Oakland,California

 

We are now parked north of San Francisco, near the bay of the same name and within walking distance of the ferry which can take us into the city.  We may take the ferry in today.  After his experience with driving around in Oakland yesterday, I am sure that John would gladly give up his wheels today!  There is no courtesy from the drivers in this state, they are all in a rush and would rather go around us in any manner possible so as not to take the time to let us into a lane.  Other than having to deal with the hazards of driving, we did enjoy our time in Oakland.  We first drove down to the harbor, in an area dubbed Jack London Square.  As perhaps you may know, Jack London was an Oakland native son who wrote The Call of the Wild, Sea Wolf, as well as other adventure-type novels.  He lived from 1876-1916.  Some of his life was spent prospecting for gold in Alaska from 1897-98.  An avid fan of the author found the cabin in which London lived while there, dismantled the building and used the wood to replicate the cabin.  The cabin was built on the wharf in Oakland.

London got the material for his novels from his life experiences as a war correspondent, miner and longshoreman.  He also found the characters for his novels in the seafarers he met at Heinold's Last Chance Saloon.  The pub opened in 1883 and has been in continuous operation since.  Its location insured that for travelers on the wharf the bar was either the first or last chance to purchase a "nickle beer" or a "dime whiskey".  A more current name for the building is "Jack's Rendezvous".  Other notable visitors to this saloon included George Sterling and Robert Louis Stevenson.  A mural has been painted on the side of the building in honor of the author.

We also saw at the waterfront the boat the USS Potomac, President F.D. Roosevelt's yacht which he used  through his presidential years.  We still had some time to kill before meeting up with John's cousin Lois, so we drove over to Willett Lake which has botanical and bonsai gardens.

The park  also has an aviary and enclosed pond where many ducks and other birds hang out.  We were surprised to see that one black-crowned night heron let us get quite close to him for his picture. 
Maybe the bird does not know it, but he should be roosting in a tree!

Eureka, California

Tomorrow we are moving on, with our eventual destination being San Francisco.  We have enjoyed Eureka immensely.  The town lies in the heart of  the Redwood Empire, famous for its coastal redwoods.  The history of the town goes back 140 years when miners, loggers and fisherman made their fortunes in the wilderness.  One lumber baron built a home which is probably the most photographed in the country.  In just the short time I was standing in front of it several cars stopped to take pictures.  Carson built this Victorian Mansion at a slow period when he needed to keep the millworkers busy.  He is said to have employed more than over a100 craftsmen to do the intricate, decorative flourishes.  Eureka has maintained many of its Victorian mansions which hearken back to the early days of the town.  Currently some local club has possession of the building.

There are over 1600 historically-designated and beautiful examples of Victorian homes all over Eureka proper.  John and I spent Saturday morning walking through the old historic business area of the town, and we could easily find at least one Victorian building on every street.  We came to appreciate the skill which is required to keep those buildings restored when we toured the Blue Ox millworks.  Antique equipment is used there for making custom doors,windows, turnings, and Victorian gingerbread that is shipped nationwide.  When we started our tour of the building, the owner, master craftsman Eric Hollenbeck, demonstrated cutting a small piece of wood on one of his scroll saws which was made in the late 1800s.   Another saw was  made before the Civil War.

Fourteen years ago the millworks took on another project, a Community School where high school students could not only learn the craft of restoring old buildings, but also try their hand at weaving, ceramics, shingle making, blacksmithing, to name a few of the other skills which they could learn at the Blue Ox.  Our tour took us outside where Eric has added more buildings for those crafts.  Some of the buildings demonstrate the millwork done by Blue Ox.  One is pictured below, in front of it is a charcoal rick.  We seemed to find many interesting objects while touring the grounds!

In our tour of the main building we found an antique printing room where the students even print their own yearbooks.  It was interesting perusing through those books and getting to know the students whose lives have been changed because of their time at the Blue Ox.  Before closing I would like to mention something else interesting which we found in Eureka.  In the historic section of town is the Romano Gabriel Garden.  The "garden" can be seen from behind a windowed wall.  The artist, a carpenter and gardener, spent close to three decades during the mid-20th century carving the whimsical art from vegetable crates, originally they decorated his front yard.

 

 

 

Sequoia Park Zoo

As Arcata, Eureka has a redwood forest.  The 105-year old zoo, park and gardens all sit adjacent to the forest.  There is a small garden next to the zoo, which we walked through first before entering the zoo.  Since we have been here the sky has been overcast with the sun occasionally peeking through.  However, the moist temperate climate here certainly produces some beautiful flowers.

Just inside the entrance to the zoo there is a small pond with Chilean flamingos.

It was John who noticed the baby flamings, a least a couple of them.  He is not in the picture, but a larger young one still had the grey feathers.  We are not sure when they turn pink.

Pictured above is a red panda.  In his homeland of China, and other parts of Asia, his coloring works  for him as he blends in well there with red moss and white lichen.  There was another animal in his pen, the cavy.  Also called "maras" that animal is the largest rodent in the world.  He can run up to speeds of 20mph and jump as high as 6 feet.  Argentina is his homeland.

Except for a cage of monkeys, a yak, two grey fox, and a building with snakes, fish and frogs, that was about all for the zoo.  They are in the midst of a big construction program.  The farmyard, however did have a variety of animals, including a bee house and a cage of mice in the barn.  We were intrigued by the size of a couple of the goats, one of which stood at least 4 feet tall.  The zoo keeper informed us that the taller goats are dairy goats- the shorter ones are used for their meat, as well as for eliminating brambles and brush.  Oddly enough, we were also told that sheep are milked.

After hiking through the redwood forest we stopped at the playground in the park to get a good look at a most unusual piece of playground equipment.  The slides, pictured above, are built off a platform which is located on the top of a stump.  That stump was the mother tree for about 12 redwoods which encircle what was once the original tree.  Children were certainly enjoying playing there!  After our visit to the zoo we toured Fort Humbolt, where Ulysses Grant served as a young captain in the 1850s.  There is only one original building left of the fort. The historic area of Eureka is also interesting, I will save that for another posting.

Arcata, California

We had planned to move from Grant's Pass to Redding, California yesterday.  It had been quite warm in Grant's Pass so we checked the temperatures for northern California, and learned that the climate would be the same there for another week.  We made a quick decision to return to the coast, where the temperatures are about 30 degrees cooler.  It was a beautiful drive down here on the Redwood Highway, Highway 101,  what with the beautiful redwood forests as well as the coastal scenery. 

We had a chance to get a bit closer to the redwoods today when we hiked in the Arcata Community Forest.  This lush green forest of 600 acres lies within the city limits.  It was logged in the late 1800s and then allowed to grow back naturally.  What was fascinating to us were the stumps of the trees which had been cut over a 100 years ago.  There is a very tall redwood growing out of the above stump!   The sustainably managed forest is owned by and maintained for the citizens of Arcata.  It was a very busy place when we were there today.  A family with two little boys were biking the trails, a jogger ran past us, and a class from nearby Humbolt State University were measuring the trees.  Some of the tree stumps have sculptures carved into them.  However, the main reason we were in Arcata today was to visit the studio of Laura Skye.  Her house is a mosaic art showcase.  Pictured below is the entrance to the studio portion of her house.  That is not a real person sitting on the mosaic bench in the picture below!

Skye and her daughter were finishing up their lunch, but were very gracious to us and offered us a tour of the place.  Almost everything is covered in some type of bling, including the mug she was drinking from.  The floors, walls, dishwasher, skulls, crutches, and even the toilet are decorated with everything from bicycle chains to gold to imported Italian glass.  Ever heard the expression of "throwing your money down the drain"?  She has done it in her toilet!  Pennies cover the bowl.

Classes and workshops are held in her house.  We caught her at a time when she is packing for a trip to Italy, she will be conducting a workshop on portraiture in Tuscany.  Leaving her house we toured the town which has large Victorian homes, colorful gardens and whimsical shops.  It is a small but very active university town where we saw (what seemed to us) a few oddities, including vans and campers painted with flowers.  Maybe we should say quite Californian.  It is good to be back in this state, the midwest seems a bit dull in comparision.

  

Crater Lake

We have unfortunately now moved inland from the costal areas.  I say unfortunately because here, in Grant’s Pass Oregon, there is a heat wave going on.  It is a bit much to take because we are now 20 degrees hotter!  However, it does cool down at night.  We did not have any plans to visit Crater Lake as we had seen it in years past.  John was considering returning there, and once I saw that area’s weather report, I needed no convincing to head north to the lake.  Grant’s Pass sits in the Rogue River valley and our trip followed a scenic byway along the Rogue River.  One of the important spots to see along that highway is the Rogue River Gorge.  We hiked on an overlook above the gorge and an interpretive sign along the way noted that the gorge was likely formed by the collapse of lava tubes and the force of the river as it followed fractures between layers of lava.  The river gorge is quite narrow and the river follows a very rocky and wild course as it tumbles down into the canyon.

 At the end of the overlook our trail abruptly ended and the river above the canyon cascades down in a series of waterfalls.

That was a beautiful sight, but Crater Lake topped the beauty which we had just seen.

The deep blue color of the lake was what immediately caught our eyes.  The lake is the deepest freshwater lake in the United States, no streams empty into it.  The clarity of it goes down 143 feet deep, which is a world’s record.  The history of the lake goes back many years when Mt. Mazama sat where it is sitting now.  The park’s brochure explains very succinctly what happened when it errupted: “ it blew, it fell, and it filled".  The volcano created a caldera, which became a lake that filled after centuries of rain and snowfall.  We hiked along the rim, soaking up the lake’s beauty from every angle.  Douglas firs and hemlocks frame the scenic picture, as well as precipitous rock walls.  

 Off in the distance in the lake we could see Wizard Island, pictured above.  It is a cinder cone which formed after the eruption.  During the summer months the park offers boat rides to the island, and it is possible to hike to the top of it.  We drove further southwest along the rim where we got a closer look at other features of the lake.

The explosion of the volcano created massive grey cliffs; we stopped to view two of them, one of which is named by Native Americans as Llao Rock.  After the eruption the area became an important ritual site for the tribes of the area, they perceive that spirits inhabit the volcanic terain.  We did not complete our drive around the rim because it was getting late in the day.  There is much more to see at Crater Lake, but we wanted to see the Rogue-Umpqua Scenic Byway before it got dark.  The road took us through a pumice desert and offered us stunning views of large rock pinnacles, as well as the rushing Umpqua River.

Newport, Oregon

The town of Newport is spread across a peninsula which located between the Pacific Ocean and Yaquina Bay.  It has been a resort community for over 100 years.  Certain Lohrmann family members may remember it from our family reunion several years back when they boarded a boat from its port to do some deep sea fishing.  During the time John and I spent wandering the Bay Front, I must say that many of our senses were completely engaged, primarily in a pleasant way.  We had learned that seal lions hang out at the waterfront, and as we approached that area we heard them before seeing them.  What a ruckus they were raising, and it seemed that the noise was all about the issues they had with each other!

An interpretive sign at the wharf informed us that only the male sea lions migrate north, the females stay back in California.  Maybe that explains all the hostility between the lions- just too much testosterone in one place!  They hang around the wharf because of the large fish processing plants that are present at the Bay Front.  What a fishy smell that hangs over the area!  John did not let that stop him from checking out the machine which was dumping out shrimp refuse.  Most of that pink garbage is shrimp shells

Beautiful murals have been painted on the outside walls of the buildings in historic Newport.  Also on the buildings are myriads of gulls who, like the sea lions, are hoping to nab some fish scraps.

If you are not into fish, sea lions and gulls, there is plenty of opportunity for shopping on the Bay Front.  Wood carvings, blown glass and a variety of other souvenirs can be found in the many stores.  And there are also plenty of restaurants here where it is possible to experience the taste of fresh seafood.

Pacific City to Tillamook, Oregon

Yesterday we continued to explore landmarks along the coast, this time traveling north from Lincoln city where we are currently parked.  Our tour book has been The Original Highway 101 Mile by Mile Guide. Pacific City is famous for the dory boats which are loaded directly into the surf.  For over a century the boats have gone from this harbor to fish on the open sea.  After 1927 larger surf boats were needed for commercial fishing, called double enders.  They required two sets of oars,  later a motor well was added near the stern.  The harbor, called Cape Kiwanda, is pictured below.  Large sand dunes mark this area.

At Cape Meares we took a short walk to see the Octopus Tree.  It had been overcast and foggy up to this point, but now the rain had started.  A picture of the tree may explain how it received its name.

The tree, a Sitka spruce, is 250-300 years old and has no central trunk.  It is unknown whether nature or Native Americans caused its unusual shape.  Also at Cape Meares is the shortest lighthouse in Oregon.

Near the city of Oceanside is Three Arch Rock Wildlife Refuge, the first NWR west of the Mississippi.  When citizens of the town noticed birds being killed there by hunters, they appealed to President F. Roosevelt for protection of the birds.  It is the home of the largest tufted puffins along the coast.

From Cloverdale to Tillamook we saw many dairy farms with cattle feeding on lush pastureland.  It rains here pretty much constantly from November to March.  Not surprising, then, to find a large cheese factory here, the Tillamook Cheese Factory.  We took a self-guided tour of the place, watching large hunks of cheese being sliced and packaged.  We munched on cheese samples, and, with ice cream cones in hand, we headed out from there to our last stop of the day, Munson Creek Falls.  To see the falls it was necessary to take a short walk through a very wet forest, which is quite lush with plants and trees.  In this setting the falls (highest on the coast at 319 feet) are quite spectacular.  The fog did not detract from their beauty.

Central Coast of Oregon

We are now parked within walking distance of a beach.  Unlike Florida, where public beaches are few and far between, Oregon has a law that all of its beaches remain open to the public.  To get the the beach near us  we have a choice of either crossing Pacific Coast High 101 or entering Fogarty Creek State Park (which lies next door to us), following the creek by the same name under the highway and then walking unto the beach.  It just came to my mind this morning that since last September we have been on the beach in Rhode Island, Florida, Texas and now Oregon.  One of these day we should act our age and settle down!

 It was cool and a bit overcast yesterday morning.  Appropriately, our first stop yesterday was at Cape Foulweather.  Captain James Cook also experienced bad weather when he was there in 1778, which is how the area received its name.  Strong winds at Cape Foulweather have been clocked at 100 miles per hour.  Our tour of the coast yesterday was determined by where the rv repair shop is located.  After picking up a needed part for our motorhome we drove to Otter Rock.

The Oregon coast, as again pictured above, is quite rugged with high rocky cliffs.  At this overlook we took at trail to find the Devil's Punchbowl.

The large bowl pictured above is a basalt (a volcanic rock) formation which, when the ocean is in a storm mode, creates intriguing wave action in the hole.  No action going on when we were there, unfortunately.  Another place where freaky wave action also occurs is at the town of Depoe Bay.  The town has "sprouting horns".  There is an area along the sea wall where one can get hit with a strong spray of water from the ocean, it almost happened to us several years ago when we were there.  Coastal rock formations, like lava tubes, are flooded by the force of strong waves and sprout geyser-like sprays.   The town also is famous for the fact that it has the smallest harbor in the country.

While at Depoe Bay we stopped at the Whaling Center.  Information is given there about whales and dolphins, there are also observation decks and docents to help visitors do some whale watching.  Earlier in the day we had seen whale spouts off in the distance at Cape Foulweather.  At the whaling observation center we fortunately were able to see the fluke (tail) of a whale as it swam through the ocean.  It must have been a good day for whale watching- nine had been spotted at the center, a total of 12 since the beginning of September.  At the end of our day yesterday we did some tide pool walking. and saw only anemones

Touring around Silverton, Oregon

We have been quite busy in this area the past week, However I will still try to wrap it all up in this one posting.  John was quite determined to see the Spruce Goose while we were here.  The wooden plane built in the 1940s is located in a town near here, McMinnville, Oregon.  Howard Hughes preferred to call his plane the Flying Boat, he considered the nickname a bit silly- after all, it was made of birch, not spruce!   The plane was designed for trans-Atlantic flight during WWII to avoid the German submarines that were sinking Allied ships.  The largest wood-constructed plane to be built, it was to carry material goods and troops.  However, it was not ready for flight until the war was over, so it only flew one mile over Long Beach Harbor, in 1947.  It sat in moth balls for 33 years, in 1988 it was moved to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum.  Pictured below is the inside of the plane, looking toward the tail.  The beach balls were used for flotation in wing floats.

Three years ago when we visited Silverton we did go to Silver Falls State Park.  However, because it was quite a cool day in April then, we only saw one of the ten falls which are in the park.  The Trail of Ten Falls is an eight-mile hiking path which passes by and under some very stunning waterfalls of the north and south forks of Silver Creek.  According to the park's brochure, Silver Falls is a temperate rainforest, an average of 80 inches of rain falls yearly.  We found the trail to be quite wet and even muddy in some places.  Ferns are thick along the trail and moss heavily covers every tree.  John and I did about 5 miles of the trail and missed two of the falls.  The trail was quite exhausting as it involved a lot of elevation change.  We went down the canyon of the south fork and up the canyon of the north fork of the creek.  At Middle North Falls, as well as at South Falls, there is a short trail which took us behind the waterfalls.

Another place we revisited while in Silverton was the Oregon Gardens.  There is a partnership with the city and the Garden in that the latter's wetlands cool the town's treated wastewater.  In the wetlands of the garden the water flows through a series of ponds.  Pictured below is one of the Garden's sculptures called Lupine Fugue.  The artist created the steel structures to replicate the form of the native lupine flower.

In the Oregon Garden there are twenty different themed gardens.  At the Silverton Market Garden can be found many of Oregon's agricultural products.  Ripening now are grapes, hops and apples.  Buried behind the beautiful daisies pictured below are grapes ripening on the vine.

 

One of the wonderful features of the garden is its conifer garden.  It has one of the largest collection  of miniature conifers in the country.  Pictured below is a western hemlock.  It is draped over quite an imaginative sculpture titled Thorsen's Weeping.   Today we are moving to the coast of Oregon.

Newberry National Volcanic Monument

Our second day in central Oregon was spent looking at different features of this caldera.  Newberry Monument is the largest volcano in the Cascade arc, covering an area about the size of Rhode Island.  It has two deep lakes and lava flows of pumice and obsidian.  Our first stop was at Lava Butte.  John spent his time there at the Visitor's Center looking at all the exhibits which had way more information on the monument than I had the patience to read.  After a few minutes there I headed out to explore the fields of lava which surrounded the building.  It reminded me a bit of Craters of the Moon.

You may notice in the picture above a very twisted tree.  Someone with a sense of humor dubbed such trees as "Lava Ness Monsters.   From the visitor's center we drove to the summit of Lava Butte. There we had a good view of a volcanic caldera.  Depending on mineral distribution within the rock and atmospheric conditions lava cinders can be found in red or black.

The most spectacular lava flow in the Newberry Volcano is the Big Obsidian Flow, which is 1,300 years old.  Usually the rock one sees in lava flows is pumice.  Obsidian is a liquid that has cooled before crystallizing-  there are striking differences from rock to rock due to the number and size of the bubbles which are present during its formation.  We hiked up to the summit of the Obsidian Flow and could easily see the black shiny rock which lay mixed in with the pumice. The obsidian and pumice of this lava flow contain 73% silica, like most window glass does.

While hiking on this trail we met up with a couple from Liverpool, England.  John had questions for them about the Beatles, which led to quite a long conversation with them.  From the summit of this lava flow we could see Pauline Lake, one of the two lakes within the Newberry Monument.  It and East Lake have hot springs with temperatures as high as 135 degrees Fahrenheit, and in 1981 temperatures higher than 500 degrees were found in a geological survey. These temperature measurements indicate that Newberry is a high threat volcano.

Returning home we went over McKenzie Pass, which brought us back to the western side of the Cascades.  Unfortunately storms were moving in and a heavy cloud cover prevented us from seeing much of the Cascade range.  At the summit we explored a rock tower built by the Civilian Conservation Corps.  Each window in the building provides a view of one mountain, and the name of that mountain is written above the window. It was getting quite cold and windy by this time and the tower was a warm place to take one final look at the mountainside before heading for home.

McKenzie-Santiam Scenic Byway- Central Oregon

This past week John and I drove south through central Oregon.  It was a two day trip that we took in our tow car and which necessitated us to spend one night in Bend, Oregon.  Initially we drove through very dense forests Douglas firs, cedar and hemlock.  Being a fairly wet area, there are also many ferns which dot the roadside.  This is the western side of the Cascades, which receives about 40-100 inches of rain a year.

We climbed Santiam Pass and found ourselves looking at a very different landscape.  This is the eastern side of the Cascades, which receives 10-25 inches of precipitation a year.  Here the land is covered by sagebrush, Western juniper and bunchgrass.  We stopped in the small town of Three Sisters, which was named after the three mountains above.  Middle and North Sisters are on the right, and the South Sister sits off to the left of them.  They were originally called Faith, Hope and Charity by Methodist missionaries in the 1840s.  In Bend Oregon we found a place to stay for the night and then proceeded to the popular scenic viewpoint of the town, which is Pilot Butte.  The high hill is a cinder cone volcano.  Every hill or mountain of the Cascades rests upon ancient eroded peaks.  From the top of the butte we could see the Three Sisters again, as well as other mountains in the Cascade mountain range.  Pictured below are the Blue Mountains of Oregon, which are in the northeastern corner of the state. In the foreground is the town of Bend.

That evening, in Bend, we saw the movie The Butler, which I was anxious to see it before it left the theaters.  The movie did a fairly good job recounting the history of our nation from the 1950s to the present time, but it does have its shortcomings in telling that history through the life story of a White House butler.  The next day, the second day of our trip, we drove out of Bend to the High Desert Museum.  The museum has indoor and outdoor exhibits exploring the culture, history and wildlife of the area.  We got there in time for the feeding of river otters by a docent.  After their meal the otters climbed onto the banks and lolled around, very happily sated from their meal of fish.  We spent the rest of our day touring the Newberry Caldera, more on that in my next posting.