Afton Canyon

Before driving over to the Afton Canyon we first stopped at Calico Early Man Archeological Site. This is the oldest and still active archeological site in the United States. In the early 1960s prehistoric rock tools were found in this area. They were shown to Dr. Louis Leakey who then made a trip here from England in 1963. Once Leakey had examined the site he applied to Washington D.C. for a grant to pursue archeological digging in the area. In the picture above you can see one of the pits which has been carefully dug out by hand.
Currently digging has continued by volunteers a couple of times a month. This area lies in what use to be a fresh-water lake lake (Lake Manix) which was fed by the Mojave River. Speaking of the Mojave River, we had been wondering where it is- all we have seen are dry river beds around Barstow. We since have learned that it flows underground across the river valley, only surfacing in selected areas.

We found the river in Afton Canyon, as you can see in the above picture. To get into the canyon it was necessary for us to drive drive on a sandy, rocky road. At one place in the road we had to drive over a rather large puddle of water. John kept saying someone told him that the canyon was prettier than Rainbow Basin and he thought that we should drive in as far as possible. Trouble with that thinking is that our little car is not built like a Jeep!  A railroad line runs through the canyon, possibly that is the reason for the presence of any semblance of a road. We finally decided to stop and just start hiking (we discovered later that the road goes on for another 100 miles through the canyon into the town of Baker). As we were standing at the river's edge, trying to figure out how to ford the river, mountain sheep bounded up the hillside near where we were standing.We managed to cross the river on a thick piece of cardboard which was lying on a narrow section of the river. It was necessary to cross the river so we could walk further into the canyon.

John and I walked a distance, maybe a couple of miles into the canyon. We will never know if  the scenery became even more beautiful further down the road, but we were very satisfied with what we did see. We not only saw the patchwork of different colors in the rock walls, but also saw some lush riparian areas.

Calico Ghost Mining Town

Before touring this town we stopped at Peggy Sue's Diner for lunch. It is a restored 1950s restaurant. In the 1980s Peggy and Champ Gabler bought the diner and decorated it with movie memorabilia which Peggy had saved from her acting career in Hollywood. She had roles in 75 movies. A jukebox decorates the entrance to the diner. We were glad we stopped as it is a most interesting place- and the food is good!

The rest of our afternoon was spent in the ghost town of Calico. This town sits in the Calico Mountains, so  named because of the great variety of colors in its soil- like a patch of calico. The colorful rugged mountains are similar to the rock formations which we had seen two days ago at Rainbow Basin. They are part of the same mountain chain.

It was fun hiking around the hills above the town where the mines use to be. We also were able to walk through several tunnels of the Maggie Mine. Calico Mining District was the site of what was once the greatest producer of silver in California. Over fifty mines were in production from 1882-1896, at the peak of the "boom years". During that time 13 to 20 million dollars of the precious ore were recovered. The town of Calico was born in 1881 and became populated with 1,200 people. When the price of silver fell the town of Calico became a ghost of its former self. One of the mine's owners, Mrs. Lane, did live in the town until her death in 1967. Below is a picture of her adobe general store which was built in the early 1880s.

Upon Mrs. Lanes death the house was restored for use by Walter Knott, founder of Knott's Berry Farm. He had bought the town and worked on its restoration in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1966 he donated Calico to San Bernardino County and it was opened for public use in 2001. It is a fascinating town to explore, many  pioneer artifacts are displayed in some of the restored buildings. There are also shops and eating places.

Rainbow Basin National Natural Landmark

We arrived in Barstow, California on Monday. Where our home is now parked there is absolute silence; no chugging trains, screaming planes or roaring motorcycles-  just blowing sand. We arrived here when some cold front was moving through, so the first day was spent in our home with windows closed. At night we have had to run the furnace to prevent our pipes from freezing. We are in the Mojave Desert, at 2,000 feet elevation. One local told us that he remembers when it snowed in August. The sun was out yesterday but a cool wind was blowing. I was comfortable in a heavy sweater which I had bought in Alaska. We drove to Rainbow Basin and took an 8-mile loop road which offered us some good views of rock walls which are in the shades of red, brown, green, and white.

While I kept commenting on the beauty surrounding us John was silent. It is amazing that after being married to him for 35 years I still forget that he is color blind! He just does not see what I see. One other aspect of the rocks impressed me, and that was the rock formations.  Over millions of years the earth's crust had a lot of shifting and upheavals. Looking at the huge inclined slabs of rock in the basin, it was possible for me to imagine the massive upthrusts of those rocks- what an amazing testimony to the powerful forces of nature!

Rainbow Basin is north of Joshua Tree National Park, which John and I visited two years ago. It is also located in the Mojave Desert. I suppose, then, it is not surprising to see those trees in the basin. The trees provide a refreshing bright color of green in contrast to all the dry gray and brown shrubs around it. This area has not received any large quantities of rain for quite some time.

Kern County Museum

 I always inwardly groan when John suggests touring another museum. However, it never fails that I end up enjoying myself and gaining a lot of new information when I do dare to enter a museum. This was true again yesterday when we toured the Kern County Museum in Bakersfield. The museum has been a work in progress since 1941. Over the years it has accumulated 50 genuine and recreated structures and some 1,000 artifacts dating from the mid 1800s to the early years of the 1900s. The structures include an 1891 Victorian style home which once was owned by the County Auditor of Bakersfield. A 1898 board and batten farm house has also been moved to the grounds of the museum.

 With the coming of the railroad the community had to deal with many rowdy railroad workers. Southern Pacific Railroad donated to the museum their small jail which was built on skids so it could be move around as needed.  There is also a reproduction of a wood framed county hospital which was used in the 1870s. At that time the right to feed, nurse and even bury the dead went to the lowest bidder, consequently the care was usually substandard. Starting in the 1850s gold was discovered in Kern County. The Yellow Astor Mine became one of the most famous mines in California, producing millions of dollars worth of gold. In the late 1800s many immigrants flowed into the area to work in the mines or on the railroad. Among these immigrants were people from China. To serve the religious needs of those people a Chinese temple was built in 1870 in Bakersfield. Chinese temples were called Jost Houses. Below is a picture of a reproduction of that temple.

At the turn of the century oil was discovered in Kern County. There were 4 oil fields, making the county one of the top oil producing areas in the United States. Several oil boom towns sprang up in the county, including the town of Fellows. An immigrant woman from France provided room and board for the oil workers and their families at her hotel in the town. The hotel was donated to the museum in 1989.

Kern County's history in relation to to California and the nation is certainly most unique and fascinating . And it place in the pages of history continued in 1981. That was when the first space shuttle to orbit the earth landed at Edwards Air Force Base, which is located in eastern Kern County.

Sequoia National Park

This park is located over 100 miles mostly due north of where we are now parked. During our drive there yesterday we first passed large oil fields, followed by many citrus groves. The trees are currently heavy with oranges. We also noticed a few olive orchards. The land at first was flat but then we came into the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Dotted over the rolling hillsides were many vineyards. The road which we took through the park is called the Generals Highway. It is an 80-year-old roadway which once was a wagon road. The road can be seen in the picture above. According to a park brochure, "a skin of pavement" barely improved the original wagon road. A rather intense effort is now being made to upgrade the road, which made traveling through the park a bit difficult for us yesterday. Every two hours the road construction crew opens the road for traffic, so we had to plan our day there accordingly. We did make it into the Giant Forest. Within this forest plateau grow the largest trees on the planet, the giant sequoias. These trees grow naturally in 75 separate locations along the western slope of the Sierra Nevada.  Four of the five largest sequoia specimens are in the Giant Forest.

 Pictured above is the General Sherman tree. It was first measured almost a century ago and remains recognized as the worlds largest tree. It is 2,200 years old. There is very little that can hurt the sequoia. Chemicals in the wood and bark provide resistance to insects and fungi and thick bark insulates them from most fires. I could only stand under this tree, look up at it, and say "wow". We tried to hike on the Congress Trail which is a 2-mile-loop that begins and ends at old Sherman, but snow and ice made that difficult to accomplish.  After about a half an hour of slipping and sliding on the trail, we had to turn back.

 

The mountain vistas in the park are stunning. While waiting for road crews to open the road in the late afternoon, we stepped out of the car to look out over the foothills and distant valley. It is called the Eleven Range Overlook. The picture below just does not do justice to what we actually saw before us.

California Living Museum

I usually don't discuss our visits to zoos, and actually we rarely visit them because of the great zoo we have back in St.Louis. John and I, however, were a bit intrigued by the zoo in Bakersfield. It advertises that its focus is exclusively on California native plants and animals. That sounded interesting to us. But what we actually liked about our visit today  was that so many of the 200 plus animals in the zoo were very active and responsive to us while we were there. I have never in my life had a porcupine come up to me and beg. I had nothing to feed him and there was no way I would pet him! He was so cute gazing up at us and making some kind of a soft snuffling sound. We later talked to a staff worker about the porcupine and he commented that the animal was slow to come around but now is friendly to staff workers- even likes them to rub his belly! Maybe that was what he wanted from us.

 Shortly after coming into the zoo I kept hearing the "who-who" of a owl. So after visiting the porcupine I hurried over to the aviary section of the zoo. There I found, in one of the cages, a great-horned owl giving me a fierce look, all the while continuing to hoot. It was interesting to watch the owl's neck puff out with his vocalizations.  And how unusual to see both him and the porcupine out in the open during the day, as they are supposed to be nocturnal animals. While I was watching the owl, I heard a talking bird in a nearby cage. A zoo keeper, who happened to be walking by, informed us that they have a talking crow- his only words are "so what". And speaking of birds, there was a roadrunner in the desert section of the museum who came up to the edge of his cage to check us out- it was great to see that bird so close-up. And in another cage an acorn woodpecker was chattering away and  kept flying against the bars.

 I am not sure whether he was just being friendly or wanted his freedom. It especially disturbed me to see both the golden eagle and bald eagle in cages-  when we have seen them soaring high in the sky in the wild. But we did learn later that many of the birds/animals at this zoo are unreleasable because of physical disabilities. I also learned that the word "balde" in the old English language means white, which explains how the bald eagle got his name; he certainly is not bald! As I mentioned earlier, many of the animals in the zoo were out and active, and that was true also of the big cats. The mountain lion, pictured below, struck a good pose for me. What a fun day we had at the zoo! Only the black bears did not come out to play with us.

The zoo overlooks the Kern River Valley. On our return trip home we stopped at Hart County Park, through which the Kern River flows. There are many river canyons in the area with hiking and biking trails through them. We took a quick walk on one of the trails at sunset. The land is semi-arid and, except in the riparian area, desert plants dot the landscape.

Buck Owens' Crystal Palace

We have moved to Bakersfield California, and it is nice finally to feel some open spaces. We were so totally surrounded by other recreational vehicles in our last park in Los Angeles, that on our first day here I just stared out over the open land around us. From our home I could look out at the mountains on our left and to the right, within the boundaries of the park itself, are numerous palm trees

 However, we are still plagued by the activities of a busy city. Bakersfield is an excellent crossroads for business and tourists. The only year-round passable road and railroad south of Sacramento for exporting the Valley's goods to the east is here in this town. And our home is sitting close by the railroad tracks! On the highways (which are also close to our home) large trucks filled with oranges can be seen heading out of town. Our first day here, Tuesday, was windy and rainy. We ventured out toward evening to explore the town and to check out Buck Owens' Crystal Palace. We discovered that the country star's restaurant would be opened for the dinner hour, and that a country music band was scheduled to play that evening.

 It was a good show and, much to our delight, they played a lot of oldies from the 60s. The Crystal Palace has on its walls many of Buck Owens' memorabilia (he died in 2006). His Cadillac hangs above the bar.

In the lobby of the building there are many statues of other country western stars, including Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. And, while wandering around the building, I also found out that Buck Owens played with Ringo Starr. That was a connection I had not expected.

Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills

John wanted to visit the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Blvd. in Beverly Hills. As we arrived near the museum we noticed signs along the boulevard proclaiming this area as the "Miracle Mile". John later learned, at the museum, that in the early 1900s this road was once an unpaved farm road. A developer got the idea that he wanted to build stores in this area to rival downtown Los Angeles. The plan was for this shopping district to attract the automotive traffic rather than pedestrian buyers. I chose to walk the boulevard rather than spend my time in a museum looking at old cars and learning about the development of the car industry in Los Angeles. Below is a picture of a busy street corner in Beverly Hills. The road seemed to have a combination of high rise buildings as well as many small shops and restaurants.

The more upscale shops of Beverly Hills are located a couple miles west of this area on Rodeo Drive. Not too long after I started walking east on Wilshire I could smell the tar pits. These pits have bubbling tar in them, and Pit 91 is our country's only urban fossil excavation site. The asphalt beds trapped and preserved prehistoric plant and animal life.The pits are fenced off so it was difficult to obtain a good picture of them.

There is a museum near the pits which displays the fossils and also visitors can view how they are cleaned, identified and catalogued in the paleontological laboratory. More than three million fossils have been recovered. Again, the idea of being in a museum on a sunny day did not appeal to me. I wandered around  the tar pits and a Pleistocene Garden near them. From there I walked to the Los Angeles County Art Museum. Below is one of the sculptures located on the grounds of the museum. The head of a hare stares over the beautifully landscape gardens.

 Most intriguing to me was the 120 cast-iron street lamps located on Wilshire Boulevard in front of the art museum.The artist, Chris Burden, collected these lamps from Los Angeles and adjacent cities. According to him the artwork, called Urban Light,  "ultimately is a statement about what constitutes a civil and sophisticated city after dark, safe and beautiful to behold". It was fortunate that when I took a picture of it the lights had just been turned on. Quite a few people seemed to be fascinated with wandering between the rows of lights. Maybe being under the lights gives them a feeling of nostalgia for a bygone era.

Balboa Park

If everything goes according to plan, we will be moving to Bakersfield, California Monday. Yesterday was our last time to attend the Prime Time luncheon at First Lutheran of Northridge. It is hard to believe that during our two months here we have met such wonderful friends at this church. So many expressed their unwillingness to let us go, and we feel the same way about leaving them. That is the biggest problem with the free wheeling life style which we have adopted! At the luncheon we met another retired couple who have done something even more radical with their lives. Dr.Dennis and Paula Lofstrum put their retirement plans aside and started a medical center in Tanzania, Africa. They have formed International Health Partners with the Victoria Diocese of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania. They spoke at the luncheon of the progress they have made in the ten years since they built their first clinic. Paula  talked about all the wonderful people around the world who have aided them with their service and money, which has made possible many healing miracles for Africans. Now she and her husband are traveling around the states telling their story to anyone who is willing to listen and open up their wallets. Hmmm, I guess if our travels here in the states get too boring, there is always the possibility of John and I traveling to Tanzania and doing some volunteer work! After the luncheon we headed to Balboa Park to work off our meal.

We walked around the lake twice, observing the activities of the people and birds around the lake. Many snowy egrets were around the lake, as well as the occasional solitary great blue heron.

Speaking of egrets,  we have also learned to look up to find them.

 We also saw some trumpeter swans. This is a good time of the year for sighting migratory birds here in California. The black spots in the lake are coots, a type of marsh bird. Some of the birds in the lake are also cormorants. The latter are easy to identify as they swim partially submerged.

Ventura County

Our day Friday began at the Channel Islands Visitor Center in Ventura. John had read that there was a good park movie there on the Channel Islands. It was not in our plans to go to the islands that day as it involves a boat ride to get over to the islands. A trip there would take up much of the day. I sure do have hope some day to travel over there, however! The islands and their encircling waters are home to plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. The visitor's center has a native plant garden where we could see some of those plants.

The above picture it that of a giant coreopsis. I thought my eyes were fooling me at first; those sunflowers should be blooming on the ground, not coming out of a tree trunk! The plant was at one time beaten back by grazing animals on the Channel Islands, but now that five of the eight California Channel Islands became part of our national park system (in 1980),  it is blossoming abundantly. The park is one of the least visited of all the national parks because it is not easy to get to. The movie which we saw at the center, "A Treasure in the Sea", stressed the islands' feeling of solitude and richness of biologic diversity. After the movie we climbed a tower in the visitor center to view Anacapa and Santa Cruz Islands, the two Channel Islands closest to the California shore. Anacapa is 15 miles away and Santa Cruz is 21. The latter island has the highest peaks of all the islands. It also has the largest and deepest sea cave in the world.

We were encouraged by a park ranger to check out a beach north of the city of Ventura where harbor seals where staying during the winter months. Before heading out of town, however, we first visited Saint Buenaventura Mission. It was the last mission started by Father Junipero Serra in 1782. The gardens of the mission are quite beautiful, as you can see in the picture below.

Carpinteria Bluffs Nature Preserve is where we found the harbor seals. In a couple of week they will be having their babies. Currently the beach is a protected birthing habitat for the seals during the winter months.We could only look down on the seals from a bluff above them. Two high schools students were there also, it was their community service project to watch the beach for the afternoon in order to ensure that no one disturbed the seals. A docent, who later joined us, commented that if the seals feel in any way threatened on that portion of the beach they would choose another area for their pupping. While we were there we also noticed many pelicans and other shore birds hanging out with the seals. We later did find some tide pools in the preserve which were not close to the seals. The only aquatic life we found in those pools were sea anemones. We took the longer way home through the Santa Ynez Mountains, which afforded us some very stunning mountain vistas. I continue to marvel at the natural beauty of California! A view of the seals can be seen below, in their lounging positions they do look like large rocks.

Hollywood Forever

Forget about the many Hollywood celebrities buried in this cemetery, I just loved watching the peacocks stroll among the tombstones! This is one of Los Angeles's oldest memorial parks, founded in 1899. Originally part of it was a dedicated Jewish burial ground. Upon first entering this cemetery the only grave sites we saw were the ones of Jewish families. We were told by another couple wandering the grounds that if we wanted to view the graves of the Hollywood stars, directors and producers buried here, we had to purchase a map of  the grave sites for $5.00 at a nearby florist shop. We had just finished our tour of Paramount Studio and walked over to the cemetery from there (the cemetery is adjacent to the studios, on the backside of them) and it was well past our lunch time. The sun was also high in the sky and it did not appeal to us to wander around in an area were there was little shade. Certainly all the celebrity graves would not be located in one area, so there was a lot of territory to cover if we did not purchase a map. We took a few minutes to wander around  the memorial park without a map and found one celebrity tombstone.

Remember Mel Blanc? He was "the man of  1000 voices".  He once admitted that it really was 850 voices. Mel Blanc was a voice actor and comedian, creating the voices of such cartoon characters as Bugs Bunny, Yosemite Sam, Tweedy Bird, and many others. Also buried in this cemetery are Rudolph Valentino, Cecil B. DeMille, Peter Lorre, Douglas Fairbanks, and many others. Contrary to popular opinion, Jayne Mansfield is not buried here but back in Pennsylvania. Her fan club put a cenotaph for her in this memorial park, complete with an inaccurate birth date on the gravestone. She never wanted her age to be known.

Paramount Studios

The above picture is that of Bronson's Gate, the main entrance to the studios. The gate was named after a street which once ran in front of the studios. We took a tour of Paramount today and, according to our guide Stacy, the gate was not named after Charles Bronson. It was the other way around, he took his acting name from the gate's moniker. Paramount Pictures has a logo of a mountain surrounded by 21 stars. The mountain is located in Utah, the stars are for the original 21 stars at Paramount. The studio was named after Paramount Apartments which were around in 1914 when the studio was started- someone just liked the name. And in the picture below is a running list of what talk shows, and television series are currently being shot on the lots.

 Well, that is barely readable, so I will list a few:  Dr.Phil, The Doctors, glee, Happy Endings, and Community. The later two sets are presently live- meaning that they are in use and set up for shootings, no pictures can be taken by us on the tour.  For Happy Endings we toured the bar where many of the scenes are shot, and also the apartments of the characters. That was fascinating to see; how a setting is decorated so close to reality, when actually most of it is an illusion. Equally interesting was the set for Community where we toured the dean's office, library and cafeteria (the story takes place in a community college).  Also intriguing were the street scenes outside of the studios. Our guide pointed out to us how scenes can be set up to show any typical street in the world. I never realized that Chicago's fire hydrants look different than New York's fire hydrants. While we were there a street scene was being shot for Happy Endings. The building which is currently being used as a bar for that show is sitting on a corner where a scene for Breakfast at Tiffany's was once shot.

Stacy had a lot to show us in this little section of Paramount (note the above picture). She played on her iPad a scene from the Brady Bunch,  which took place below the tree.  In another corner of this area is where Paramount has their day care building. Lucile Ball was one of the first mom actresses to insist on having her children near her while she was at work. And speaking of her, the door at the far end of the building (with the awning above it) was her dressing room. Audrey Hepburn used it before she did. Our tour took about two hours and the time flew. It was all quite interesting, so totally another world. My last picture to share with you is that of Forest Gump's bench. I believe now that John and I have seen three out of the four which were made for the movie. The other two we saw are located in Savannah, Georgia.

Venice Beach

This beach, located south of Santa Monica Beach, is primarily most known for its Ocean Front Walk. We were there late Saturday afternoon. It was quite a cool breezy day so we probably did not see all the activity that is usually along the board walk. Despite the cool day many homeless people were hanging out there wrapped up in their blankets. A few had small tents. Some were selling stuff like small plastic skulls painted in garish colors. One young man offered two jokes for a dollar. And then there were about 6 shops where salesmen outside of the buildings claimed that "the doctor is in". If we had anything from cancer to insomnia we supposedly could be examined and approved for a marijuana use. Occasionally we could smell the drug in the air as we walked along the board walk. In the picture below is one of the medical shops- "evaluations" mean medical examinations. There are also shops for body piercings and tattoos. Quite a colorful beach front area. Not surprisingly, Venice Beach has served as a back drop for movies and some television series.

Venice Beach is known for its muscle builders who work out on the beach. Los Angeles parks department has an outdoor gym on the beach with body building equipment.  Had it been a warmer day I am sure we would have seen those athletes in action. A variety of entertainers were around playing on drums and guitars. One young lady was twirling around with a hula hoop under a park sculpture. It was getting dark by the time we noticed her.

Venice Beach is also popular for its wall art. Permission from the city is required to do this public art.

We ended our afternoon on the beach at a small restaurant which offered Mediterranean food. The food was delicious and the service was awesome. There seems to be no shortage of good eating places in the area. We took is one last look at the beach before leaving. Unlike Santa Monica beach, this one has a  rocky shoreline.