Daytripping - Saturday 5/23/2009

Cornpop has his own ideas about percussion, and he fits in fine. He makes this thing sing! You can catch him at Arnie's Cafe in Tujunga this Friday night, the 29th.

Usually Hydra and I go camping with our Songmakers friends over Memorial Day Weekend, but since Hydra had that knee surgery it just seemed like we'd be pushing our luck to have him going in and out of the travel trailer with it's high steps and his crutches. So we were daytrippers today.

The weather was perfect. We hung out under a big live oak tree most of the day. Broke for ice cream, reconvened for more music. Yes!



I've always been amazed at the way our friend Fireside makes his fingers dance over the strings of his guitar. An amazing talent!

Harvey House - Barstow, CA - Saturday 4/18/2009

The former Casa del Desierto hotel, which housed a Harvey House restaurant back in the day, faces the railroad tracks in Barstow, CA. Harvey Houses were restaurants and sometimes motels, along the Santa Fe passenger rail lines.

The Judy Garland movie Harvey Girls (1946) was probably the first time I ever heard of a Harvey House. It was a great place for young women to work in the late 1800s. I'm pretty sure the song "The Atcheson, Topeka and Santa Fe" was in this movie, and I grew up singing it.


Hydra waits in the shade.


The plaque.

Arsty photo taken near the entrance to the rail museum.


Inside the Western America Rail Museum, there are samples of the dishes that were used in the Harvey House. Lovely California poppy pattern. Boy, if I ever see some of this in a shop, I will be tempted to snap it up.




Front end of a Model T Ford at the Route 66 Mother Road Museum, which is also housed inside the old hotel. We had a great chat with a couple of the volunteers here, one of whom is a terrific photographer named Steve Diffenbacher. The other--K.J. Diffenbacher--wrote up the very interesting guide "Things to Do Within 100 Miles of Barstow."


How the towns along the rail line got their names. (Yes, Mom, I still like Just So Stories!)


The old and new photographs in this museum were my favorite parts.



The mat Hydra bought at the museum (for $5.98!!) outside our travel trailer door.


Saturday night and we're ready to relax. Dodger keeps me company on the front porch. Later, D & J will stop by for more conversation. They just got back from northern Indiana!
Our neighbors have a nice little fire going. I always forget to bring wood! (Next time!)

Random Camping - Friday 4/17/2009

Okay, even I had to really think to figure out what this was a picture of, other than the bug-splattered windshield of the Tahoe. Ah, it's Mojave Narrows campground as we approached on Friday afternoon.

I worked at home on Friday and Hydra had the day off. We packed up and got on the road in record time (12 minutes to hook up the trailer, which is amazing) and then the drive to Victorville only takes about an hour. We set up the trailer, made the flock comfortable and met friends for dinner at Di Napoli's Firehouse Pizza. Ooh, good Italian food and even better conversation.

Then off to a hoot being held near by. Sang some songs and enjoyed some fun performances. (I fell back on Teenager in Love because people can sing along with it, and it is precisely in my range.)

And this time we had the combination to the lock on the campground gate, so we didn't have to maneuver around the puncture strip on the exit lane when we got back after hours.

Flat Brayden Learns Some Chords - Sunday 3/22/2009

Hydra took some time over the weekend and showed Flat Brayden a few chords. He practiced quite a bit and seems to have a knack for music.

Here he is on our last day of camping, playing When the Saints Go Marching In for the camp manager, who is very cool.

Guitars. No Cadillacs - Friday 3/20/2009

Now really. Is there a better way to spend the day than in the company of musicians?

We went in to Fillmore in the early morning for our Starbucks fix and to sit and read the Ventura County Star. The Voice came in for his daily brew and we sat and talked for quite a while.

We met up again back at the campground. Click below for a sample of The Voice's voice. Wish I'd thought to hit the video sooner!

We are so lucky to have found Songmakers. It's an amazing group of people.

Shrouded Oranges - Thursday 3/19/2009

Not sure why these particular orange trees were covered, while both younger trees and trees with blossoms on them were not covered. Thought at first it had to do with a frost threat.

It just struck me that it might have something to do with pollination, and keeping random bees from visiting.

Near Fillmore, CA, where we went to camp for the weekend. Beautiful!

Everyone's Anonymous but Mom and Dodger

I'm going to call her by her stripper name--you know, when you use your first pet's name as your given name and the name of the first street you lived on as your surname--but she's still kind of obviously related to me.

So Kitty West, it is.

Dodger adores her. He brings her name up every so often, like it's the best idea ever.

"Kitty!" he says, n the same tone he says, "ice cream!"

He was happy to sit on her knee in the camper as she sipped coffee imported from the Starbuck's in Fillmore.

So what's your stripper name? Mine's either Tootsie West or Fritzie West...not sure which one came first.

Trains, Trailers and Automobiles

Mom's train was supposed to arrive at 8:15 this morning. But it didn't.

First there was an engine problem and they crawled into Albuquerque, NM. Then they had to wait in Kingman, AZ to replace the crew who had been working too long. Then they hit rail traffic as they approached Los Angeles. I learned all this from the nice lady in Amtrak customer service.

So Hydra came home early, and we packed up the trailer and he headed for the campground to meet up with our Songmaker friends. I followed a little way in the Echo and then peeled off to head for downtown L.A. and Union Station.

She's supposed to arrive at 4:04!



I love the seats at Union Station. I'm not so wild about the fact that now they say the Southwest Chief isn't going to arrive till 5p.m.


It was a warm day. Every so often a breeze blew up. There's a nice little public space around this gazebo at the end of Olvera Street.

There are a lot of homeless people downtown. I'd forgotten what that's like. You just have to think a bit about how you engage other people...like, a lot less freely.



This woman was the only person dancing to music played by a flutist who accompanied a recording. It was kind of lovely to watch her spin and dip, her purse and a shopping bag near her feet.


Three friends have their photo taken.

Around this time Mom called to let me know the train wouldn't be arriving until 6 p.m.

Hydra's always thinking about another guitar.

Ooh, I could have had his name painted on one of these--in any color!



This particular specimen does, indeed, look superior. I walked to the far end of Chinatown. Went to the fabulous Wonder Food Bakery for a couple of egg custard tarts. Don't be fooled by their location amid trinket shops, they have wonderful baked goods.


I walked under the dragons on the way out of the district.


Just as I started to cross Alameda at 5:40 I heard something about the Southwest Chief arriving! I went inside and no one could tell me what track it had just arrived on.

We found each other after a few trips up and down the long corridor for me. It's just exciting to see people pouring into the station from all those entrances.


By 6:15 we were seated at a table at Phillippe's! It's only a couple of blocks from the train station. What a nice way to avoid the last of the heavy traffic draining out of downtown. We split a beef dip, a turkey dip and some potato salad.

What's even more amazing is that it only took an hour and fifteen minutes to get all the way to Fillmore. I almost missed the exit to the 126 from the 5, the traffic was moving so well. After traveling more than 48 hours on the train, Mom was gracious about being whisked off to a campground.

We ate the egg custard tarts in the car. Tender and delicately flavored, they flaked all over us.

Gotta say, it was much nicer for Mom to be stuck on a train than a plane, and it was much nicer for me to roam downtown rather than pace the baggage area at LAX.

We win!

Make It Stop! - Tuesday 9/23/2008

"Oh my gosh. It's 9:50 in the morning and we are still in Lone Pine!" is the post I started to write this morning.

We went into town to gas up the Tahoe before heading out across the desert, get a last cup of coffee at the coffee house and give in to the the simple lure of McDonald's Sausage McMuffin with egg. Thus one last photo of a nice sign in Lone Pine.

Back to the campground, finished packing up. Hooked up the trailer (which in itself takes about 15-20 minutes.) I took one last walk around the rig to make sure the windows were closed, steps were folded up, brake lights are working...and discovered that the Tahoe's back right tire was visibly flat.

We unhooked the trailer and tried to change the tire ourselves. The jack comes in about 12 pieces stored in a compartment of the truck. You have to unlock the spare tire with a key. Then the diagram didn't look anything like the way our tire was suspended between the back wheels.

So we called AA and settled in for a wait.

The guy came (from the same place with the Angry Mechanic) right away and fixed us up.

We just have to be really really glad that neither of these things happened when we were in the middle of the Mojave, which would have just complicated everything. A lot.

Dodger said "Home" for the first time this evening when we were done unpacking and I was working for my job. (From 4-10 p.m. Sigh.)

So we have two weeks to get the catalytic converters replaced... Is what I'm pretty sure I was going to say!

This One's for El Gallo! - Monday 9/22/2008

So, yeah, maybe it's a good thing that we're still here on Monday, a day after we expected to be back home. Because it gave me time to remember one of my goals for this visit. To bring Faygo Redpop to the Owens Valley.

If it's rare in California, then it probably isn't sold up here. This may very well be the first Faygo in the Owens Valley!! (Or anyway, the first documented.)

So. Witness history in the making, friends.

This is also quite possibly the first Faygo Redpop consumed in the Owens Valley, too.

Today I used the campground's wonderful WiFi to work at my job. Whee. I had reports on episodes of all four of my shows due on Wednesday, so it really needed to be done.

We found out that the catalytic converters had melted down inside due to clogging that was going to become critical at some point, but which was put over the edge by our descent from Whitney Portal using 2nd gear to help slow the truck and save the brakes.

Rather than wait 4 days to 2 weeks for a replacement part, we opted to have them bore out the catalytic converters for a $412.00 temporary fix. Hydra had called our dealership and I'd done some research online, so we knew that this wasn't a crazy temporary solution.

Sigh.

By the time we got the car back in the late afternoon, we thought it best to set off for home first thing in the morning.

Hanging Out at Boulder Creek - Sunday 9/21/2008

We spent last night sitting outside the trailer singing to Hydra's guitar playing. The neighbors were really friendly and even came over to tell us how much they enjoyed it.

I went out again in the morning with Dodger. He likes watching what's going on. He was out here in the dark last night, too.



How do you get nice trees like these next to our campsite in the desert? By irrigating twice a day, in summer.


I chatted with the camp's owner in the morning when we indulged in the free muffins and coffee, and told her we were a bit stranded. She offered us the use of a loaner car that they keep here, at Lone Pine's little airport.

"Just go in and let Red know you need the car," she told us, and got one of her employees to take us the couple of miles over there. She didn't have much nice to say about the Angry Mechanic, either.

In Which Sundry & Hydra are Ferried About Town - Saturday 9/20/2008 (Part Three)

Also in which Sundry and Hydra never make it to Hydra's birthday lunch in Indepedence, opting to have their Tahoe slowly lose power and die in a red zone at the edge of Lone Pine, CA. Pop. 1665, elevation 3733.

We met a nice man who stopped to see if he could help. And a nice sheriff who looked about 26 years old checked to make sure we were okay while we waited for the AAA tow back to the garage we'd already talked to.

They'd have to do a bunch of work, and they were about to close until Monday. I don't want to go into the gory details of the difficult conversations with the angry mechanic, who is the only mechanic in town, who everyone says overcharges.

Also in which we find out how a photographer entertains herself while waiting for a tow.

This is outside one of the public buildings in Lone Pine, across from the film museum. You're instructed to look through the pipe to see Mount Whitney on a clear day.

See it?



View of Mount Whitney on a cloudy day.

We heard several people look through this and laugh as we sat there...waiting.


Dee dee dum. Oh, look at the cool thing that has fallen from the tree overhead!





Our ride arrives.

We are simultaneously thrilled and frightened to find that we have to ride inside the Tahoe while it's being transported on the back of the truck!

We've never been down this road before! (Neither has the Joy Luck Duck, seen here hanging on for dear life.


Hydra waves like the queen as we are carried past the homes of those who have to actually drive their vehicles from one place to the other.


Our destination for the time being. Sigh.

We got a ride back to the campground, about five miles away, with a woman associated with the shop somehow. Maybe angry guy's wife.

She said her great grandpa Bill built the shack on top of Mount Whitney.

Whitney Portal Hike - Saturday 9/20/2008 (Part 2)

We ventured up to Whitney Portal, the place where fearless mortals begin their climb to the top of the tallest mountain in the contiguous U.S., Mount Whitney. So cool that WPA workers built this trail for us in the 1930s. What a great thing the WPA was.


Hydra enters the breach. The big rocks make me feel like a little kid!


Hydra overcomes his usual shyness and busts loose with some melodrama.


Falls at Whitney Portal.



Here we go, about to drop about 5000 feet in 13 miles. This is the road that is going to put the Tahoe in the hospital.


A view of the Alabama Hills from Whitney Portal Road.

Cultural Lone Pine - Friday 9/19/2008

Hydra went out to the Alabama Hills--where lots and lots of movies were filmed, including Iron Man--to scan the dirt with his metal detector while I hung out at the coffee house in town and started reading Braveheart's fab new novel.

After a few hours, I wandered over to the Southern Inyo Museum and struck up a conversation with the volunteer there.



Most of the stuff in the museum started out in the now defunct Darwin Museum. But Darwin's pretty isolated and dwindling.

Lots of locals have donated personal histories and collections, like the one that includes some pretty cool skeletons and bugs. From talking to the volunteer, it seems like lots of people stop in and tell him bits and pieces of history. I hope he writes them down.


These are books that contain images of livestock brands that were in use in California. I was surprised at the number of them in the book from 1926, which is on top. There are 2 or three columns on each page.

Oh, the book underneath it? California Brands in 1980!



In the evening, we went to the film museum for a screening of Mule Train (1950) starring Gene Autry. The big Lone Pine film festival is held the second week of October every year, so they are gearing up and there are some interesting new exhibits. We didn't get there early enough to see much, so we missed the Iron Man exhibit


I'd like to see this movie here sometime. I've seen it several times, of course. Gene Autry is really no Gary Cooper!