enough

but soon becomes more narrow and eventually very narrow before widening out again.

In the narrowest part, the walls of marble are polished by the furious scrubbing of gravel carried by the torrent of flash floods.  It was our first cloudy day, and one couldn't help but think that if by some perverse miracle it rained there would be no place to hide.

Eventually, the stream bed widened.  We walked along, enjoying the beauty of constantly changing colors and shapes.

Eventually, we decided we would enjoy getting off our feet and having the before dinner drink that had become a Death Valley tradition.  Besides, it was getting dark and we had no lights.  So, back we went.

At times, looking back, we could see a distant mountain on fire with the light from the setting sun.

Back we went through the narrow, gravel scrubbed granite.

And then we were out.

As we emerged I saw this gentleman sitting on his folding chair on the rock above me. He said he was a third generation dairy farmer from Northern California.  He was in his seventies and had recently retired at the insistence of his son.  So now he had time to sit here with his pony tail and red, white, and blue tie-dyed shirt and enjoy the sunset.

It seemed a fitting way to end our time in this most unusual place.

Death Valley - Day 2

March 5, 2013

Today dawned bright and clear, just like yesterday.  Just like a lot of days, I imagine.  Yesterday we went south, to Furnace Creek and beyond.  Today we would go north.

Off we went.

The two things to see in the north are Death Valley Scotty's Castle and Ubehebe Crater.

The first thing you learn about Death Valley Scotty's Castle is that is was actually Albert Johnson's vacation place and that it was actually called "Death Valley Ranch".  Actually, now that I think about it, the best part of visiting Scotty's Castle is the stories.  Albert was a mining engineer and insurance executive and very rich.  He was also crippled and unable to father children after a train crash which killed his father.  Scotty was a con man and fabulous story teller.  He conned Albert out of a lot of money before they became friends.  Bessie, Albert's wife, was in the first undergraduate class at Stanford, and a very conservative Christian.  Eventually she would, while dressed in flowing white and red robes and wearing a tiara, preach two hour sermons to the staff in Death Valley.  She also hired a former boyfriend to oversee the construction at the ranch.  He, of course, spent a lot of time there and eventually got divorced.  There's a lot more.

There are both an underground and above ground tour.  We did both.  Here's our guide for the underground tour.

Underground means just that.  Leading off from the basement of the main house is a series of poured concrete tunnels.

They allowed staff to go from place to place and also provided a conduit for water pipes. There is a 200 gallon per minute spring above the house.  That water flow, along with turbines to harness its power, ran everything in the buildings including the electric generator for the electric lights.

This area was a viewing room with windows that would have looked out into the pool, had the pool ever been completed.  But that's another story.

The pool never was completed due to a combination of the depression and the fact that the Johnson's didn't really have title to the land on which their home was built.  But Albert had all the tile.  Thousands of pieces of tile of all sorts.  It's all in those tunnels, and since the whole place is now under the auspices of the Park Service, that's where it's going to stay.

I mentioned the buildings were electrified.  Turns out power surges were a problem, so the electricity was all pumped into a massive bank of huge storage batteries before going to the house.  The batteries are still good today.  Or so they say.

After the underground tour came the above ground tour.  Here's the main house.

Here are some exterior details.

You see, it really was called Death Valley Ranch.  But Albert let Scotty pretend it was his castle.

A few interior shots.

The tour concluded with the music room with its chandeliers and ornate ceiling.

There was a grand piano.

And, although this photo doesn't exactly show it (nor could we really see it, but we heard it), a pipe organ.  A player pipe organ.  It's in its own separate room behind the louvers to the left.

You see us, in the photo above, exiting through a turret with its spiral, iron staircase upon which we were not allowed to go.

From there we exited into the desert sun and the brilliant greenery that said water was here.  In all Death Valley, this is the only place with trees.

Before heading for home we stopped at Ubehebe crater, the result of an explosion of superheated steam a very long time ago.  It appears out of nowhere.

There was a trail to the bottom, but even if we had been inclined to take it, and I'm not sure we would have been, the wind was blowing so very strongly one could literally barely stand.  Approaching the edge of the crater was scary.  This raven was flying vigorously along, but going nowhere.

We headed back so as to get to the sand dunes around sun down.

It's hard to convey the size and area of the dunes.  There's much more to them than appears from the road.  And some of them are over a hundred feet high. 

We trudged up dune and down as far as we could then sat down on the crest of one of them to await the sunset.

Others were there, but not many.

The wind was still blowing, sometimes very hard.  We had sand in our eyes, hair, and mouths.  I was worried about my camera, but it seems ok.  There was sand in our shoes and pockets, and in my camera bag.

As the sun went down, the light changed.  We watched the shadows advance.

It was lovely.

And then it was night.