There And Back Again

Mile 7725 – Entrance to Grand Canyon National Park, South Rim.  Leave it to us to run into almost nothing but sun in the Alaska Inside Passage and the Pacific Northwest, both famous for rain and bad weather, only to get to the Arizona high desert and get soaked.  Ever since we arrived in Southern California, the weather has turned on us, but today was the first day we had to alter our plans because of bad weather.

Instead of going to the Grand Canyon, which we heard was invisible, we went to the Meteor Crater near Winslow, Arizona, because it can be viewed in not-so-good weather and it has a visitor center that we could spend time in while it rained.  On the entrance road was a sign: “Speed limit 50 mph for motor vehicles, 26,000 mph for meteors”.  A meteorite slammed into the high Arizona plain here 50,000 years ago, and the crater is very well preserved.  It is a privately held attraction because when the family offered it to the Park Service, back in the thirties, they declined.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 11: Meteor Crater, Arizona

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 7530 – Williams, Arizona, gateway to Grand Canyon National Park.  We started off in Barstow, a town that has seen better days and even those days were probably not that good.  We had one of our worst meals of the trip last night.  The hotel was nestled in between I-40 and a very busy train track.  The air conditioner was at least as useful overpowering the noise from outside as in cooling our room.  But Barstow is mentioned in the song “Get Your Kicks on Route 66”.

Quiz of the Day: Who wrote that song?  You can easily look it up on the Internet (I did), but if anyone actually knows that without cheating, put in a comment.  Your reward will be that we will approve your comment.  If we later find out you cheated, you will get a dishonorable mention in our posts.

We drove through the Mojave desert in the morning.  It was not as hot as the day before.  By the time we got to Kingman, we discovered from the local visitor center that we had just whizzed by another Aunt Esther postcard scene, so we backtracked on the old Route 66 from Kingman towards Oatman and back.  It was well worth it.  P.J. will have the pictures to prove it.

Back on I-40 from Kingman, the road went up-and-up-and-up and the temperature went down-and-down from the nineties to the sixties.  We had rain and sun with spectacular scenic thunderstorm skies.  We are now in Williams on Route 66.  Williams is not mentioned in the song, but it is a lot nicer than Barstow.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 10: Route 66, Arizona

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

[group photo by Geena Jackson]

Mile 7137 – Barstow, California, jumping off point towards Arizona tomorrow.  We’re in the desert.  When P.J. got out of our air conditioned car today, she said it felt like getting into a car that’s been sitting in the sun in the summer.  The reverse of what you expect.

We had a nice breakfast with Wayne Jackson and his family, then went to Mira Loma to spend the afternoon with Fay Champion.  The common thread here is Ruth Jackson, my friend from Cambridge, Mass, who later moved to California and married Wayne and befriended Fay, and who died four years ago this month.

~ posted by Arjan

I really enjoyed taking the time today to visit old friends before we got back in the car to continue our trip. The landscapes and cloudscapes continued to unfold throughout the afternoon as we turned north and then east. I am looking forward to new territory (for me) over the next couple of days as we drive through the desert.

The temperature hit 104 degrees today. In Alpine, California, where we had breakfast, it was not only hot, but also humid. The skies were a little threatening all day, and it even rained a little. Because of the weather, I had to give up on the idea of taking more vintage postcard pictures around San Diego (I only got one). I hope I can take the rest when we return to California in October. I took all my photographs today out of the car window at 70+ miles an hour.

~ posted by P.J.

[Scenery Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 6912 – Alpine, California.  After two days in Los Angeles, we drove down to the San Diego area to meet an old friend, Wayne Jackson.

At the point where I-5 and I-405 merge into 11 lanes (2 feeder lanes, 2 commuter lanes, and 7 regular lanes), we ran into traffic delays.  Apparently 11 lanes is not enough.

After driving over the Ortega Highway, we decended to Lake Elsinore, where the thermometer reached 102 F (39 C), the highest temperature of our trip so far. In San Diego, the temperature was comfy again.

We had dinner with Wayne, overlooking San Diego harbor and recounting old memories, and then bagged another postcard at the Hotel del Coronado at night.

This is the end of our trip down the west coast.  Tomorrow we’ll start heading back east on the return phase of our trip.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 8: San Diego, California

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 6592 – Los Angeles, California (local miles). In LA we saw more TV than the entire rest of the trip combined. Although I like Obama, an entire day of rah-rah-rah on TV was more than I could bear. By the time Obama came on, I was turned off and escaped (sorry, everyone).

Over the two days, we spent time with my dad and stepmother, washed the car, changed its oil, and caught up on forwarded mail.

~ posted by Arjan

I was pleased to have lots of time to work on our blog photos while we were in Los Angeles, but I was disappointed that I didn’t have a chance to take my vintage postcard photographs in the Los Angeles area. I will have to try again when we come back to California in October for Jan’s 98th birthday.

~ posted by P.J.

[Photograph © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 6597 – Los Angeles, California.  We drove from Carmel, along the beautiful California coast past Big Sur and Santa Barbara, with a lot of fog and gray skies.  Leave it to us to have mostly dry weather for five whole weeks, only to come to Southern California and see rain where you’re not supposed to.  It was only sprinkles, but still.

While we are in L.A., I need to give my car an oil change, do more laundry, handle my mail (which has been forwarded here), and spend time with my dad and stepmother.  I’ll take a two-day break from blogging and will resume posts on Saturday, the 8th.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 5: Near Santa Barbara, California

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 6257 – Carmel, California.  Woke up to fog in San Francisco, had breakfast with potatoes sauteed in red wine (where do you find that?), and then bailed out the car.  The combined cost of parking in Vancouver and San Francisco is about 50% of what we spent on gas so far.

Drove back into the sun to Stanford and San Jose to find more old postcard landmarks and to have lunch with former colleague Bill Eisenberg and his wife, Jen, and then drove back into the fog at Carmel-by-the-Sea.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 4: San Jose and Stanford, California/a>

[Photograph © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 6108. The car was parked all day and got a rest.  Parking the Prius for a day in San Francisco costs about the same as a tank of gas.

This morning, I was able to do what I often do at home: Walk to a coffee shop early in the morning and read the New York Times— the first news I’ve read since July.  After breakfast together in Union Square, we took public transportation (not the cable car— I like public transport better than a tourist bus or tour) to the Embarcadero, then to Fisherman’s Wharf, and finally to the Presidio to stare at the fog over the Golden Gate Bridge.  We walked back along the shore (on the San Francisco Bay Trail) from the Golden Gate park to the Palace of Fine Arts.  The bridge was still mostly in the fog, but at water level you are under it and the towers stick out of the fog at times.  The rest of the city was beautifully sunny.

When you walk out of the front door of our San Francisco hotel, there are more interesting restaurants within a block than in all of North Dakota.  Of course, you can also pay more for dinner in San Francisco than you might pay for dinner plus lodging in North Dakota.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 3: San Francisco, California

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 6108 – San Francisco. To San Francisco from Redding, in the North Central Valley of California, via wine country and Santa Rosa.  As we approached the Golden Gate, the temperature dropped from around 90 to 55 on the bridge, in dense fog.  In the city, it is sunny, with comfortable, clean, clear air after our spending most of the day traveling in heat and smoke.  I love this place.  Before going over the bridge, we stopped at the Golden Gate overlook in Marin County.  We were just above the fog there.  The fog swirled around below us, playing games with the tops of the bridge, accompanied by a fog horn concert.  Very impressive, but hard to convey.  In my opinion, the bridge is the most— or maybe only— scenic, man-made structure in America.

Earlier in the day, we went to Santa Rosa, tracking down another 1930s postcard, of the county court house.  To make a long story short, we could not find the building. After googling it on the net, we found that it was demolished in the sixties because it was considered “seismically unsafe”.  There was a commerative plaque, and P.J. took a picture of it as well as the park that replaced it.

Vintage Postcard Project: September 2: Santa Rosa, California

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved.]

Mile 5848 – Redding, California.  Started off early for Lassen Volcanic Park.  On the way the sky turned brown with smoke and the sun became almost obscured.  We stopped at a ranger station and were told there were more fires in Lassen Park but they were contained and the roads were open.  We decided to go ahead.  Glad we did.  We drove out of the smoke and into the park under clear, sunny skies, due to a favorable wind direction.

Before the Mount St. Helens eruption, Lassen Peak was the only other volcanic event in the U.S. in the 20th century (1914/15).  We have not been to this park before and now I regret we did not allow more time.  The trail to the peak is closed most of the time, but they opened it for Labor Day weekend.  By the time we got there, though, it was too late in the day and we were already committed to our next destination (San Francisco), so we could not come back.  But we did take a short hike at Summit Lake and ran across a family of deer.

We drove through areas that were ablaze only weeks before.  Most blazes are contained now, but some are not.  We learned not only about volcanoes but also about forest fires.  We drove by blackened areas that still smelled.  Our hotel tonight has fire fighters staying in it. Tomorrow we expect to be in the clear, fresh city (!) air of San Francisco, courtesy of the Pacific Ocean.

[Photographs © 2012 P.J. Gardner. All Rights Reserved. Photograph of P.J. Gardner by Arjan Post.]