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!)

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!

Victor Valley Visit - Saturday 6/21/2008

Here we are! It always cool to wake up some place new. I sat in the dinette in the trailer and wrote, and then went out to see if I could walk around the lake.



This was taken across from our campsite. There are quite a few people scattered around the lake fishing for the stocked trout and catfish.

This body of water is a natural oasis (which may have been enhanced with damming) formed by the Mojave River. The Mojave is completely dry and sandy above ground in some places, but apparently still flows below the surface.

Click here for an aerial view.


This was taken looking north from the northern end of the park. Those are cattle in the background. I have some closer shots, but I liked this posts, too.



It was really too hot to think about sitting on a fiberglass seat in my denim shorts, but the boats look nice, huh? It was 98 degrees when I started my walk at 10 a.m.!



This guy asked if I was trying to get a picture of the ducks. He'd just seen a mother duck and her babies disappear into the reeds. He asked if they were catching all the fish at the other end of the lake. I told him that's what they asked me about his end when I was up there!

He said one time he was here and he saw a whole flock of white water birds on the lake. They swam around in pinwheel circles, then go butt-up all at once! Then resurface and slowly spin until they dipped again. He said it was beautiful and kind of funny, too.



There are horses--which you can hire to ride--and camels at the other end of the park (though this shot was taken later, from the window of the Tahoe.)



We visited the California Route 66 Museum in Old Town Victorville. It's a really nice little museum. Very well maintained, and chock-full of interesting memorabilia from Route 66 itself, and about the businesses and desert characters that were once in the area.

Interesting fact: Sammy Davis, Jr. almost died and did lose one eye in an automobile accident in Victorville on November 19, 1954, on his way from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.


Inside the museum. That sign for Mahan's Half Acre used to advertise a folk art construction of glass bottles out in the desert.



For my tastes, this is the weirdest display in the museum. False fingernails painted with Route 66 scenes! Brought to you by Lissa Anderson.


This rather grim sign is a reminder of just what it meant to travel Route 66 back in the day!



Luckily for us, it was only a few minutes to Johnny Reb's for lunch. We split catfish and a hamburger. The burger was way over done, but the catfish was crunchy and wonderful. And hush puppies! Hydra is not impressed with a fried ball of corn meal dough, no matter what you call it, but I was transported back to vacations in South Carolina as a kid, and that was just fine.



Passed this very expressive Vietnam War Memorial in Old Town, near Johnny Reb's.


We could have bought this cool coin-operated Uncle Sam riding chicken at The Antique Station in Oro Grande. But noooooo.



Whatever you think Soylent Green might be, we're pretty sure they make it in Victorville.

Took this on the way to the hoot, which was the main excuse we had for going to the area for the weekend. Met a bunch of friendly desert Songmakers we'd never met before and stayed out realllly late.

No, really late for us. Like 1 o'clock.

Which leads us to the last adventure of the day. Or the first adventure for tomorrow... Whatever.

When we got back to the campground, the gate was locked! And it had been since 10pm.

So I held the tire-gouging strip on the exit down with one foot while Hydra drove slowly into the park. I don't think I could have actually stood there with the Tahoe coming so close to me and the headlights shining into my eyes if Hydra hadn't gotten out a big flashlight so I could hold it and see that the tire wasn't going to go over my foot.

Still that was less scary than the thought of driving over the thing myself! Whew!

You Say It's Your Birthday? - Wednesday 1/16/2008

Well, it's my birthday too, yeah!

Hydra had the day off, and suggested that we go to the UCR/California Photography Museum in Riverside. I've been wanting to do this for about 3 years, but every time I check it out, they seem to be changing exhibits. Same was true today, but I figured with a name like that, it had to have a pretty decent permanent collection on display.

I was wrong! The permanent collection is a few cases of cameras and four walls of photographs. Nice discussion and display of earliest types of photos, with a description of each.

They advertised a special stereographic photography exhibit. I expected we'd be treated to 20 or 30 stereographs. Not so. The display was set up in this weird little area at the entry to the bathrooms on the bottom floor. The only stereographic photos actually on display were the four--count 'em!--four in the permanent collection. Sigh.

I was particularly interested because I just finished reading All Will Be Revealed by Robert Anthony Siegel.

This is a photo of the Riverside Art Museum, next door. Which was completely closed due to a change in exhibits.



We had a delicious lunch at the Bella Trattoria (shared an antipasto plate and added bowls of flavorful minestrone soup) in the famous Mission Inn. Dick and Pat Nixon were married in one of the presidential suites. We'd never heard of it before, but it's said to be the heart of Riverside.

We enjoyed the small but informative Mission Inn Museum but declined to take the tour, which cost $12.00 per person.

Darling, that's more than the Louvre or the Musee D'Orsay!

Keeps riff raff like us out, though.





The Chief has seen better days. (In an antiques store on Market Street.)


It's just a good thing I don't have a) a bigger house or b) too much money. Otherwise, both of these things would have gone home with us.

That guy with the clock in his belly is seriously weird. What was the original intent!?



Back at the homestead. Little Gus on the left doesn't fly. We had his wings trimmed when we first got him, so we could get him used to us handling him. We've done this with all our birds. Seems like he should have all his flight feathers by now, but still no lift-off.

He climbed up the chair in the bedroom to get as close to his cage as possible at bedtime. Hydra called me in to see him and Rocky (center) on the pillow. As soon as he saw the camera, however, Nick flew a curly-cue and got into the shot. Jr. Ham.


And! The birthday dessert! Double Rainbow vanilla ice cream with Saunder's hot fudge and hot caramel toppings, carried home from Michigan by Hydra. Yum!

Hope this didn't sound complain-ish. It was a wonderful day.

Getty Villa - Saturday 10/20/2007

It was a beautiful day to visit the Getty Villa. It's the "old Getty," which was closed for several years for renovations. Mom and I went to the "new Getty" on something like the 7th day it was open. We'd been here years and years ago. The herb gardens are in much better shape than they were there.


My foot at the center of the universe. Just one of the amazing floors in this reproduction of a villa found buried under ash in Herculanium, Italy.



Detail of a fountain in the east garden. Beautiful colors and patterns.


Detail of one of the trompe l'oiel walls. This is one of those museums where the building is as much of an attraction as the artwork. Which is rather like some of the best European museums.




There's so much attention to detail. Even these electric lamps with Medusa heads molded into their bottoms.

And the displays are of a manageable scope. You can get through the whole thing in a leisurely one and a half to two hour visit and not feel you've rushed or missed anything.



I took this one to show the thin panel of marble behind this statue, which allows light from outside to glow into the room. I remembered this as one of the more magical features of the villa from my last visit maybe 15-20 years ago, but there was no mention of it in the room. I wondered if I'd just dreamed it.

But no, I asked one of the docents, who was delighted to confirm that the sheet of marble here is only about 1 inch thick and that it's lit only by sunlight.


Perhaps my favorite work of art today. If you are lucky enough to visit the family room when there are no kids around, you'll feel comfortable doing as we did and decorating one of the vases that's there.

The figures in the middle of this vase were drawn in by Hydra, who has the advantage of a lot of knowledge of ancient art under his belt. Pretty cool, huh?

My lion was pretty sad. Mom did some nice patterns, but erased hers too quickly!



Cool Thing: We stopped at Patrick's Roadhouse for a bite to eat to kill time before the museum opened. We made great time. It's a fun little place I'd go back to on purpose, especially knowing the history now. The Arnold Swartzenegger chair is no longer pulled up to a table, but that's really okay by me.