Mt. Rushmore

Rapid City, SD, was a convenient place to stop for the night on the way to Sioux Falls. Even though it was a short visit, we made a late afternoon run to visit Mt. Rushmore, just 15 miles away. It was pretty impressive. Check out some photos here.

Awesome Example of Classic Americana!

Stops like this are truely what make driving the country worth the hours. For anyone who has driven I-95 think of South Of The Border mid-west style. There are signs for hundreds of miles as you approach this icon.

"The Wall Drug Store got its start during the Depression years by offering Free Ice Water to
thirsty travelers. From their beginning in 1931 to today, the family-owned and run business
continues what their reputation was and is built on — giving friendly service to the public." (http://www.walldrug.com/)

Click here for some amusement.

Here is a link to a cool article.

A long, long drive

After work on Tuesday, July 24 we dove immediately into our whirlwind 1700-mile drive from Burlington, WA to Sioux Falls, SD, where we had another event at a local dirt track (the I-90 Speedway). Here are some photos from eastern Washington, nothern Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota.

16 oz Almond Joy with Soy Milk Please

One of my favorite things about the Pacific Northwest is the ever-present coffee hut. They are everywhere! Most are geared toward drive-through, while some you can walk up to as well. Even though I refuse to pay for anything but the $1.69 coffee of the day at Starbucks, I can't resist the flavors, sizes, milk choices and extra shots at these little shacks of espresso heaven. It feels better somehow to patronize the small business owner, too. At this stop I opted for coffee with an extra shot of espresso, iced, with Almond Joy flavor and soy milk. Donny had an iced Chai Spice.

Extra Large

Seriously, what kind of vehicle requires tires this big?

Mt. Rainier Hike

At 14, 411 feet, Mt. Rainier is the highest peak in Washington. It is also an inactive volcano, now with a mantle of snowfields, glacier and dense forests. It is a Northwest icon, with over 300 miles of trailes throughout the park. We decided on an approach from the Northwest (closest to where we were staying). Some of the other areas of the park look beautiful as well, and they are on our list of future places to explore. Over ninety percent of Rainier's land is under wilderness protection. In 1997 it was designated a national historic landmark for early examples of “parkitecture” structures. Since the route over the Carbon Glacier was washed out due to flooding, we head up toward Mowich Lake. The trail we hiked led to Lake Eunice, surrounded by summer wildflowers. The rain and fog only enhanced the peaceful atmosphere. Click for more photos.

Seattle

In contrast to last year, we saw lots of rain this trip to the Pacific Northwest. We did catch the Bite of Seattle this time. It featured lots of food, live bands and chance meetings with some friends who were in town working either at this event or nearby.

Mt. St. Helens

Mount St. Helens erupted at 8:32 Sunday morning, May 18, 1980. Shaken by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, the north face of this tall symmetrical mountain collapsed in a massive rock debris avalanche. Nearly 230 square miles of forest was blown down or buried beneath volcanic deposits. At the same time a mushroom-shaped column of ash rose thousands of feet skyward and drifted downwind, turning day into night as dark, gray ash fell over eastern Washington and beyond. The eruption lasted 9 hours, but Mount St. Helens and the surrounding landscape were dramatically changed within moments. In 1982, the President and Congress created the 110,000-acre National Volcanic Monument for research, recreation, and education. Inside the Monument, the environment is left to respond naturally to the disturbance. (Source: http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/mshnvm/)

It's amazing to see how much natural recovery has taken place. We were especially lucky to see many summer wildflowers blooming. The several rest stop/information centers along the route we took through the monument each offered a different perspective, and were all quite informative. One highlight was viewing, from far above, the herd of elk that has returned to the area. Click HERE for photos of Mt. St. Helens.

Sorry, Mt. Baldy

We neglected to post anything about our visit to Mt. Baldy on 7-7-07. While our hotel was taken over by a huge Filipino wedding party, we escaped north to this highest peak of the San Gabriel Mountains (western San Bernardino County, between Los Angeles and the Mojave Desert). We took the chair lift to the ski lodge, then hiked northwest another 800 feet or so to the top of Chair 4 (about 8600 feet). On the way back down we made a detour to San Antonio Falls to cool off before ending the day with a root beer float at the "Original Movie Slope Snack Bar." Click HERE for photos.

Mt. Shasta

Mt. Shasta, northern California, 14,161 ft. (4317 m)

Pea Soup

Best Western is a membership association of independently owned and operated hotels. (I looked this up, and it says so in their FAQs.) With more than 4,100 hotels in 80 countries, they call themselves "The World’s Largest Hotel Chain." Many are the standard place name like Best Western Dallas North or Best Western Falls Church. The really interesting ones are those that are themed, and there are many. The theme often doesn’t match the surrounding area, as in the case of the Best Western Swiss Clock Inn, in Pecos Texas. The design includes dark wood beams and a tall white clock tower visible from the highway. The Best Western Pecos Inn, on the other hand, is in Artesia New Mexico. Sometimes, the hotel takes its theme from a landmark already in place. This is true of the hotel we stayed in last night on the way to Portland from LA. It is the Best Western Peasoup Andersen’s Inn in Nella Village, CA. A Danish man and his French wife started drawing tourists with the original Pea Soup stop further south in CA, but this Pea Soup II has been there a LONG time as well. The sourdough bread bowl full of pea soup with 5 toppings (croutons, ham, bacon, scallions and cheddar) at the restaurant next door was delicious. . . and 10% off with our coupon from the Best Western. There are numerous other examples that don’t quite fit. I guess you can find driftwood by a river, but it’s not the first thing you think of. Nevertheless, the Best Western Driftwood Inn is in Idaho Falls, while Big Country is in Coalinga, CA. Other memorable stops include the Best Western Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma with above average Mexican food and nothing but highway and cows in view. Curious names we’re keeping an eye out for: Best Western Icicle Inn in Leavenworth, WA, Best Western Locomotive Inn in Laurel, MT, Best Western Lodge at Purgatory in Durango, CO and the Best Western Treehouse Inn in Mt. Shasta, CA.

San Diego Wild Animal Park

Hmm. I wonder where they keep the bananas?
The 1,800-acre Wild Animal Park is located north of San Diego near Escondido. Part of San Diego Zoo, the Wild Animal Park is a destination of its own. It's operated by the not-for-profit Zoological Society of San Diego. The sanctuary is home to more than 3,500 animals of 429 species, including the largest crash of rhinos in any zoological facility, and one of the only California condor exhibits in the world.

Click here for wild animal photos.

San Diego Sunday

Our first California Coast dive was La Jolla Cove Ecological Preserve. If only we could have gotten a photo of ourselves in all the gear. Since we're used to water temperatures closer to 80 than high 60s, we were equipped with thicker wetsuits, hoods, gloves, etc.

These photos are pretty much what we looked/felt like. Buoyancy control was more of a challenge, and visibility was very limited (about 5 feet). Our dive guide said it was the worst she'd ever seen. We navigated around some tall columns of kelp, which were pretty cool-looking, but with the surges increasing, we head to more shallow water. We did see a few garibaldi fish (like big, chubby orange goldfish) on the way in, and a harbor seal playing around at the surface. All in all it was a good experience. The Cove was very pretty, and there were some cool sea caves to explore nearby. Oh, and breakfast at on the Coast Drive was delicious.

After watching the NASCAR race and taking a nap, we head back out to the coast to eat and watch the sunset. As you can see, it was pretty amazing.

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo and his National Monument

Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo led the first European expedition exploring the what is now the US's Pacific Coast. He arrived in San Diego bay in September of 1542 and declared it a "very good, enclosed port." The National Monument commemorating his journey was established in 1913.



The Old Point Loma Lighthouse is a short walk away from the statue of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo. The lighthouse was built 422 feet above sea level. It seemed like a perfect spot to serve as both a harbor light and coastal beacon. Unfortunately, the light was often obscured by low-lying fog and clouds. The lighthouse was in service from 1855-1891, when construction of a new lighthouse on lower ground was completed. You can walk through the old lighthouse and see how the Keeper and his family lived when the kids had to row a boat across the bay to Old San Diego to get to school.



At the western entrance to Cabrillo there are also outlooks from which, in season, you can see the annual migration of Pacific Gray Whales. Tide pools below are home to anemones, octopus, troglodyte chitons, sea hares, crabs and a wide variety of mollusks among a variety of other creatures.

Click here for additional photos.

Punta Reyes National Seashore

San Francisco has lots to offer, and I'll be sad to leave without eating my bread bowl of chowder and cioppino on Fisherman's Wharf, but we again decided to use our limited time to do something we'd missed on past trips. Punta Reyes National Seashore is just north of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. This ancient home of the coastal Miwok also has interesting maritime and ranching history. The bases of craggy cliffs and rolling hills are pounded by timeless waves. Spanish explorers and merchants later navigated this shoreline, some ending up one of the wrecks that dot the coast. Others transporting goods for gold miners, dairy farmers, and lumbermen. The Point Reyes Lighthouse was built in 1870. It was interesting to read excerpts from the lightkeepers' logs. It's hard to imagine living and raising a family in those days in this windiest, foggiest place on the Pacific Coast. The lighthouse was decommissioned in 1975 when the U.S. Coast Guard installed an automated light and turned over other operations to the National Park Service. Also in the area is a refuge of reintroduced Tule Elk. Depending on when you visit, you can sometimes watch migrating whales and an elephant seal colony. We saw a big harbor seal swimming below the lighthouse, and a few deer. Oh, and there were lots of happy-looking California dairy cows wandering the cliffs as well. Click here for some pictures of this beautiful area.

Joshua Tree National Park

"Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock." - Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire

Joshua Tree National Park was amazing. Click here for some photos.

San Diego I

We didn't have much spare time in San Diego this year, and we visited many of the big attractions last year, so we picked an area we'd never visited before to check out one afternoon. Click HERE for a few pictures of San Diego's Mission Bay area and up to La Jolla. The most popular things to do in town are, of course, the world-famous San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park (not to be missed), Tijuana, the Gas Lamp District, Old Town, Legoland and Sea World. It looks like we may be back here before the 4th of July, so there may be an update to come. Next stop: The Inland Empire.

Wichita to Cali

With 3 short days to drive from Wichita to San Diego, we decided to get a head start and get going directly after work on Saturday. These are some shots from Arizona and California along the way.

Wichita, KS

The City of Wichita grew from trading posts set up at the confluence of the Big and Little Arkansas Rivers in the late 1800s. The "Keeper of the Plains" still stands watch from this spot where the rivers flow together. There are lots of parks and museums in this area, and we visited several, including the Mid-America All-Indian Center Museum.

Brick-lined streets, historic buildings and lampposts, good restaurants and informative signage make up Wichita's Old Town. It's set where the old warehouse district was located, not far from the Santa Fe and Rock Island railroad tracks. The original names are still visible on a number of buildings (see below).

"The Keen Kutter brand of tools was created in 1879 by E.C. Simmons of St. Louis, MO, a pioneer in the use of catalogues as a major sales tool. The tool manufacturer was owned by Morton-Simmons Hardware Company of St. Louis, MO and sold tools throughout the country. Today, the building has been restored to a 115-room hotel in the heart of Old Town, with the façade and distinctive brick tower true to their original form." --Credit: Historical information excerpted from Wichita Century (Wichita Sedgwick County Historical Museum, 1969) and the City of Wichita Historic Preservation Office.

One night we saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean at the Warren Theater. It's a regular movie theatre with extra wide aisles and a call button on the seat to summon a waitress to bring a fresh salad, pizza, cold beer (in an actual glass), or more traditionally more popcorn and candy.

For some additional photos, Click HERE.

Tulsa Life

We admittedly didn't put in as much effort into Tulsa as we had other places to find interesting things to do. Maybe we were tired, maybe it was the weather, who knows? In all fairness, Tulsa is a decent little mini-city. It's known mostly for its Native American roots and former oil glory days when many residents got rich on "black gold" and built palatial mansions along the Arkansas River. A number of people we spoke to reflected on those days. More recently, there has been an effort at urban renewal, with lots of parks by the the riverfront, a variety of restaurants, a zoo and museums.

We had the opportunity to visit the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, as it was one of our event sites for work. I called on my limited teaching experience to give brief talks to school groups visiting the museum for the day. The main topic was, of course, the race car, and how it tied in to their visit through aerodynamics, motors and engineering.

Just because it was so novel, I wanted to include the photo below, apparently a liquid nutritional supplement chock-full of naturally derived minerals, vitamins and anti-oxidants.

For the rest of our visit to Tulsa we were primarily engaged in losing small amounts of money to the penny slot machines at the Osage Million Dollar Elm Casino, The Creek Nation Casino, and The Cherokee Nation Casino and Resort. Next stop: Wichita, KS where, fortunately, there are no casinos. --HTM