Around the Golden State. Sequoia, Up The Coast, SF, Napa, and More.
Charlie of course had to come first, but now to the start of the story:
February 16 and 17
I left on the 16th with Nancy for a week or so to enjoy Nancy’s grandbaby Charlie, and Josh and Kelly too, in San Francisco, and to enjoy getting to know Nancy’s friends Ellen and Bill in Eureka/Arcata. Lucky me for sure.
We arrived in mid-afternoon and immediately hit the streets. This is from the mural decorating the outside walls of the Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy.
February 22
A few details from our morning walk.
I left all the wires in these pictures because they are so much a part of almost every view in SF. Even though you can become blind to them, when you happen upon a street where they have put the wires underground you will definitely notice the improvement.
A clip from the above. Some of the expressions: ‘I don’t think I was courageous. I think I was determined.’ ‘It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than out abilities.’ ‘The only way to have a friend is to be one.’
When it was gray and icky out I’d walk around mostly with my head down, trudging, but when the clouds would part everything looked pretty darn entertaining.
Who are those people? Subways around the world are inhabited by the same people so I suppose you already know who they are.
February 18
On our way up to Eureka I was driving so I drove us off the highway and into the totally all tourista all the time Golden Gate Bridge viewing opportunity despite Nancy’s protestations and in the end she said ‘thank you, that was fun’.
…goodbye Golden Gate Park and Golden Gate Bridge and Radio Tower. Goodbye parking on 53 degree hills. Is this what comes from hanging out with a one year old? Goodbye San Francisco! See you again soon!
Our cameras, endlessly entertaining.
SF is defined these days by neighborhoods of several blocks circumference. We are staying in Noe Valley, three blocks up the road from The Castro and Josh and Kelly live three miles away in Bernal Heights
On the road again… We’re doing the Highway 101 North from San Francisco drive through farming country and the coastal redwoods to Eureka. I think you could do that drive one hundred times and it would be fabulous every time.
A view out the car window during a rare dry moment. We spent many entertaining hours listening to a book on tape, ‘That Old Ace In The Hole’ by Annie Proulx. We were lovin’ it. Since we needed another few days on the road to finish though, I don’t know how it ends and will enjoy sitting around the library for a few hours to find out.
Public transportation is a lively art in San Francisco.
There’s BART for long haul rapid transit, then Muni runs a subway and buses, and they’ve got these electirfied babies and some historic cars from around the world, and the cable cars of course, that actually are used for transportation.
More. Folks were out in great numbers turning their faces toward the sky to bathe their sun-starved cheeks in the light and warmth of the morning.
Here we are at a bar in Bernal Heights where we enjoyed a nice cocktail before dinner. I was amused to discover our fellow patrons were all women and this lovely lady, our bartender, also played bass in a Retro-70s Drag Band. The name of the band is ‘Wood, Against the Grain.’
She said no matter how much face hair she wore she still couldn’t manage to pass. It’s true. Her band mates were obviously more successful in achieving that manly look.
My Bombay up twist was perfect and Nancy said it was the best Margarita she ever had bar none.
From Ferndale, another Victorian Restoration town, 11 miles south of Eureka. Nancy and Ellen went shopping and I took a turn to check out the sights.
It is a curiosity to me that this trip I didn’t do much of my usual line-’em-up effort to get interesting pictures of the people in my day, and when I did I didn’t much like the results. I could dwell on the psychological implications of this, or not, which is the most likely outcome.
Me outside our cottage in Noe Valley. Nancy found this place on Craig’s List. The owner of the house was renting just this one ‘mother-in-law’ style apartment (ok ok, it’s probably bigger than my place back home…).
(n.)
We were setting up this shot and Nancy was watching herself carefully for approximately 20 minutes, needing to be positioned just so, turning to the left, the right, look up, move to the side, start the left-right thing all over again, all to find just that perfect profile.
That’s me, cracking up.
(n.)
The outdoor garden at the the Cornelius Daly Inn. Mighty sweet, and the whole place terribly terrribly tricked out in every aspect of 1900s restoration. And the innkeepers were definitely an odd lot. The husband had a prior career as a stand in for Lurch and the wife never even made herself known.
Nancy was mildly horrified. ‘Unbearably twee and ongapatchka Victoriana.’ For coffee they had only a weak, flavored brew and little packets of Coffee Mate. But they made up for it by being expensive.
February 19
Ellen, one of the motivations for this trip. She recently eloped with her long-time true-love and was having a dinner party for her friends to celebrate, wedding cake and all.
Ellen was also having a gallery show which we got to enjoy. Her pictures are entirely remarkable and here is a website highlighting her work.
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Charlie’s First Movie!
We went downtown to meet the kids for a movie, the noon time ‘Rattle and Reel’ where adults are welcome to bring their babies to the theater. We saw a documentary about The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. It was quite wonderful and here’s a link to the story.
(n.)
It was raining for our return from Berkeley so we hopped a taxi at Civic Center and were easily back at our b&b for a quiet evening to rest up for tomorrow’s return flight.
At Josh and Kelly’s for one more Charlie fix before heading to the airport. The park is just a few vertical blocks away.
Awww.
(n.)
A long-ish driving day. We made the ladies a picnic for dinner, served on the ironing board with towels for a table cloth.
Day 6: Fresno back home.
We just Had’ta have bar-b-que tri-tip sandwiches!
In retrospect, this was Mom’s last road trip and she got to have it the way she wanted.
Mom really likes to have her picture taken.
So take the index finger of your right hand and point it skyward, then take the index finger of your left hand and point it downward and then with your left hand make a circle around your right index finger. That’s what my sister and I did for the whole trip because it’s Mom Mom all about Mom. Mom is the center of the universe and we all simply rotate in her orbit. Oh yeah, she had fun.
About that rainbow shot, I ask myself and will never know the answer, if I was by myself would I have stood out in the rain those extra some number of minutes to set up the tripod and do a better job with the opportunity? I’ll never know.
And if I did and if in say twenty minutes, after fussing about and getting soaked, would it have been too late? Would I have lost patience? Am I basically too lazy to have bothered? I’ll never know that either. But I can guess…
Day 4: Susanville to Reno.
This reminds me of an old tinted postcard that you might find in the bottom of a drawer at Granny’s, not written on but bought and saved because of some unremembered day.
Having recently gone through my stuff I found a few in the bottom of my own drawer!
Day 1: LA to Manteca
Break time. To give you an idea of the distances between potty stops.
…and James and Carolynn, and Jake, and Brad. Thank you all for coming and bringing treats! We ate lunch, snapped a few pics and left before Mom or Phyllis were over the edge. Mom was smiling for hours.
Early the next day…
The High Desert State Prison in Susanville. You do not want to be here.
This was a ‘scenic view’ turn out. Mom didn’t want to get out of the car. ‘Don’t you want to be in the picture?’ ‘Oh YES of Course.’ And she was out and smiling before we had time to bring the stool around!
Aiko treated us to a Japanese dinner in Reno and I taught Windy how to play video poker. We had us some fun!
Mom absolutely HAD to stop here and absolutely HAD to have the all you can eat soup bowl.
Day 3: Chico to Susanville.
This drive was our favorite time in the car. Wow. A season. Fall in Lassen National Forest. Very gaspy.
October 20
Taking Aiko to see her son in Susanville.
Racing up the I-5 to make it to the Harris Ranch exit in time for this remarkable (and shockingly pano-distorted) sight.
Day 2: Manteca to San Ramon to Chico.
Riki put together such a gift for Mom. We got to visit with Phyllis…
BEAR!
Can your pounding brain break through your skull? So I’m backing up, quickening the pace, but can’t resist. I snap the shutter at my waist, hoping the bear is in frame (see him on the path there).
SNAP. The bear raises himself UP and takes two Bounding strides in my direction. WHOooooow. Here’s me: no no no no I’m not no going no no to get mauled by no no no no a bear point four miles from no no no the no parking lot no no that’s just not no going to happen no no no no.
All this thought in one gasping breath.
Then the bear seems to lose interest and lopes off into the meadow and I sit down on a log, listening, so I can go in the Opposite direction.
By total coincidence I arrived on the day when the park was presenting activities in honor of Captain (later Colonel) Charles Young and his Buffalo Soldiers. This was the Centennial of Colonel Young’s year as the first African-American Park Superintendent. The parks were run by the army until the National Park Service was established in 1916. Prior to 1916 the Army assigned cavalry troops to make improvements, patrol the parks and protect the Big Trees.
According to the program, ‘Young and his troupers accomplished more in that one summer than their predecessors had in a full decade’.
Colonel Young was the third African-American to graduate from West Point and this is another quote from the program ‘It is recorded that he felt that “…the worst he could wish for an enemy would be to make him a black man and send him to West Point”‘.
They set up a ‘living history encampment’ (you’re lookin’ at it – the whole thing…).
The most entertaining part for me was a conversation I had with one of the leaders who was just arriving. He went off on how some of these guys just didn’t get it – their uniforms were wrong for the time, they were wearing watches and carrying cell phones, they hadn’t studied history and they were just flat out doing it Wrong.
He reminded me so much of all those Civil War re-enactment fanatics. But he was touchy when I mentioned this. He said well, some people call them re-enactments but he calls what they do Living History. I didn’t stick around long enough to hear him share with his troups his opinion of watches and cell phones.
The Wuksachi Village Dining Room, the only white-tablecloth restaurant in either park. I didn’t eat there.
Here and from the picture above is a great camping spot in the Forest between Sequoia and Kings Canyon.
Over 7,000 feet and the scenery is much rockier, smaller trees and thin forest.
And now into the park..
‘They’ say the reason the roads into and inside Sequoia are so twisty-curvy is because the builders already knew what happened in Yosemite and deliberately didn’t want so many people to come, so they made it hard.
Now it is particularly hard because the road is in such bad shape with potholes and bad weather buckling etc. My car was all a-rattle but then in the few miles I drove in Kings Canyon, the roads were in great shape. So I’m wondering what all this means.
I would take a picture and then get in the car and move a bit up the road and pass this guy. Then he would pass me. Then I would pass him and we did this several times until finely I just took his picture because it was like we were on this trail together even though his effort expressed total commitment and my effort was my usual dilettantish self.
See those steps leading up the rock? Take those flights, what you see, and add five times more and that is what it takes to get to the top. Why you can’t see more than this is beyond me.
Heading down.
The three-car group I mentioned before were shortly followed by many other groups of Spanish speakers – everyone out at Moro Rock that early morning were speaking Spanish. The reason I think is that the Central Valley agricultural area is right over the hill and you can easily day-trip into this cool and magnificent landscape.
Later in the day the predominance of Spanish speakers no longer so evident.
There was a little motel-style courtyard of 7 places to stay as well as the restaurant and bar shown in the next slide. My accommodation was sort of like this one but not as cute so it only makes sense to use the cuter place as an example.
Leaving work at 3pm Friday gets me to Three Rivers, ‘Gateway’ to Sequoia, around 7, despite pockets of traffic here and there on the way up.
I used to think of Three Rivers as a modest village in the foothills of the Sierra but this time I didn’t run into any village. It was mostly a line-‘um-up town with shops, businesses, restaurants etc. stretched along the roadway for many miles. This motel/lodge is about six miles past the end of town and a few minutes from the park entrance.
It was a great place to rest up for the night. Notice the No Vacancy sign. There was virtually No Vacancy for miles around, which is what I wanted, to see how bad it could get.
A few minutes later at the entrance to the park I rolled down the window to pay the Park Ranger and was immediately and overwhelmingly overpowered by the smell of the dry grass and summer weeds and the mountains. And I knew absolutley that this was the ticket.
