Category Archives: Travel

A couple of shots and thoughts from the car along the way to Boise Idaho

Americana, Travel

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(For some strange reason, when I tried to put this on facebook a couple of days ago, it didn’t take.)

Google maps tells me that the trip from Michele’s family cabin in Olympic Valley, California – where Aston and Eileen picked us up at about 7:15 AM – to Ophelia and Peter’s home in Garden City, Idaho is 465 miles and should take 7 hours and 34 minutes driving time.  Most people will tell you that it is a boring drive. Google is about right and most people are more or less wrong.

We get coffee in Truckee and head east to The West. After clearing the spectacularness of the Sierra Navadas, we follow the Truckee River – past the Mustang Ranch, surrounded in cyclone fencing with concertina, looking unhospitable as we thought when Michele and I pruriently drove by years ago – until it turns north to its sink at Pyramid Lake.

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Then we drive out into a flat nothingness of the Humboldt Sink surrounded by distant, hazy hills. Driving up to Tahoe the night before, we could smell  smoke and the moon glowed faded red. Now the whole Humboldt Basin seems full of smoke.

Boise-6-3We are in an air-conditioned BMW sitting on leather cushions and breathing filtered air as we watch the Humboldt Basin slide by as if we were watching it on TV. The California Trail passed through here and people actually walked across this wasteland. Between 1848 and 1855, almost 150,000 people walked it – at a pace of around 15 miles a day – carrying their belonging on ox carts as part of the biggest migration in human history. (In 1850, when California became a state, the official census said 92,597 souls lived here; by 1860, the population had jumped to 379,994.)

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The most severe part of their journey was from Salt Lake City to Reno and the scarcity of water was probably their biggest worry. Our biggest worry is where to stop for gas and we decide on a truck stop west of Winnemucca.

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From the truck stop on, we are driving in increasingly clearer air, giving us a clear view of 7200 foot Auburn Peak in the East Range. Maybe twenty or twenty five years ago, Mike Moore bought an old US Air Force Radar Station on Auburn Peak and named it Radar Ranch, he sold it sometime later and it is now for sale again for only $200,000. It has a concrete block main building, an artist studio, lots of water storage, electricity, and a 360° view of the world all the way to the edge. Check it out.

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When we turn left at Winnemucca, it begins to feel like we are almost there even though, intellectually, I know we have another four to five hours of driving.

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First we have to climb out of the Great Basin which we do at Blue Mountain Pass – 5293 feet – after we crossed the border into Oregon, then we run along the top of  a high plain. The fire off in the distance reminded all of us that this is a early and busy fire season.  We drove by fires in California and the weather forecast for Boise predicted heavy smoke. When we got to Boise, one of the main topics of conversation was the evacuation of Sun Valley and Ketchum because of fires. The red state west is in a drought and it will be interesting to see what that does to their perception of Global Warming, or Global Change if you prefer (I read today that Florida Republican Congressman Jeff Miller says that God is changing the climate, not our pollution, so maybe that is the answer and I guess it is OK to keep up these long road trips).

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We are now in the Owyhee River Basin and start talking about what we are going to order when we get to the Rock House Espresso and Ice Cream Parlor in Jordan Valley, Oregon. Jordan Valley is a neat and tidy oasis with a nifty coffee house.

Boise-1486This was our last stop in Eastern Oregon, and the old part of the town seems so orderly, that I was pretty sure this was a Mormon town, but it turned out that it was settled by  Basque(s?).

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To be continued.

 

Some more pictures from Japan in the early 60’s

Photography, Travel

Japan-0012Our first trip out of Tokyo was to the old Imperial Capital of Kyoto. It was an eight-hour trip by train (Japan didn’t yet have bullet trains, but they did already had very fast, air-conditioned trains, however they were expensive). We had the brilliant idea of taking the midnight train which we would sleep on, thereby getting to Kyoto at 8 AM rested and ready to go. I don’t remember when we got to the train station, but what ever time it was, it was too late. The train was standing room only.

Japan was in a heat wave and the temperature was over 35°C outside, at the Tokyo station, it was hotter inside the train. Most, or at least many, of the people on the train had stripped down to their underwear, hanging their clothes up on hangers so they would look nice and neat when we all got to Kyoto. This was before I read about the Japanese ability to compartmentalize behavior, still being in a stifling hot railroad car with a group of people in their underwear was not as weird as it sounds here. Part of it was that underwear in those days, in conservative Japan, was modest in the extreme and part of it was that we were naive in the same way that gullible people are naive, anything seemed possible and, even, normal.

Terry and I slept sitting on the floor, leaning against the closest seat. Being young and in the Army, I was more or less able to sleep anywhere, or so I thought. In this case, we didn’t get much sleep and arrived in Kyoto ready for bed. The fact that Kyoto was even hotter and muggier than Tokyo didn’t help either. Of course, checking into a place to stay at 8:00AM was out of the question (we found out when we tried). So we spent the morning of our first day wandering through some magnificent buildings, zombie-like. Kyoto was the largest city in Japan and the Imperial capital for many years and it is full of treasures like the Imperial Palace, Nijo Castle, Daitokuji Temple, Heian Shrine, and the list goes on and on, we zombied many of them.

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On five dollars a day – our approximate budget was actually six bucks a day – we had to sleep in cheap hotels and cheap hotels in Japan are ryokan, a kind of Japanese inn almost like an old boardinghouse. That meant we slept on mats on the floor in rooms with sliding soji screen doors. The bathroom was a squat toilet down the hall or down some stairs and the shower was a communal hot tub in the basement that we couldn’t use until we washed off – usually – with a garden hose. They did come with breakfast which was a money saver except that breakfast was fishhead soup with some very rubbery, chewy, things we called Dunlaps (after the tire). Looking back on it, they were more charming than this sounds and, at the time, some were less charming. Never the less,  they were cheap.

After our afternoon rest, we hit the town. One of the highlights that night was a strip club where the strippers were dressed in about the same fashion as the women in their underwear the night before on the train. At the strip club, the Japanese patrons went crazy. Really crazy, running at the stage crazy. It was a shock and we kept asking ourselves Why don’t they just take a night train ride.

The next day, we started sightseeing in earnest.

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One of the Kyoto sights that was high on my list was  a  famous – even then – Zen rock garden of Ryoanji-Sekitei. My mother thought of herself as somewhat of a Japanophile, and – in addition to exposing me to Japanese food – she taught me an appreciation of Japanese art starting with the art of the Zen garden. Our hotel was near the train station and the rock garden was at a  Zen temple across town, strangely near the strip joint, and it was a long walk (in the muggy, smoggy, air). But, when got there, it was worth it.

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Close by is the Zen Golden Temple of Kinkaku-ji and it was even more worth it.

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Kinkaku-ji was not the only temple with water a water garden, we ran into several others in other cities, but this was our first.

Japan-0051Just up the road from Kyoto was an even older capital of Japan, Nara. About the only thing I remember about Nara was that it had a very urban park full of tame, miniature deer.

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And just down the road was Osaka and Osaka Castle. As I remember it, Osaka was a pretty dismal, industrial city, but the castle was terrific. Years later, while reading Shōgun by James Clavell, I came across a section in which a feudal lord and a samurai are standing on the parapets of Osaka Castle, pledging allegiance while thinking about how they are going to double cross each other. I said to myself, I’ve been there.

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To be continued (and finished).

 

Maybe it’s all a matter of attitude

Around home, Cars, Photography, Sierras, Travel

Uhhh…that should really be Maybe it’s all a matter of altitude. Let me make a short story, long.

Michele’s sister, Claudia, was going to the family cabin at Squaw Valley and she graciously agreed to give me a ride – pretty far out of her immediate way – to get the Range Rover which was now back in Minden at Hollar’s 4×4.

As an aside, I had meant to post that on Monday but got the date backwards and told WordPress to post it on 06/05/2013 rather than 05/06/2013. I really left on Monday and got back on Wednesday. End aside.

Because Claudia was in Napa, the easiest way to meet her was to take the ferry to Vallejo. Michele dropped me off and I started my trip at the Ferry Building which has been remodeled – in 2003, under the Willie Brown administration – into a foodie paradise featuring local purveyors.

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In the back, the Ferry to Vallejo loads at a new pier.

Rover trip-0010I said Goodbye to San Francisco and about an hour later said Hello to Vallejo which is still devastated from the Navy pulling out (I think as a way for the Pentagon to punish California’s anti-war liberal Congress-members).

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Claudia picked me up and we headed to Minden under a darkening sky that turned to rain in the foothills and snow – with big flakes that didn’t stick to the road – as we got higher (passing blooming dogwoods in between).

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When I picked the Rover up at Hollar’s 4×4 and drove to Squaw Valley without the low coolant light going off even once, I felt very hopeful. Not hopeful enough to drive to Gerlach, but hopeful enough to think I would get home. Claudia and I spent the next day driving to Gerlach in her truck and, on Wednesday, I started home early so I could be home to let Precious Mae out (she had been locked in all night because Michele was now in Napa) .

When I fired up the Rover, in the cabin’s driveway, the low coolant level light started flashing immediately. This changed my chances of getting home, but I decided to give it a try anyway. I figured that there were two main obstacles: Donner Pass at  7,056 feet which I could go over slowly by taking the old road and Emigrant Gap at about 5,200 feet where I didn’t think there would be an old road to bypass the freeway.

After getting gas and a supply of anti-freeze, I drove around Donner Lake with Donner Pass looming, ominously, in the background.

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Donner Lake and Donner Pass are named after the infamous Donner Party (duh!, OK, probably only infamous in California). I figured, no matter what, my trip would be considerably easier than that experienced by the Donner Party in 1846. Considerably easier than working on the First Transcontinental Railroad when – primarily – Chinese  workers labored to get tracks through this solid rock landscape (today, it is hard to believe that all this work was done by hand, lots of hands).

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After taking a couple of hurried pictures from the side of the road near the summit, I turned back towards the car. Coolant was running out from under the engine. Not dripping, gushing. All I could think of as I ran back to the car was If I can just get over the summit, I can coast to a place to park where AAA can pick it up. I jumped in and started driving.

As soon as I got over the summit, I turned off the engine and started to coast. Ahead was a a little uphill section and then it looked like a long downhill and I was calming down, so I fired up the engine, and – watching the temperature gauge – got over the next bump. That pretty much went on until I got to Emigrant Gap where I stopped, let the Rover cool, and then poured almost a gallon of coolant into the reservoir tank. I called Michele and told her that I was not going to make it and I would keep her posted.

I went over Emigrant Gap at about 45 and coasted – off and on – to the Rest Stop at Gold Run. I stopped, washed my hands and sweating face, and decompressed. I was about 145 miles from San Francisco and our towing covers 100 miles so I thought I would see if I could get under the limit. This went on for a couple of hours, coasting downhill, crawling uphill at 45 until I finally got to the Great Central Valley. The I pulled off the freeway at a Park and Ride to add more coolant. It turned out that I parked next to the Placer Buddhist Church and I took that as a good sign. So I walked over to the Church while the Rover cooled. The Church was closed but the Koi in a pond- infront of the Church – were calming.

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I filled the coolant reservoir and it only took about a quarter gallon and I was off to see if I could get within 85 miles of San Francisco to give myself some breathing room on the towing distance. Then a funny thing happened: the Rover stopped spewing coolant. I checked in Vacaville even though there were no flashing lights, everything seemed fine and I kept going (at 45 on the Freeway!). I didn’t bother to check before I went over the Bay Bridge. I didn’t even bother to check  this morning when I fired up the Rover to go to the market. Still no flashing lights.

Michele’s theory, which I am completely buying into, is that the Rover problem is only bad at high elevations. This is because the pressure cap releases fluid at about 15 psi – pounds per square inch – and that is the differential pressure between the atmospheric pressure – outside the Rover radiator –  and the pressure inside the Rover cooling system. I have no idea what the pressure should be  inside the radiator, but let’s say it is 25 psi now. At sea level, the outside pressure is about 14.7 psi. That plus the 15 psi pressure cap is almost 30 psi at sea level, well over the inside pressure of 25 psi. Going over Donner, the atmospheric pressure is about 40% of sea level or 5.88 psi and that is not enough to keep the cap from releasing massive amounts of coolant.

Of course, the whole point of the Range Rover, for us, is to go to the mountains; to go over Donner Pass or, more importantly, Tioga Pass at  9,943 feet where the pressure is under 4 psi. But, if I stay at sea level until I do a restoration on the Range Rover, I may be OK. Or, maybe, it’ll be OK for the next week. We’ll see.

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An east side of the Sierra Nevada detour

California, Photography, Sierras, Travel

On Tuesday morning, Aston and Eileen got up early and drove to San Francisco to go to work and we started a little later to drive to Lee Vining to meet Karen Amy and her friend Chris. The first stint took us along the east shore of Lake Tahoe so we could marvel at its blue gem-likeness set in a granite ring. From there, we picked up Highway 50 to crest the Carson Range at Spooner Summit and drop down into the Great Basin of  Nevada just south of the state capitol, Carson City.

From there, it is Highway 395 all the way south to the backdoor to Yosemite at Lee Vining. We cross back into California at Topaz Lake about 60 – some odd – miles south of coming into Nevada . I was born in San Francisco and have lived in California all my non-Army life. I was brought up to think of myself as a Californian more than as an American. As much as I love Nevada, I think of California as my home and even though we have only been in Nevada for a little over an hour, I get a little coming home tingle as we look down the valley with California in the hazy distance. This border crossing, back into California at Topaz Lake seems so archetypical: we drive through high Nevada – it may be dry enough to be called – desert, cross a long flat pass at about 6,000 feet, and then head down into the Topaz Lake Basin with green fields on the California side.

The Walker River flows into Topaz Lake and we go up river as we head south up a long canyon. About 15 years ago, the Walker River overflowed taking out the road and we had to detour about 50 miles out of our way to get to Death Valley. A year or two later, we drove through the denuded canyon on a new road and marveled at the devastation. Now, going up canyon, I am not sure, even, where the river took out the road.

Our plan is to meet Karen at noon at the Mobil Station cafe but we start to run late because we keep running into unexpected traffic controls. It turns out that we are caught up in construction of Digital 395, a 583-mile fiber network whose motto is Connect on the Wild Side. The project seems to be a public/private partnership with lots of semi-official – but unidentifiable –  sounding names like the Eastern Sierra Connect Regional Broadband Consortium and the California Advanced Services Fund. Among others, it is funded by the California Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Commerce under the Recovery Act. I couldn’t help thinking that alot of the people who moved here to get away from civilization and are now getting broadband would use it to badmouth big government. Our trip through Bridgeport is the worst with twenty minutes waits for a slow, controlled, crawl through town which is having all its roads repaved;

iPhone photo by Michele Stern

meanwhile, Karen has shown up an hour and an half early. We finally show up about 30 minutes late and the four of us have a quick lunch so we can scurry twelve miles back to Conway Summit at 8,138 feet where the Aspens are starting to turn.

Portrait by Michele Stern 

After we wandered around the Conway Summit area, going to Virginia Lake and then back down to the view overlooking Mono Lake and, way in the distance, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, south of Mammoth.

By now, Michele and I were in full tour guide mode, wanting to go down to the edge of Mono Lake to better show it off.

Mono Lake is, of course,  not a lake but a dead sea and it is the major rookery for Seagulls on the west coast. Still, it is always a shock to see them here, hundreds of miles – by road, at least – from the sea (which is, after all part of their name). But, here they are, chowing down on Alkali Flies and Brine Shrimp. Somehow, they seem both tamer – as in less frenzied – and wilder – as in less dependant on humans – than on the coast. As we watched the Seagulls, I ended up watching the soft waves, lapping the shore, and marveling at how different these waves are from the waves at Virginia Lake, 45 minutes and 3,200 vertical feet away.

By now it was getting close to our 4 o’clock cut off time, so we took a quick peek down the June Lake loop, looking for fall color, and then headed back over the hill. Karen and Chris to Yosemite Valley and Michele and myself to Portola Valley. At 8600 feet, it was already winter at Tuolumne Meadows.