Friends Raenu and Arturito are joining Caroline and me on Caroline’s birthday weekend for a visit to Disneyland.
Thanksgiving 2004 – Day 5
As this blog entry is only being put together in early 2020 from notes we took back in 2004 there is some reflecting on the differences the intervening decade and a half has brought. While this photo is poor in quality, it’s what it shows that is important. One, it’s obviously a cheap place, but look around. The TV is not a flat-screen but a big old picture tube there on the right. There’s an ashtray on the table next to Caroline, while on the bed with her is a paper map of the U.S., and under it is a holder of about 200 CDs we used to take with us for music. Since that time, phones from rooms have mostly disappeared as wake-up calls have become a thing of the past. Paper bills are no longer slipped under the door as they are now emailed with our smartphones the connection to the outside world; they are our alarms, maps, and source of entertainment.
We were out before sunrise and passing through Stockton, California before the first hint of the sun peeks over the horizon.
Somewhere near Kettleman City off Interstate 5, it’s only 8:45, and we’re already 210 miles closer to home. It’s amazing the distance we can cover when we aren’t distracted with frequent stops.
Time to turn on our idiot mode as we are now feeling we are making such good time we can afford detours. At the turnoff for the 58, we head towards Buttonwillow and McKittrick to visit a national monument we have yet to see.
Over the hills we go, driving west when we should be going east.
But if we position ourselves just right, we can head south after our detour and pass through Los Angeles, and who doesn’t want an extra side trip to L.A.?
We’re almost there.
Caroline Wise and John Wise on their first visit to the Carrizo Plain National Monument. Those are not the faces of regret for taking the wrong road in the wrong direction to see something not seen before. They may be the faces of idiots, but at least they are still happy after having already driven over 2,000 miles on this trip.
And this is what we drove out to. This area of the California Central Valley is about all that remains of the original landscape before farming and cities took over and erased what the land once looked like. Maybe we can time a return following spring rains to witness the wildflower bloom that is supposed to be spectacular out here.
The drive out of Carrizo is on the Soda Lake road going south.
Hanging out at the intersection of Soda Lake Road and the West Side Highway. From looking at Google Earth, I can tell you that somewhere before the end of 2018, the Union 76 sign was cut off the building, as I’m guessing it was more valuable as an item exchanged for cash than an aesthetic artifact that added to the view.
Call this a late lunch or early dinner, but arriving at the North Woods Inn in Covina, California, at 2:15 p.m. is a luxury as it means we’ll likely be on the road to Phoenix by 3:00 and that screams at us that we’ll be home by 9:00 which is EARLY EARLY EARLY!
Thanksgiving 2004 – Day 4
Welcome to Junkie City, USA, a.k.a. Eureka, California. What is the attraction of this place to those who prefer life on a needle instead of working to find something akin to happiness? Oh, I know the answer is that those who’ve taken this path are suffering from deep pain inflicted upon them by those who have denied them love and betrayed the trust that should exist between family members. Well, that’s likely the most common cause, as why else would someone have so little self-confidence and self-loathing to try a little bit of suicide every day?
As for this small town of only about 27,000 people, it is beautiful and loaded with Victorian homes, so it’s certainly worth a visit.
Across from Old Town Eureka is Woodley Island, and behind that is Indian Island.
By 8:30, we were out on Clam Beach, walking north to the Little River State Beach.
There was a lot of ice out on the beach and even something called Frost Heave. When ice is forming below the surface and pushes up it can create some very strange soil extrusions. While I got a couple of photos of the phenomenon, I wasn’t happy enough with any one of them, so I give you a giant jellyfish, of which there were many on our oceanside walk.
I have no idea where this was, but it adds to the beauty of the day, so here it is.
This is on our way to Fern Canyon at the Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and marks our second visit.
Yes, it’s still that cold out here.
Fern Canyon and our camera do not like each other. What a strange place this is with these vertical fern-covered canyon walls. We weren’t able to hike too far in as we weren’t wearing the right shoes for getting through the creek that runs through the canyon.
I’ve got a hunch that we’ll be bringing my mother-in-law Jutta up into this corner of America on her next visit.
About to leave Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and head up to the Redwoods National Park.
Into the woods we go with god rays leading the way.
Big, thick bark on big old Redwood trees makes big old me happy.
The roads less traveled are the perfect trails for us to follow.
Has anyone ever seen all the redwoods that there are to see? How many people will attempt to hike the few remaining forests where these giants continue to exist in order to witness them firsthand before we lose our minds and finish the process of pushing them to extinction, which we were almost successful with?
How could we have ever been so merciless to just go after these forest dinosaurs and never consider anything other than the financial gain?
We take the energy of the sun while it smiles upon us, giving life. The symbiotic nature of it all is so easy to take for granted, as though reality is just this thing that happens and always has. I wish to know if, even for only a day, how the minds of early humans walked past this scene and interpreted the air visualized with the light of the sun that seemed to reach out to the observer.
Caroline is over there behind the door on the right. We are in O’Brien when we have a really great stupid idea.
How about we drive up to Grants Pass for a cup of coffee from Dutch Bros? But wait a second, don’t we have to be in Phoenix tomorrow? So, what’s your point?
If you think this “bath mat” is indicative of our $50 room at the Gold Star Motel in Sacramento, you wouldn’t be too far off. Good thing we only have 750 miles and about 11 hours of driving tomorrow otherwise, we’d probably have to remain on the road tonight beyond the already late hour of nearly 11:00 p.m. My apologies in advance if there are no photos posted tomorrow, as we’ll have to focus on driving.
Thanksgiving 2004 – Day 3
This idea of the early bird catching the worm doesn’t always hold true, as at 7:00 in the morning, you might be too early to enter the Muir Woods National Monument. Muir Beach is also not visitable, but at least the overlook is accessible on this cold and windy morning.
Put it on the list as Caroline steps into the early morning surf here at the Pt. Reyes National Seashore and Drake Bay. You can tell by the look on her face that we aren’t bothered in the least by not being able to visit the Muir Woods on this trip; we’ll get there someday.
The Lipnosky Dacha in Inverness is a strange sight as the onion-domed architecture comes into view. I wish I’d gotten a better photo, but at least I have a reminder of this place, and who knows, maybe they rent it out and we can stay here on a future visit.
Wow, I can’t believe we are here on the right day, a perfect day, a day when somehow we seem to have Pt. Reyes to ourselves. I’m sure this can’t happen twice in a lifetime.
So we aren’t totally alone, as there are these coastal cows lounging on the grass. If it weren’t for the status of this area as a national seashore, it would be home to 15 billionaires who would be able to covet the views for themselves. Instead, cows own this luxury.
These are Tule Elk statues at Pt. Reyes. No, they are not statues but real elk with one of the most priceless views on earth who seem to be sharing the wealth with the cows above. If only we humans could be so generous.
This is not an optical illusion; the road really did just drop off into the ocean.
A few researchers were out here performing a necropsy on a baby Sperm Whale that sadly either came to shore to die or maybe washed up. In any case, these people will try to find out why it died and then distribute the pieces of the whale across the beach so other animals can help dispose of the carcass.
I’m pretty sure we are on Tomales Bay, but I wouldn’t put money on it.
On the way to Bodega Bay.
And by 2:00 p.m. here we are at Arch Rock in Bodega Bay, California.
You’ll never be able to explain to me why, on a Saturday here during the extended Thanksgiving weekend, we are not encountering overwhelming crowds who want to enjoy the weather. A couple of years ago, we understood the emptiness of places due to the fear that stopped American travel post-9/11, but we’ve mostly recovered from that, so what gives? Maybe part of the answer lies in the absurd amounts of traffic and the hours required to move in and out of the San Francisco area, especially on holidays. In any case, I have to pinch myself that, along with the cows and elk, the place is all ours.
Pampas grass may be invasive, but there’s no denying that it adds to the beauty of our coastal drives.
It’s shortly after 5:00 in the afternoon when we arrive at the Point Arena Lighthouse, which closes to visitors at 3:30, so we can only admire it from afar.
A half-hour after passing through Ft. Bragg, we are about to turn away from the coast, but not before watching the sunset over the ocean. Our timing to be in the right place at the right time often feels extraordinary, though inexplicable. We still have two hours before we reach Eureka, where we’ll stop at Big Louie’s Pizzaria for dinner and check into the Town House Motel for the smoking rate of only $49 for the night. Cheap is our middle name.
Thanksgiving 2004 – Day 2
Up in San Jose, we must make time this morning to stop at the Winchester Mystery House where we’ve seen the signs on the freeway a number of times as we pass through this way.
A young man by the name of Wayne was our guide on this informative tour of Sarah Lockwood Pardee Winchester’s home. Sarah was the widow of William Winchester, who created the “Gun that Won the West,” better known as the Winchester.
What started as an 8-room farmhouse became a 160-room mansion with 10,000 windows, 2,000 doors, and 52 skylights. Exactly why she built such an extravagant maze of a home after the death of her husband is part of the mystery that draws people in.
I was ill-prepared with our relatively cheap point-and-shoot camera to photograph architecture in a confined space. I probably should have had a 10mm lens for a good wide-angle with a 1.8 aperture for the lighting conditions, even though there are so many windows in this house.
From there, it was a short jaunt to San Francisco, and the main reason for this Thanksgiving drive north.
It didn’t take much thinking about this visit to Northern California and the Legion of Honor, where this bronze of The Thinker by Auguste Rodin stands out front. Originally known as The Poet, as it was part of a larger sculpture titled The Gates of Hell, it was meant to depict Dante and is based on The Divine Comedy. Obviously, we are not amused by any of this as we are here for a Mayan art exhibit and not an entry to hell. Though, come to think about it, how fitting is it for middle America if they knew that San Franciscan’s sense of humor acknowledged that theirs was a city that led to hell?
Sadly, NO photography is allowed of any of the pieces on exhibit and there is enough security to ensure nobody snaps a photo. So, how’d I get this one? With some amount of stealth and trust that the camera might capture something, I shot blindly. Thanks to San Francisco for hosting such an amazing collection of works; I only wish we had more visual memories of the pieces we were able to witness. We did buy the companion book for the exhibit, but as usual, the items that caught our attention were not featured enough.
Nobody stopped us from taking photos of Gottfried Helnwein’s work, but then again one needs to be careful what they use from his work to give an example of his controversial pieces. Nazis, menstruation, nudity, and deformities are normal elements of his work, and while Otto Dix played with similar themes, they didn’t verge on the photorealistic that makes one almost ashamed to be looking at Helnwein’s paintings.
What’s not to love about this piece titled The Russian Bride’s Attire by Konstantin Makovsky?
After leaving the Legion of Honor, we took a walk around the park the museum is set in called Lands End, which is also a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. The trails are well-marked but also well-traveled, though this being the long Thanksgiving weekend, they might be especially busy today.
Back into the core of the city, with Chinatown being our big draw after finding a parking garage at the corners of Stockton and Vallejo, which also happens to be just around the corner from the City Lights Bookstore. It was right near here 13 years ago that Caroline stepped into San Francisco and America for the very first time. That was back in January 1991, and if you are interested, you can visit a page with a few of those photos by clicking here.
Chinatown is still a magic corner of San Francisco to the two of us. We pass by the elegant eateries, the snobbish trendy places that are of such great appeal to the wealthy tech workers of this great American brain trust of a city. Shopping for trinkets and cheap shoes while taking in the sights of the exotic world of Asia represented on these streets is our cheat of needing to visit China for a small taste.
Time for the obligatory cheesy tourist traps to make sure we see the really important sights of the city before these kinds of places lose the interest of a public more interested in being seen than going out to see. This is the USS Pampanito submarine that is moored at Pier 45 next to Fisherman’s Wharf.
Next door is the Musée Mécanique that was opened by Edward Zelinsky who passed away a couple of months prior to our visit. Mr. Zelinsky owned one of the largest collections of coin-operated mechanical art on earth. There’s a lot to see here and the limited time we have before they close tonight will demand that we return someday to properly appreciate this labor of love.
San Francisco is an undeniably beautiful city, made more so at night when some of the crush of tourists and residents start to return home and to their hotels. We’ll continue our exploration, not wanting to give up on the buzz that happens here, like further south in Los Angeles. By comparison, the city of Phoenix enters rigor mortis an hour after the sun sets, allowing you to hear the sound of a cactus needle drop.
Our room at the Colonial Motel ($59 for the night) is over in San Rafael, so we were able to stop on the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge at night for this view that should never grow old to us. Tomorrow, we continue our trek north.
Thanksgiving 2004 – Day 1
Yesterday at 3:00 p.m., we left Phoenix via Wickenburg, Kingman, and drove to Las Vegas in Nevada before continuing northeast to Beatty, where we spent the night at the El Portal Motel for only $38. Sometime after Las Vegas, we were pulled over out in the middle of nowhere. Turns out that the road I chose to relieve myself had some kind of military secrecy thing, and the last place I should be dealing with my bladder is on this road off the freeway. There was no ticket, just a stern warning to move along quickly.
We were staying in Beatty so we could visit the Rhyolite ghost town and head through Death Valley National Park for a second time this year.
Our plan is to cut through the park and head north at Olancha and then take the road over Yosemite from Lee Vining and maybe stay the night in Modesto, California.
Can one ever experience enough Death? I mean Death Valley. This is our third visit and we are far from bored and feel we’ve barely scratched the surface of being able to claim we’ve really seen this national park.
Spending a bit more time exploring the sand dunes as that’s the easiest and quickest thing we can do, seeing we are only supposed to be passing through.
Remnants of trees are an intriguing sign of life when everywhere else we look, we see sand, salt, and scrub brush.
How many other visitors feel kind of guilty about walking over dunes where there are no other footprints? Their pristine appearance should be left in perfection so the next visitor can experience how cool they look, but then we might as well just look at this stuff from the car. So we accept our destructive actions and trod on the virgin sand.
Dried mudflats are almost like cement or maybe more like cobblestones.
Got stuck at Stovepipe Wells talking with a guy who was working in the gift store about his years spent working in Yellowstone before moving out to Death Valley. Maybe someday we’ll be able to spend more than a week or so at Yellowstone.
How much water was pooled here that left the earth so compacted? And who was so lucky to have been here to see the mountains and deep blue skies reflected in the pool?
Not a blade of dead grass nor the remains of a bush offer evidence that anything here ever grows.
Well, this is a wicked turn of events that testifies to some serious poor trip planning on my account. In Olancha we learn that the road we intended to travel over Yosemite is closed for the season due to heavy snow that collects up that way. We’re told that the mountain passes north of that may be closed or require chains, so we might want to consider an alternate route.
Our adjusted plans take us south towards Kernville, where we can head west for a 200-mile drive across the Central Valley. This “lake” is irrigated land somewhere out here in the middle of California where so very much of our food is grown.
This being Thursday and Thanksgiving day, we decided to call it an early day and call it quits in King City. Spent the night at the Sage Motel for only $35 after having a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner at a place lost in time that we forgot to note.