CALIFORNIA: PALM SPRINGS ART MUSEUM

 June 12, 2021

Last weekend Bob was away from home so I decided to take a little trip out to Palm Springs to visit the art museum. I hadn't been there in years and thought it would make a good day trip.  Unfortunately, it topped out at about 110° F that day, but fortunately there is covered parking and I spent most of my time inside.

If you think of Palm Springs as a lush oasis, you are misguided. It is definitely the desert.

The museum evolved out of a regional museum into an art museum in the 1950s and moved into its current Modernist building at the base of Mt. San Jacinto in 1976.

Today the museum has a collection of about 24,000 objects, which is not bad for a regional museum.

I started with a temporary exhibit across the street from the museum. History of Suspended Time (A monument for the impossible) is artist Gonzalo Lebrija's recreation of a piece of performance art when he used a crane to drop a car into a lake while filming it with a high-speed camera. This is the moment just before the car hits the water.

Although this car is a 1968 Chevy Malibu, the exhibit reminded me a lot of Cadillac Ranch, which we had just seen a few months prior in Texas.

NORTHEASTERN CALIFORNIA: LAVA BEDS NATIONAL MONUMENT

 September 6, 2020

On July 22, 2020, a thunderstorm rolled through northeastern California, and lightning strikes started several fires, including one in Lava Beds National Monument. Named the Caldwell Fire, it roared through over 83,000 acres before it was contained. The area, dense with ponderosa and lodgepole pine, had not seen fire in over 40 years.

About 70% of the park was scorched. If you do a Google image search of Lava Beds National Monument, you get photos like these that show trees and grasses growing on the perimeters of the lava beds . . .

From here

. . . and also throughout lava fields.

From here

When we turned into the park, we didn't realize what had occurred there six weeks before.

SOUTHERN OREGON, DAY 4: LOWER KLAMATH NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE AND TULE LAKE NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE

 September 6, 2020

In 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt established the Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, which straddles the Oregon-California border, as the nation's first waterfowl refuge. Its more than 50,000 acres host 80% of the Pacific Flyway's migrating waterfowl, with peak waterfowl populations reaching 1.8 million birds.

But while it is known for its waterfowl, there are plenty of other species to be seen, such as these red-tailed hawks, a bird we often see in our neighborhood in Southern California.

Turkey vultures congregate as if they were attending a funeral.

Later on we spied a golden eagle surveying the area from his perch atop a telephone pole. 

CALIFORNIA: SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK, TOKOPAH FALLS TRAIL

 August 11, 2020

After lunch on the last day of our Great Tree Adventure Trip, we headed to Tokopah Falls, a 3.4 mile roundtrip hike next to the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River. The trail ends at the head of a valley where snow melt from the High Sierras cascades (although it was barely a trickle when we were there at the end of summer) over granite rocks.

The stunning variety of life is impossible to ignore on these wilderness hikes.

CALIFORNIA, SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK: THE GENERAL GRANT GROVE AND THE SHERMAN TREE TRAIL

 August 11, 2020

We spent the final day of our Great Tree Adventure Trip in Sequoia National Park. To give some perspective on where it is located, on the map below the black circle on the left is Fresno, the red circle is Sequoia National Park, the yellow circle is Mt. Whitney (located inside the national forest), and the blue circle is Death Valley.

Sequoia National Park was created on September 25, 1890, to protect 404,064 acres of forest. These days, 2.2 million acres are part of the park. Yellowstone was the first national park, created in 1872, but Sequoia was the second national park, beating out #3, Yosemite, by five days. Its elevation varies from 1,370 feet to 14,494 feet (the Mt. Whitney summit). The largest living things in the world live within its boundaries.

The National Park Service arrowhead features a sequoia silhouette, and embossed sequoia cones, like the ones on the sign below, decorate the belts and hatbands of park rangers nationwide.

The obvious difference between Redwood and Sequoia National Parks is that being on the coast, Redwood National Park has a much more lush environment. For the novice, however, it is hard to see the difference between the redwood and sequoia trees themselves. 

Perhaps the most significant difference for a lay person like me is that the giant sequoia has a huge trunk that tapers slightly as it rises, and the redwood, though it generally taller than the sequoia, has a more slender trunk. These are sequoias:

CALIFORNIA: FROM THE REDWOODS TO THE SEQUOIAS

 August 9-10, 2020

After a few days in Redwood National and State Parks, our plan was to spend the night in Fortuna and then head south to Sequoia National Park. 

On our way to our hotel, we stopped for dinner in Eureka, the seat of Humboldt County. With a population of about 27,000, it is a tiny town by California standards, but a metropolis by Humboldt County standards.

I've always associated Eureka with the Gold Rush ("Eureka" = "I have found it!" = the California State motto), but the city really grew during the late 19th century when the lumber industry exploded. Hundreds of ornate Victorian homes were built during this period, and many have not only survived, but have been reborn through restoration.

The most famous of the houses is the Carson Mansion, a QueenAnne-style Victorian home built in 1886 for William Carson, one of California's first lumber barons. It is supposedly the most-photographed Victorian home in America. It has over 16,000 square feet on three floors. These days it is occupied by a private club.

CALFORNIA: REDWOODS NATIONAL AND STATE PARKS, Day 2 Part 2, Tall Trees Trail

August 9, 2020

Like an expensive restaurant, the Tall Trees Trail requires advance reservations. Only 50 people are allowed on the 4-mile round-trip trail each day. Fortunately, we were three of those people. It is listed as a moderate to strenuous trail with 600 feet of elevation change. This grove has some of the tallest trees on earth, primarily redwoods and Douglas fir.

Entering these forests is like stepping into another world.

Pictures just don't capture the size of the trees, the stillness of the air, and the primeval atmosphere.

CALIFORNIA: REDWOODS NATIONAL AND STATE PARKS, Day 2 Part 1, Stout Grove and False Klamath Cove

 August 9, 2020

Our second day in the Redwoods started out with a misty, magical morning. Look closely at his photo:

Did you spot the small elk herd? Eagle-eye Bob did and stopped to take some photos.

Of the entire trip, the next two hours hiking a 1.5 mile loop trail in Stout Memorial Grove in Jedediah State Park were my favorites. The original 44-acre grove was, ironically, donated to the Save the Redwoods League by Mrs. Clara Stout to memorialize her husband, lumber baron Frank D. Stout. More acres have been added over the years.

CALIFORNIA: REDWOODS NATIONAL AND STATE PARKS, Day 1

 August 8, 2020

After a good night's sleep, we left Redding and drove northwest towards the coast, passing through small towns like Willow Creek (population about 1,500), where we stopped for gas and had our first couple of sightings of Bigfoot. Northern California is obsessed with Bigfoot.

A little further on we made another stop for a bathroom break. I love the tacky decor.

The amazing thing was that just behind that gas station was a huge field of blackberries that were just becoming ripe. There were no signs telling us to keep out or to leave the berries alone, and I must confess that we ate a few--not many, but a few. They were delicious.

The name "Redwood National and State Parks" is a little confusing. Abbreviated as RNSP, it is a complex of one national and three state parks on the northern California coast, together comprising 139,000 acres. The state parks were established in the 1920s, and the national park was established in 1968. 

Our first stop was at the Trillium Falls Trail in one of the state parks (Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park).

CALIFORNIA: TULE ELK RESERVE, THE CALIFORNIA STATE CAPITOL, AND SACRAMENTO MURALS

 August 7, 2020

Five months into The Great COVID-19 Epidemic of 2020, we were getting pretty tired of staying home, but we were hesitant to travel. However, when our son Sam proposed meeting up in Northern California to explore the Redwood and Sequoia National Parks and surrounding areas, we figured that was a trip we could make pretty safely at the time. The numbers of cases were down and we would be in a place where we could be outdoors almost all day.

The plan was to pick up Sam at the Redding Airport, so we got an early start and headed north. It is a 600-mile drive, and not always particularly interesting.

About the only excitement was this silo and mailbox painted with cherries. Yup, pretty boring.

Of course, Bob did have to take a side road when he saw a sign for the Tule Elk State Natural Reserve. It is located in the No-Man's Land 20 miles or so west of Bakersfield and three miles off the 5 freeway. Never heard of it? Neither had we.

CHIRIACO SUMMIT AND JOSHUA TREE, CALIFORNIA: SUPER BLOOM 2017

I interrupt our Caribbean adventure posts with time sensitive material. In a week or two, the subjects of this post will disappear like Brigadoon, so I need to post about them now while they are still relevant.

When Bob asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday, I suggested going hunting for the Southern California Desert Super Bloom.  We've had a record amount of rain this winter, and wildflowers are supposed to be putting on their best show in twenty years. My first choice would have been the Anza Borrego Desert, but it is over two hours away from where we live. Because I had a Saturday commitment, we could only go on a weekday, so Bob took a half day off on Friday and we drove to the high desert, only an hour away.

Of course, heading east on the 10 freeway mandates a stop in Cabazon at Hadley's for a date-banana shake. The shakes, along with a few other treats we bought there, served as our lunch: 

After Hadley's we passed snow-capped Mt. San Jacinto: 

 

. . . and field after field of electricity-generating windmills:

Eventually we arrived at the first of our two major stops: Chiriaco Summit, 1,705 feet above sea level. 

Broad swaths of flat, windy desert are dotted with blooming ocotillo, one of my favorite desert plants. During the bloom season, the stalks are covered with green leaves and topped by mustaches of deep orange blooms: