Christmas Vacation 2018

Our visit to see the Wild Lights exhibit in Palm Desert was great fun, so we were interested in seeing how the Christmas lights off the Las Vegas Strip compared.

The weather in Las Vegas was outstanding and a nice change from what we had been experiencing. We ate lunch one afternoon on the outside patio at Mon Ami Gabi at Paris Las Vegas where we watched humanity walking the Las Vegas Strip.

Of all the characters we saw, I thought the oddest were the parents walking up the street with their children while street showgirls, topless except for pasties, walked down the street. My first thought was this had to be an only-in-Las Vegas thing, but then I remembered the Spring Training ballpark in Arizona that used to have an open-air Hooters out behind center field, so there's that.

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Up the road a bit, the Las Vegas Motor Speedway hosts Glittering Lights. This million light display is a drive-through winter holiday exhibit that goes under the grandstands and then loops around the outside of the race track itself.

Entry Gate to Glittering Lights

Since the raceway also hosts the western version of the Electric Daisy Carnival, they should keep at least one of the light tunnels around until then.

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Ethel M's four acre Cactus Garden is world famous and is decorated with Christmas lights every holiday season. It's an amazingly well done display, with an impressive and artistic use of color. The place was crowded even mid-week when we visited.

I suspect a lot of people were visiting for other reasons. The "M" in Ethel M stands for Mars and the company was started by the son while estranged from his father. Ethel M is best known for its premium chocolates and especially the liqueur-filled ones. The factory and retail outlet usually have standard business hours but factory tours and retail sales continue during the evening viewing hours of the Christmas season and there were long lines for the tour and the cash registers.

Scenes from the Cactus Garden

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We were sure the Ice Queen would be at the Bellagio Conservatory and she was there waiting for us along with the other regulars--the Mt. Shasta white fir, the Coca-Cola train, and the ice-floe polar bears, as well as a new winter coach pulled by four white horses.

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We made a morning visit to Red Rock Canyon, a sandstone canyon on the western fringe of Las Vegas. It was a convenient place to hide stolen horses in the 19th century and to abandon stolen automobiles in the 20th. Today, it's best known for hiking trails and its single sandstone outcropping stained by rusted iron oxides like the Sedona formations.

Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area

Las Vegas is known for "wildlife" of a different sort, but bighorn sheep and wild burros are fairly common. Red Rock Canyon is also home to the desert tortoise, but we didn't see any. We always see wild burros on our drive down US-95 once we descend into the desert outside Tonopah, but it was in Red Rock Canyon that we got to see them up close.

This guy didn't move as I approached. The rest started moving away at various speeds

Spring Mountain Ranch, now a state park, is also in the canyon. It's best known for Howard Hughes' ownership, but that's the least of its history. Hughes never actually lived there. He purchased it in an attempt to get his wife, Jean Peters (whom he married in Tonopah), to join him in Las Vegas but it didn't work and he remained at the Desert Inn.

Spring Mountain Ranch House - Sandstone Original and Red Addition

Its previous owner was Vera Krupp, a former actress who married Alfried [sic] Krupp in Germany in 1952 upon his release from prison after serving time for war crimes. When they divorced in 1956, she kept the ranch and the Krupp Diamond, a high quality, 33 carat, Golconda, Type-IIa diamond set in a ring (think Cullian I and the Koh-i-noor). The ring was ripped off her finger during a home-invasion robbery at the ranch in 1959, but the thieves found it impossible to sell and it was quickly recovered by the FBI.

This alone makes for a good Las Vegas story, but there's more.

After Vera Krupp died in 1967, Howard Hughes bought the ranch, but, for $307,000, Richard Burton bought the diamond ring and it became known as the Elizabeth Taylor-Krupp Diamond. 

Taylor claimed it was her favorite piece of jewelry and she wore it quite often, even in some films she made. (This diamond ring shouldn't be confused with the million dollar Taylor-Burton diamond purchased by Burton in 1969 which she had set in a necklace since it was too large as a ring. Taylor thought that diamond was more trouble than it was worth and sold the necklace during her lifetime.)

After Taylor's death, the Taylor-Krupp diamond ring was sold to a South Korean conglomerate for $89.3 million, but with a finishing touch worthy of Las Vegas, experts agree they overpaid.

For more photos, go to: Christmas 2018

Yellowstone, Grand Teton, and Wind Cave NPs

Fall 2018

We knew Yellowstone would require multiple visits and we hoped to cover the southern portion as well as the rest of Grand Teton on this trip. Unfortunately, we seriously underestimated the Yellowstone Lake and West Thumb district and will have to return for a summer visit.

On previous trips, we entered through the West Entrance and the North Entrance through the Roosevelt Arch, so for this trip we drove I-80 to I-15 and followed the Snake River up to Jackson, Wyoming and in through the South Entrance. We drove through Grand Teton on to the Snake's headwaters off the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Parkway. There we stayed at a Flagg Ranch cabin which was central to the areas we wanted to visit.

West Thumb was our first surprise. The maps show it as a mere bay of Yellowstone Lake, but it's actually a caldera that formed inside the giant Yellowstone caldera a half million years later. The geyser basin there is not as well known but it does have colorful hotsprings and dormant lakeshore geysers.

The Lake Area was our second surprise. The Lake Yellowstone Hotel is the oldest hotel in the entire National Park system and it was recently renovated for the seventh time. The hotel has a massive lounge overlooking Lake Yellowstone and the dining room there reminded me of the one at the Wawona Hotel in Yosemite. The hotel is a beautiful place, except perhaps for its current yellow exterior. Nevertheless, we're interested in staying there in the summertime.
 

Yellowstone Lake Hotel

In Grand Teton we had unfinished business. Both the Jackson Lake Lodge and Coulter Bay Marina were closed for the season the first time we visited there. We returned to see the lodge and take the boat tour of Jackson Lake. The lounge at the lodge was just as impressive as the one at the Lake Yellowstone Hotel and, in Wyoming, Jackson Lake is second only to Yellowstone Lake in size.

 

Tour Boat with Mount Moran Behind

From Grand Teton we drove the backroads of Wyoming to the southern Black Hills area of South Dakota. The prairie countryside was nothing but Black Angus cattle and oil pumps. But then there were also a few pronghorn.

We decided that the pronghorn should be Wyoming's state mammal simply on the basis of numbers. We saw single bucks, mating pairs, some harems of five or so, and a few herds of twenty or more. In all, we saw several hundred and, as with Florida's alligators, by the end of the day we had had our fill and found ourselves saying, "Oh, gee, there's another one."

THE SOUTHERN BLACK HILLS
The northern Black Hills are noted for Sturgis and Deadwood, but the southern portion is much different. The big draw these days is Mount Rushmore and my plan was to take my photographs and check it off my list. However, I was surprised to discover just how controversial the monument is.

In addition to the fact that it's clearly unfinished, the original conception for the monument was to honor the Heroes of the American West and would have included Buffalo Bill, Lewis and Clark, and Chief Red Cloud. Gutzon Borglum, the sculptor hired to create the monument, wanted a broader appeal and decided on the four former Presidents instead.

An Unfinished Monument

The Lakota response to this was to commission a Native American carving that would dwarf Mount Rushmore. Work on the carving began in 1948 and Crazy Horse's head, itself larger than all of Mount Rushmore, was finished in the late 1990's. Little has been accomplished since and no finish date is contemplated. At present, work is being performed on the hair at the top of the head and on the finger pointing out. A drawing of the proposed horse adorns the rock face.

Crazy Horse Memorial After 70 Years of Work

CUSTER STATE PARK
Our visit to Mount Rushmore took us up Iron Mountain Road, noted for its spire rock structures, road loops, pig-tail bridges and three tunnels. The tunnels were constructed to frame Mount Rushmore for amazing views.

Iron Mountain Road Tunnel

There are mountain goats along the roadway and the grasslands at the base of the road are home to bison, prairie dogs, burros, and pronghorn. Neither the goats nor the burros are native. The mountain goats are all descended from six loaned to Custer State Park by Canada in 1924. Their descendants escaped and thrived. The burros are descended from working burros that were abandoned when they were no longer needed and are quite comfortable begging for food.

A Feeding Mountain Goat

Feeding the Burros

Of course, the highlight of Custer State Park is the bison herd. The era of the cattle drive is long over, but cattle roundups are still simply a standard part of ranching. Bison roundups, however, are rare, and when the state of Wyoming performs its annual Buffalo Roundup of its 1300 head, somewhere between 15 and 20,000 people show up to watch. It makes for quite a spectacle.

If you search for "Buffalo Roundup" on YouTube, you can find videos of previous years' roundups that took place on warm, sunny days in September. Ours wasn't like that. 

We woke up to several inches of snow in the town of Custer and the prairie grasslands in Custer State Park were slick from hoarfrost. The bison weren't interested in anything too risky; their progress was steady, but stately.

BLACK HILLS CENTRAL RAILROAD

This historic railroad is quite an elaborate and impressive operation. The 1880 Train is pulled by a steam engine and operates today between Hill City and Keystone in South Dakota. This is a former mining route that carried gold and, later, materials for the construction of Mount Rushmore.

Nancy Supervising Railroad Operations

WIND CAVE NATIONAL PARK
Established in 1903, Wind Cave was the seventh National Park and the first cave park. It has since been eclipsed by Mammoth, Carlsbad, and even the nearby Jewel Cave National Monument.

I ducked my way through the Garden of Eden tour where we saw the rare boxwork formations that develop from erosion of material rather than the more common accretion seen in most limestone caverns.

The cave itself actually breathes. Its efforts to maintain an atmospheric equilibrium pulls in and expels air and gives the cave its name. It has long been known by Native Americans, and in fact, the Lakota origin story tells us that, in the beginning, humans came up to earth from here. The cave was discovered by white settlers on a still day in 1881 when a gust of underground wind from the only known natural opening, a hole hardly big enough for an adult to climb through, blew Jesse Bingham's hat off his head.

Natural Opening on Left, Excavated Opening on Right

Nearby Jewel Cave was established as a National Monument in 1907 and is the 3rd longest in the world (behind Mammoth and Sistema Sac Actun in Mexico). There is some speculation that Jewel Cave actually connects to Wind Cave by way of, as yet, undiscovered passageways. Even if these exist, the combined cave would probably still be shorter than Mammoth Cave.

For more pictures, go to:   Yellowstone-Grand Teton-Wind Cave

Pinnacles National Park

Spring 2018

This trip was mostly about unfinished business. 

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We've passed the turnoff to Pinnacles National Park several times on trips to and from the Monterey Bay area but we never actually made the turn, Of course it didn't become a national park until 2013 and I'm not entirely sure why even then. The pinnacles themselves are the remnants of a volcano.

Pinnacles from East Side of Park

The Pinnacles

Other than that, the park is known for its remote location, extreme summer temperatures, two talus caves with large bat populations (closed when we visited), and as a release point for some of the captive-bred California condors (which we didn't see). It was established as a National Monument in 1908 but because there was no access it was almost abandoned in 1922. Today there is access to the west entrance out of Soledad and to the east entrance out of Hollister (which is not in southern California and is nowhere near the ocean) but no roads go through the park.

The west entrance is said to have an automated gate that is open between 7:30AM and 8:00PM, but the Contact Station there is closed until summer. We drove to the east side where they do have a visitors' center, however, the park film is shown at the Bear Gulch Nature Center which is only open on weekends. The film can be viewed online but there is no cell phone or internet access in the park.

LANDS END, GOLDEN GATE NRA
Back when we used to go to the San Francisco Zoo fairly regularly, we would finish the day by driving over to the Great Highway. We would visit the Cliff House with its Camera Obscura and Musée Mécanique and then head south on Hwy 1 through the breath-taking and dangerous Devil's Slide area down to Half Moon Bay and then turn east to head home over the San Mateo Bridge.

On this trip, we found that there have been quite a few changes since we left California. We visited the Lands End Overlook Visitor's Center (2012), ate lunch at the renovated Cliff House (2013 - the Camera Obscura is still there but the Musée Mécanique has been moved), and drove down Hwy 1 through the Devil's Slide bypass tunnel (2011).

Cliff House and Camera Obscura at Lands End

NILES CANYON RAILROAD
We lived in southern Alameda county for 30 years but never rode the Niles Canyon Railroad. It's on the original trans-continental route and there are fun weekend excursions from Sunol to Niles. The Niles District was once the home of Essenay Studios where they filmed Broncho Billy westerns and Charlie Chaplin comedies early in the 20th century. The train museum there has two fairly large model railroad setups, one HO-scale and one N-scale which were fun to see in action.

An interesting aspect of this train ride is that as one diesel engine pulls the train on the trip north, a second diesel engine follows behind. Then in Niles, the following engine is coupled to pull the cars south on the return trip.

Niles Canyon Northbound Engine

Niles Canyon Southbound Engine

BIG TREES AND PACIFIC RAILROAD
We rode the Roaring Camp Railroad through the giant sequoias north of Santa Cruz in 2015, but didn't realize that there was an additional railroad that went from the Santa Cruz Boardwalk up to Roaring Camp. So on this trip to Santa Cruz we rode that train.

Big Trees & Pacific Train at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk

It was a fascinating experience. We boarded right at the Santa Cruz boardwalk and there was a real party atmosphere as people came out of their homes to wave at us as we rumbled through the historic district of Santa Cruz right down the middle of the street through stop signs and red lights. Once in Roaring Camp we watched the steam train that went up the mountain pull in, board passengers and begin the journey again.

Steam Engine at Roaring Camp

CAPITOLA
I'm actually embarrassed to admit that while I have visited Monterey, Carmel, and Santa Cruz on many occasions, I had never visited Capitola until this trip. I'm not sure how I missed it. It's California's oldest, and perhaps best, seaside town, famous for the Venetian Hotel's pastel colored bungalows right on the beach.

Capitola's Venice Hotel Bungalows

We visited on a warm, mid-week day and since school was out, the beach and restaurants were lively places. Surfing in California is supposed to have begun on the waves at Santa Cruz, but today Capitola seems to be the place for beginners. It reminded me of the days when snowboarding was just beginning. That was a never-ending series of crashes and falls as everyone learned to hold their balance. Everyone on the water at Capitola seemed to be a beginner and the results were the same.

PEA SOUP ANDERSON'S
I have no idea just how many times we passed this place on I-5 but we never stopped there because we always ate lunch at the Harris Ranch in Coalinga. Since we were merely crossing I-5 on this trip, we finally got to visit.

Pea Soup Anderson's

The first time I heard of Pea Soup Anderson's was in 1965 when Bob Dylan ate there while traveling from Los Angeles to Berkeley. The story, in Rolling Stone I think, was supposed to be an ironic look at a rebel eating at a tourist trap, but I remember thinking to myself that the dude had to eat somewhere. Of course, now I know that they should have taken him to the Harris Ranch.

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CAPITOLA ADDENDUM

Summer 2018
 
With California wildfires ruining August at Tahoe, we headed back to Capitola looking for clean air.

The fastest route is I-80 west to the Bay Area and then south through San Jose and Santa Cruz, but that's a major truck route and no way to start a vacation. It was a half-hour longer, but we took CA-88 through Gold Rush country, then down to the San Luis Reservoir heading west to the ocean. It was a relaxing, pleasant drive in both directions.

Since we made these plans at the last minute, we weren't able to get a good room at the colorful Venetian Hotel, but we did okay and got to stay at the Capitola Beach Suites. We had a balcony suite with a great view of the ocean every bit as good as what we would have had at the Venetian. Beach access was just a few feet away and it was a great place to stay.

Capitola Beach Suites Behind Venetian Hotel

We didn't have any plans except to enjoy ourselves and we did. The fog, just off the shoreline when we arrived, was perfect. Fresh, salty air and the cool breezes were a refreshing change from Reno's heat. The fog burned off each afternoon and we took our folding chairs down to the sandy beach and simply relaxed.

We explored the shops in Capitola and ate at several of the restaurants on the Esplanade. The beginner surfers were still on the bay and we discovered the more experienced surfers off the Opal Cliffs at Pleasure Point. "The Hook" is apparently well known for its consistent waves and it was fairly crowded when we were there mid-week, but the surfers there seemed to know what they were doing. It reminded me of a Blue Slope.

We did visit Moss Landing, again. We keep saying we're going to rent kayaks there and someday we will. This time, we hiked over the dunes to the shoreline and collected seashells, then walked back to watch a dozen sea otters floating in Elkhorn Slough. We really do need to rent kayaks there.
 
In addition to Pea Soup Anderson's, California has a number of roadside stops that started out small and grew into something special. Knott's Berry Farm is probably the best-known and Disney built his park as close to it as possible to tap into its visitors.

Other famous ones we've visited are The Nut Tree in Vacaville and the Harris Ranch restaurant in Coalinga. Our trip back to Reno took us by Casa de Fruta and we stopped to check it out. With a restaurant, deli, winery, and a small railroad park attached to the original fruit stand, it was an interesting place. The pond full of snapping turtles was just a bonus.

Our return to Reno saw the air quality climb into Good territory just in time for the Best in the West Rib Festival at the Nugget. Good times indeed!

For a few more photos, go to Santa Cruz 2018

Spring Training, Monument Valley, Antelope Canyon, Navajo NM

Winter-Spring 2018

Our trip this year to Arizona for the Giant's Spring Training began with visits to two historic towns.

Usually we drive directly to Las Vegas for our first stop, but this year we spent the first night in Tonopah, NV, a place now known for its dark skies, perfect for star-gazing, and as the midway point between Reno and Las Vegas.

But its glory years were in the early 1900's when silver strikes turned it into a boom town. At five stories tall, the Mizpah Hotel was the tallest building in Nevada until 1927. Celebrities ranging from Wyatt Earp to Jack Dempsey passed through Tonopah and Howard Hughes married Jean Peters there in 1957. It's hard to imagine all of this when visiting this high desert location today.

Then we drove through Las Vegas and continued on to one of the two places in Nevada where gambling is illegal: Boulder City. The town was a planned community built in 1931 to house the workers needed to construct the Hoover Dam. We took the walking tour of the historic district where the design of the buildings is Spanish Colonial Revival. None of this was built as temporary housing at all as the original buildings are still the core of the city and what were the workers' homes are still occupied.

While there, we also re-visited Hoover Dam itself and things there have certainly changed. Homeland Security makes its presence obvious with military-style gear and assault weapons to make sure that the tourists don't hijack the place with their pen knives. So we headed on to Scottsdale.

Spring training has also changed over the years. It's certainly a big business now with high-priced tickets, sellouts--even lawn seating is sold by individual spaces--and this year we saw paid parking for the first time in Scottsdale. But still, we escaped the cold and snow and had a good time.

NAVAJO NATION

We took the long way home and visited two of the most iconic places in the Navajo Nation: Monument Valley and Antelope Canyon as well as the Navajo National Monument.

Monument Valley is the symbol of the American West despite the fact that it is not part of any westward route and was rarely visited until Harry Goulding opened his trading post in 1923 and proceeded to convince John Ford to film a movie there in 1939.

Monument Valley from Goulding's Lodge

The valley is a lot bigger in Stagecoach than it is in real life and the stagecoach itself is actually heading in the wrong direction as it travels through the valley. But that's Hollywood and scores of directors have followed John Ford's lead into the valley with mostly westerns but stretching to include Stanley Kubrick with 2001: A Space Odyssey and Robert Zemeckis with Forrest Gump.

Goulding's was the original lodge there but it is actually outside of the park and we stayed in one of the Navajo-owned view cabins overlooking the valley where we watched sunrise and sunset.

View from Cabin

Monument Valley Sunrise

The Valley Loop road is unpaved and in terrible condition but you can drive it yourself--if you have high clearance or a rental car. We opted for a Navajo Guided Tour that included an additional loop.

The views were as dramatic as we expected and the famous view from John Ford Point is so well known that it's virtually a cliché. One of the valley residents rides his horse out to the desert promontory where you can take his picture. You can Google "John Ford Point" images if you need to see a wide selection of those pictures.

View from John Ford Point

The additional loop was really interesting. About seventeen families have part-time homes in the valley proper and rely on propane and solar for modern power and, since all of the valley wells have been dry for quite a while, water has to be trucked in. We visited with one family and while we were there, two wild horses wandered in searching for water. The arid west was never more apparent.

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The road from Monument Valley to Page, AZ took us to the Navajo National Monument. This is a National Park site in the Navajo Nation that has nothing to do with the Navajo. It is the site of three separate cliff dwellings built by the Ancient Puebloans.

The Inscription House site is said to be quite fragile and is not open to the public (it's not even shown on the NPS maps). The Keet Seel site is the best preserved of the three. It was the first discovered in modern times and is the reason for the National Monument but it is a 5 mile hike from the Visitor's Center and can only be visited during the summer months with a Ranger guide. The Betakin dwellings weren't even discovered until after the Monument was designated but is the most accessible of the ruins both from hiking trails and from roadway overlooks.

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For our return to Page, AZ, we stayed at the Lake Powell Marina and Resort with a view of the lake and where we watched dozens of rabbits come out at dusk to feed on the grass.

View from Lake Powell Resort Room

You may not have heard of Antelope Canyon but you have probably seen photographs of it. The canyon begins in the sandstone hills on Navajo land south of Lake Powell and is actually one of the smaller feeders into the lake. But it is quite a canyon.

Upper Antelope Canyon

We went on a walking tour of Upper Antelope Canyon and a boat tour of the canyon where it enters Lake Powell.

The walking tour is extremely popular. A lot of tour books say you can just drive to the site and sign up for one of the guided tours. While this may be true for the less popular  and more difficult Lower Canyon walking tour, it simply isn't true for the Upper Canyon. Even the low-light early morning and late afternoon tours were filled when we were there so we were glad we had made reservations with one of the Navajo tour guides.

The upper canyon is a slot canyon carved through the sandstone by flash floods with a depth of up to 120 feet. When the sun is high enough, beams of light can shine down into the canyon in dramatic fashion. Our visit in late winter certainly wasn't the best time for that, but there were still special photography tours scheduled for the peak mid-day viewing hours and we were fortunate enough to get a tour just ahead of one of these.

The tour walked us through the slot canyon and then returned the same way and as we returned we ran into a photography tour group with about a dozen tripods set up to take the same picture--I really regret not taking a photo of the group.

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From the Lake Powell Marina we took the boat tour of Antelope Canyon where it enters Lake Powell. It was a much shorter trip than the boat tour we took to Rainbow Bridge National Monument in the fall of 2016 but it was quite impressive.

Antelope Canyon at Lake Powell

Antelope Canyon is also a slot canyon where it enters Lake Powell and our boat went up the canyon as far as it could. We almost traveled too far and the boat pilot carefully turned the boat around with precise back and forth maneuvers. The kayakers from the Antelope Canyon Marina went much farther up the canyon. It looked like a fun trip.

Antelope Canyon Kayakers

For More Photographs, go to MONUMENT VALLEY