Travels with Gunther and Kara

Sunday morning we had coffee then headed off to Mass at 0900 in Sweet Home OR just next door to Foster Lake Resort. On the way home we stopped and filled Big Red up with diesel…when we leave here for Bend OR on Tuesday there is no fuel, gas, or services until almost into Bend. From there it’s another 320 miles to Boise ID where we’ll fuel again…prices in OR are cheaper than in the DPRC but still more than needed as self serve is illegal in OR…unless you’re pumping diesel or unless you have an aux tank…in those two situations (actually you’re required to in the second) you can pump your own.

We got back to the rig and Neil made us a nice bacon and eggs breakfast…then about 1200 or so we headed off for 2 waterfalls east of here in the Cascade Mountains…and we also got to scope out at least the first half or so of Tuesday’s drive to Bend. We had about an hour drive to the area of the waterfalls…there’s a hike between them but we decided to just drive to both parking areas and take the short walks over to the river.

First up…Sahalie Falls…a very nice 100 foot vertical drop on the McKenzie River. Fortunately…there are well marked viewing areas and mostly the idiots can’t get out onto the rocks near the top…although in both cases there were a couple of them.

Shots of the falls…again the ones with flowing water are Neil’s tripod mounted shots and the more frozen ones are Connie’s.

Looking into the cauldron at the base of the falls…there was a slight rainbow that was intermittently faintly visible…but none of our photos captured it unfortunately.

Neil grabbed a short video you can see here.

Next up…about a half mile down the road and maybe 3/4 of a mile as the McKenzie River winds…google tells us it’s only 64 feet high but it actually looks taller than Sahalie…the viewing areas were a little closer so maybe that caused the apparent higher height.

Again…Neil got a short video here.

As we departed the area…we stopped briefly by Clear Lake…which wasn’t actually very clear…to see what we might see…it’s a relatively small canoe only lake down in a small valley.

We headed home for dinner…corn and chicken…both done on the barbie.

Monday morning after breakfast we headed off for another couple of waterfalls…our destination was the McDowell Creek Falls…we elected not to do the whole 1.6 mile loop hike as it was pretty steep but did end up doing about 0.75 miles…we walked into the falls from both end parking lots. McDowell Creek is up on the ridges to the north of Lake Foster and there are at least 4 named falls on the creek in the county park there…although only Majestic Falls was really worth it. Several others would have been better with higher flow but Royal Terrace Falls in particular was of limited beauty with the low flow. 

As per usual…we got both flowing and frozen waterfall shots…this is primarily because Connie doesn’t carry her own tripod and thinks that setup and takedown of it is too much bother…so Neil always gets those while she concentrates more on general area including the falls style shots…both kinds usually make it to the blog.

Royal Terrace Falls…119 feet but as you can see it’s pretty low flow here in mid summer…the following shot I got from google was taken in the spring melt season.

As you can see…much better when there is actually water flowing over it.

Close up of a side fall.

Connie’s artsy-fartsy shot.

Heading back to the parking lot after Royal Terrace…Neil hopped down on the bank and got this very nice 7 foot or so high one just under the bridge across the creek to the parking lot.

Then turned 90 degrees to the right to get this nice side view of another short drop before the creek leveled out for awhile.

We drove the mile or so to the upper parking lot and got very nice shots of Majestic Falls…only 39 feet according to the sign but much higher flow. Two different HDR treatments here…one was a 5 bracketed shot series and the second he took 7 bracketed shots. First one processed with his normal Aurora HDR 2019…the second one done in Lightroom just to be different.

Downstream of Majestic Falls…a couple of small flows over some rocks caught his eye so he shot those as well.

We hiked back up to the parking lot and headed home…we did spot a yearling whitetail deer on the way back…it was on the unpaved road adventure portion of the tour…but it got away before we could grab the camera…and would have been a photo of it standing on the road anyway.

With that…our work here in Sweet Home/Foster OR is almost done. We’ll wander back over to the Point Restaurant before dinner and get a couple of marionberry cobblers to go and put them in our freezer for later and Neil will pack up the outside this afternoon. In the morning…a 90ish mile drive over US-20 east to Bend where we’ll spend 2 nights at the Elks Lodge there. They don’t take reservations so Neil called over to see how full they might be…there’s only one big rig site left so Neil went ahead and paid the $20 to reserve it for tonight even though we’re not there yet…we’ll still only pay $60 for the 2 nights we’ll actually spend there which is less than the commercial park we would have had to use instead.

Interesting things found on the net.

You should always try to take the boredom out of your job…no matter what it is.

Rules for Wiley Coyote.

Cyas.

We had a really great Independence Day…a bottle of wine, some carne asada on the grill, and some marionberry cobbler…the latter was really good…and we only ate about half of the serving we brought home from the other night…leaving the remaining for another night.

***Breaking News***

There has been another earthquake out here on the Left Coast…both in the 7 range…no worries for us as both were down in the LA area in the south of the DPRC…we didn’t even feel them as we’re 700 or 800 miles north. As long as the Yellowstone super volcano doesn’t go off in the next 3 or 4 weeks we’ll be just fine…it is overdue for an eruption based on historical averages but then that has been true for 75,000 years or so. There aren’t any major fires burning in the Pacific Northwest so far…again if we make it another 3-4 weeks we’ll be in Nebraska and pretty much out of fire country. One of our readers asked us if we were heading east yet so I figure I should update ya on that.

***We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post***

Friday morning we had breakfast…cheese pastries we got the other day…and then headed out for some Fun Stuff©. Our first stop was the Fort Hoskins Historic Site…this is the remains…well actually there aren’t any actual remains remaining so it’s just the site where Fort Hoskins used to be. Fort Hoskins was established in the early 1800s to (a) protect settlers to the Oregon territory from the evil natives and (b) to keep the aforementioned evil natives on the reservation…there were a series of treaties between the US government and the local tribes over the years which (a) gradually reduced the land the Indians retained and (b) were all eventually torn up by the US government in order to provide more land for white settlers and take it away from the Redskins…as I’ve discussed before this is not one of the finest moments in our government’s history.

We spent an hour or so wandering the hiking path around the former fort site…although there’s really not much left…once the fort was abandoned in 1865 it fell into ruin and there is nothing left of it today.

There are the remains of a school that was built in 1915 and then abandoned in the 1950s.

On our walk…we spotted this Red Breasted Sapsucker…a woodpecker variety…Neil tried to tell him “Dude…the chances of finding any bugs to eat in a creosoted telephone pole are zero.” He ignored that advice and kept drilling away.

Nearby there were some Cedar Waxwings in the trees.

And Neil spotted this Yellow Spotted Millipede…Connie lost her watch (or so she thought…it was actually found on her nightstand next to the bed later)…and he redid the entire 0.6 mile hike looking for it…didn’t find it (since it was back at home in the rig) but he did spy the millipede…which his iPhone app Seek identified for him.

Next up was the Hayden covered bridge…which turned out to (a) be a reconstruction of the original early 1900s bridge from the 1980s, (b) not much of a photo op as you could not see the bridge itself except from the end, and (c) we decided the covered bridges out here aren’t nearly as interesting and photogenic as the ones up in the Northeast…we saw two of them today and they’re very similar in construction whereas the New England ones are much more individualized and have more character to them.

From there…we set off to visit Alsea Falls…this was an add-on to our original plan since Connie found it on the way…it was just a short hike from the parking lot…although there was a 9 mile drive down a banjo-worthy road to get to the parking lot…it wasn’t too tall, maybe 30 feet or so…but we all enjoyed it as it had a lot of character instead of just being a boring single drop. 

Here are a few shots that Neil got with long exposures and his tripod to blur and make the flowing water stand out.

Connie got a couple with faster shutter speeds to freeze the water…both varieties are nice but Neil likes the flowing ones best.

On the way back up from the waterfall…Connie spotted these cool flowers…they are known as Wall Lettuce…and are really small being only maybe 3/8 of an inch across the blossoms.

After that…we punched “Home James” into the GPS in Li’l Red…it routed us another 12 miles down the banjo-worthy road before eventually connecting up to some better roads and then back to Foster. 

We had a shower since we smelled…then headed over to the local Elks Lodge 1972 for Happy Hour and dinner…fried chicken and we ended up with some leftovers for later.

Saturday…we left about 1300 for a day trip over to Newport OR to see Thor’s Hole and have dinner.

Speaking of Newport…and the other city names here in OR…the folks that settled this place either have no imagination whatsoever…or else they have no integrity for doing their own work…as almost all of the place names in the state were ripped off from someplace else.

Anyways…we decided on the way back home that while Thor’s Hole was decent as was dinner…neither was probably worth the 220 mile round trip drive down the curvy mountain roads over to the coast.

Basically…we headed pretty much due west from Foster, past where we were yesterday and than another 45 miles out to Newport…then 25 miles south on US-101 to Thor’s Hole.

This is what it looks look when it’s not quite high tide and when you’re standing back…lots of idiot tourists standing right on the edge.

Some of the other nearby rocks.

And these two are closeups of Thor’s Hole itself. You’re probably wondering just what in tarnation Thor’s Hole is…so’s Ima ‘bout to tell ya. What it is is a vital part of the earth’s crust that keeps the land from going under water at high tide. Ya know how your bathroom sink has that little overflow thingy at the top so’s when ya wander off in the middle of shaving…not that bears shave mind ya but ya’ll human critters do…at least Neil used to but not any more…anyways back to that little overflow hole thingy. Well…Thor’s Hole serves the exact same purpose. When it’s almost high tide like it is in these two photos…the waves periodically wash across the top and drain out the bottom. Since it isn’t quite high tide…the drain hole backs up a little…ya can see that in the second photo. In another hour or so…it will be full high tide…and the hole will be under about 2 feet of water…which will continually pour into the hole and down the drain so that the rising tide doesn’t drown the land. Simple eh?

Now don’t ask me where the water goes after it goes down the little…well actually big, about 20 feet across in this case…overflow hole thingy…I got no idea on that…but looking at it it’s pretty darned clear that is what is happening.

There’s a short video Neil took as well…you can view it here. The wave at the end almost got him…came to within just a couple of feet of where he was standing…so he headed back for higher ground.

We drove the 25 miles back to Newport and headed to Georgie’s Beachside Grill for dinner…Connie had a bowl of chowdah and Neil had a couple of sliders. Both were pretty decent and we washed them down with (respectively) a glass of Chardonnay and a Dark and Stormy. After that…it was about a 2 hour drive home…we stopped for a couple groceries at Walmart on the way and then filled Li’l Red up with gas for tomorrow and Monday’s Fun Stuff©.

Interesting things found on the net.

Ya ‘member this pan or moon image from last time doncha?

The frying pan is the middle one in the left column. Lower left is our moon…but that’s the only one I could identify for sure. I was fairly sure but not positive that middle left was the frying pan when I saw the original…and I think the lower middle is Europa. I can’t find where I got the original image again…googling frying pan or moon turns up a half dozen similar grids ranging from half frying pans to all but one being a frying pan…but where I found this one said that the other 8 were moons. Given some of the other photos though…Ima not real sure.

Connie does that genealogy stuff…but Neil doesn’t…he found this ‘splainer chart that will make all that once removed stuff make sense for ya.

And finally…

Cyas.

Happy 4th of July everybody…traditionally observed as the birthday for the country…but more on that a bit later…just wanted to wet y’ur whistle as they say.

First though…our trip from Fairfield CA to Foster OR including our escape from the DPRC, its associated disasters and nanny-state-itis, its high prices, and its mostly intolerant-of-the-views-of-others liberal population. We had a 2 day travel planned with an overnight stop in Yreka CA…as opposed to Eureka CA, there are actually two different cities there that are pronounced the same but with different ways of spelling the word…go figure. The first day we started underway preps about 0800 for a planned 1000 departure…we actually got on the road 10 minutes or so early…we pretty quickly got off the base, onto I-80 for 2 miles then I-505 for 50 miles or so and the remainder on I-5 headed north…all of it in pretty heavy traffic through mostly brown and barren countryside…not really anything worth looking at. We got into some hills in the afternoon as we passed into a more pleasantly green portion around Mount Shasta…so it was slow going up and down. I believe we found every idiot driver in the state that first day…not a drop of blinker fluid among them and absolutely no courtesy to their fellow drivers at all. There was a bit o’ excitement when Connie almost ran out of gas…she hadn’t looked at it until her low gas warning light came on…we pulled off at the first place after that where there was space for the rig and she had about 16 miles of gas remaining according to the dashboard…way closer than it shoulda been. After that…we continued on to our stop at Yreka RV Park just a mile off the freeway and quickly pulled into a beautiful, long pull through full hookup site F2. Since it was just an overnight…we did front jacks, slides, and power and that was the extent of our setup. After resting a bit we headed out to a local place for dinner…we weren’t that hungry so it was a couple of nice brews for us and we split a pair of appetizers…prime rib with mushrooms and potato skins…the former was excellent and we almost said we were done but thought a bit more would be good so we ordered the skins…which turned out to be more like stuffed baked taters instead…way more than we thought it would be so we ended up with leftovers for lunch.

Next morning…we started about 0700 instead of our normal 0800…between that and the minimum underway steps needed we were on the road well before 0800…we figured that being July 3 and the eve of the 4 day weekend it would behoove us to get to our next stop at Foster Lake Campground early so as to avoid the late afternoon post work rush. Again…straight up I-5 although at least the traffic was lighter most of the way. We pulled in around 1430, got checked in, and quickly pulled into our site 58. Since it’s a 6 night stop we did a full setup…then walked next door to the Point Restaurant for dinner…seafood and brews…and we now have a new entry in the “Connie meets the town drunk” category…yup, entry #7 almost 3 years from the previous Mikey at the Down the Street Bar in Casey IL…more on that later too.

Just to independently verify that CA thinks that they’re not part of of the USA and are a separate country known as the People’s Republic of Californiastan (DPRC)…as we passed the border into Oregon…we looked to our left on I-5…and there is a customs station for people entering the DPRC from Oregon. Just like any other state (like NV…there’s a similar station there)…US citizens are not free to enter the DPRC without passing through customs. They don’t check you papers…yet…but you get a whole bunch of questions that do not happen _anywhere else…in the United States of America. According to google…CA would bet the 4th largest economy in the world if they were not a state…so I think it’s time to just let them go and be a sanctuary state, no border controls, liberal bastion, giveaway state with the highest taxes possible instead of part of the US of A.

***Breaking News***

There was a 6.2 earthquake down in southern DPRC just north of LA this morning…for down there 6.2 is pretty small. One guy tweeted about the local news media making a big deal about a bottle of hand sanitizer vibrating across the table with the comment that “always having to manufacture drama must be a living hell.”

***We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post***

Before I get into that whole USA birthday thing…here’s the moon or frying pan photo I promised ya’ll a couple posts back and then plumb fergot to put the darned thing in the post. As I said before…although if you go back and look it don’t say it any more since when Connie noticed the lack of the photo Neil quickly edited the post to try and hide his forgetfulness…this is a series of 9 images. Of the 9…8 are moons within the solar system and the 9th is an image of a frying pan. Your job…should you decide to accept it…or even if ya don’t…is to figure out which one is not like the others…in other words, it’s homework. I’ll let ya’ll know the answer next time…although first correct entry in the comments section will get ya honorable mention in the post…so have at it.

Ok…Independence Day…routinely celebrated on July 4th…is universally recognized as the birthday of the country…only actually the truth is a little stranger than that. I s’pose ya could call it the nation’s birthday…but it all depends on how you define the word birthday. So what really happened back in 1776 ‘round this date. 

Well…the US Declaration of Independence is the statement adopted by the Second Continental Congress declaring the independence of the 13 colonies from Great Britain. It was ratified on July 4, 1776…hence the celebration today…but was that really the founding of the country? Strictly speaking…I don’t think it was…it was merely the rogue action of a bunch of what the King of England branded as traitors for signing the document. After all…what chance the 13 upstart colonies stand against the might of the mightiest country on earth…why practically none of course. However…although there was mention of the “13 United States of America” in the document…there was effectively not much of a national government until the Articles of Confederation were drafted and sent to the states in late 1777…and they didn’t come into force until 1781 when they were ratified. To my thinking…the ratification of the Articles was when the country could actually be legally stated as coming into existence…before that they were just a bunch of loosely affiliated rebellious colonies.

Still though…July 4, 1776 is the officially established date for the birthday of the country…so who am I to argue the minutia…but I thought it might give ya’ll something to think about as you celebrate the day…after all that’s what Ima gonna do.

In other July 4th related news…Nike recently released a sneaker line that features the Betsy Ross flag on the heel. The flag looks like this.

It is an actual flag from early in the history of the country…first flown in 1777…and features 13 stripes and 13 stars to commemorate the 13 original colonies. As a historic flag…it has been long considered a patriotic symbol.

So far…so good…Nike honored the country by introducing this shoe line shortly before Independence Day. So what’s the problem? Well…it turns out that this particular flag has been branded by the NAACP as “engaging in intentional acts of intimidation…rooted in an agenda to insult, injure, and incite”…this is because the flag was adopted by some right wing patriot groups in the 1990s to allude to parallels between the anti-government struggle (according to Wikipedia) of the groups and that of the American revolutionaries.

Anyways…noted unpatriotic American who should move to Venezuela Colin Kaepernick…he objected to the use of the Betsy Ross flag…so naturally Nike immediately cancelled the shoe…so I guess Kaepernick is the unofficial CEO of Nike. Talk about idiotic corporate following of political correctness BS…that takes the cake for this week but I’m sure we’ll see another example by this time next week.

Obviously Kaepernick has the right to protest under the Constitution…and far be it from me to infringe on that right…as opposed to him and his ilk who are perfectly happy to infringe on the rights of those they disagree with…but as an American I believe that honoring the flag, the country it represents, and those who have died to ensure the freedoms we enjoy in this country deserves a higher standard. As I said a few posts back…I think it highly likely that we’ve seen our last constitutional amendment due to the inability of politicians to compromise…but I for one would certainly support an amendment that made desecration of the flag or refusal to stand for the National Anthem a crime rather than a protected right. One can disagree with your government without spitting on your country. Why do we give air time and press inches to these hypocritical morons rather than to those that honor the country.

Ok…on to our latest Town Drunk…Darren. To briefly summarize what the Town Drunk means…ever since our first year on the road in 2012…Connie has had this bad habit of attracting the attentions of the local town drunk wherever we happened to be. I’m not sure why…originally I thought it was because every time it happened she was all purdy’ed up in a dress, heels, and makeup…but along about #4…who wasn’t actually drunk as he was a teetotaler but fit into the group of weirdos she attracts I decided that wasn’t it as #4 occurred when she was in shorts, t-shirt, and flip-flops. Best as I can figger it since…it’s just random. It isn’t the fact that we frequent dive bars as some of them have happened in more upscale joints, it ain’t how she’s dressed, and it ain’t even where we are in the country as it happens all over…it is just some sort of strange galactic gravitational pull sorta thing that pulls these weird men into her life. It’s always men…but not all men as most of the ones she meets are perfectly ordinary gentlemen…but then along comes the occasional weirdo to add to the list.

So…Darren. We’re sitting there at 2 of the 3 seats at the bar in Point Restaurant…Neil’s having a very nice Black Butte Porter and Connie is working on some strange concoction named Mamba by Gilgamesh Brewery…this is an ale made with black tea and tangerine peel…she liked it but I gotta tellya it was pretty gack…didn’t taste like beer at all but then she likes those gose sour things too so whatevers. Anyways…we’re sitting there and this inebriated fellow…it is the Town Drunk after all…he wanders up to the bar next to her and asks the bartender for another Bloody Mary…but he’s got all kinda special requests for her…he wants 4 stalks of asparagus, 6 olives, a lime wedge, and 2 jalapeño slices in it. He’s obviously done this before…and pestered this bartender before…as she says Ok and slowly makes his drink. He is also ordering some sort of coffee thing for his buddy sitting over in the corner at the one armed bandit or video poke machine or whatever it was…but he has to turn around and ask him three separate times before he remembers it. He’s waiting on his drink…and he turns to Connie and sez “I’m the only guy you know that got throwed in Jail in Yellowstone National Park.” Turns out he got arrested for drunk and disorderly in the park on Friday evening…ended up in the jail in West Yellowstone I guess, don’t think the park actually has a jail but mebbe it does…and spent the weekend in the hoosegow as the judge wasn’t in until Monday. Here’s a shot of ol’ Darren and Connie…clearly 3 sheets to the wind as you can tell. 

He slurped that drink down right quick…delivered the coffee whatever it was to his buddy over in the corner past her right shoulder…and went out for a smoke. Said he was coming back for another…but 45 minutes later when we left he was still AWOL.

We boxed up our leftovers from dinner…or more accurately the bartender boxed them up for us…and we got a serving of marionberry cobbler to bring home for later…which actually turned out to be the next day…we never heard of marionberry beyond the obvious reference to the former mayor of Washington DC back in the 90s…turns out it is some sort of hybrid blackberry that was invented in Marion Country just to the north of Foster. We figured that anything on the dessert menu with both berry and cobbler in the name just had to be good…I’ll letya know later.

Interesting stuff found on the net.

Cyas.

Well…ya know how they say that bad things happen in 3s? I can tellya…they do for really sure.

Ya’ll already know about the Charlie Foxtrot situation over at American River Resort which led to us staying at the most excellent Elks Lodge in Rancho Cordova…but we had two more issues since then.

First…on our drive from Rancho Cordova to Fairfield…we pulled off into a clearly marked Walmart entrance since there were no rest stops, no truck stops, and we needed a potty break. Only once we turned into it…it turned into this narrow dirt road that did not…in fact…go to the Walmart parking lot but to some sort of construction area. In the midst of backing around to get out of there…Neil elected not to make Connie get out of the car and be his mome-backer…(small aside here…a mome-backer is the guy that gets off of the back of the garbage truck down south when the driver of same is backing up to get the dumpster or empty his load or whatever…he got his name from what he says…as the truck backs up he keeps saying “mome-back, mome-back”. It’s a southern thing I reckon…and a close relative to ho-de-do…which is what you call out to the guy who’s got the door open in front of you…although with all the automatic doors these days ho-de-do is getting less and less common…but I digress.)…anyways she was having a bad day and he knew he should have made her get out and talk to him on the radio while he backed up and turned around…but his heart was in the right place and he let her stay in the car on the driver side of the rig and talk to him on the radio. Unfortunately…with her single eye vision and therefore a complete lack of depth perception…she failed to see the depression that the passenger side tires went down in to. That woulda been just fine…but then he cut the wheel sharply to the left to finish getting around as he went forward…and the skirt under the rear end of our LR slide dragged into the ditch…bending up the skirt and the T-molding on the rear of the slide. He ended up cutting the broken piece off of the molding when we got to Fairfield…and we’ve got an appointment in mid August at Camp Horizons to get it fixed.

Lesson learned…always, repeat always…get out and look (he did that…just didn’t make things clear enough to her and make her get out and watch) and make sure that Connie is back there to mome-back and stop him before Bad Things© happen.

Second…on Friday we did laundry in the AM and then went over to the commissary and package store for booze and food. On the way to the car…he was pushing the basket and walked around it to open Li’l Red’s rear hatch. In the process…the cart slowed down some and curved to the left…directly in front of Connie. With her non-functional in daylight right eye…and her head was turned to the left…she didn’t see and and walked right into the back of the cart. Neil didn’t think she hit it that hard…but she her hand got sandwiched between her belly and the cart with the back of her hand hitting directly on the corner of the handle with pretty much her full weight. 

We continued and finished loading the groceries…but by time we got to the rig she had shooting pains up her arm past her elbow and down into her fingers. She’s not normally a wus about pain…but it was getting worse and since it was 1500 by that time we decided to run over to the ER on base to get it looked at…the last thing she wanted to do was head over there at 2200 that night with a broken hand.

Some 2 hours and 3 X-rays later…luckily it was just a deep bone contusion…she had some ice on it while we waited over there and by the time we left it was feeling much better.

So…another lesson learned…wait awhile before heading to the ER unless you can’t walk or a limb is bending some direction that is clearly not normal.

Next up…a couple of corrections/updates from a previous blog. I had posted the following shots from our railroad museum tours.

We wondered what this screw thing was on this RR car.

One of our readers actually knew what it was…thanks Bill. This is the coal tender for a locomotive and the screw thing is a transfer mechanism that moves coal from the tender into the locomotive…then depending on age and size of the locomotive either puts it in a ready use bin for the fireman to shovel into the firebox or on larger/newer models puts it directly into the firebox. The screw turns inside a pipe with only a small clearance and the threads carry the coal through the pipe.

Second…I posted this photo of what was described as a wye or an engine roundtable that only turned part way around…at least that’s what the signage said. Again…one of our readers…thanks John …knew (actually he was curious I guess and asked the folks at Trains magazine) that this is actually an Anderson Roundtable…and does indeed turn all the way around…Neil confirmed on google satellite view that it does have tracks all the way around. What you might not know…we certainly didn’t…is that the rotation of the roundtable is done by hand…in other words a bunch of strong backed railroad guys turn it by hand. It is well balanced and the locomotive gets right into the middle…so although it is a strongman job…it’s apparently not as hard as one would think. The arms sticking out at the ends…one is right in the middle of the shot…is where the strong railroad guys push it ‘round.

OK…on to what we did so far here in Fairfield after our trip to Sacramento. 

We headed up one evening to the Putah Creek Cafe up in Winters just a bit north…had a really good pizza there cooked in this outside oven. 

Saturday we headed off for a winery tour and a visit to the Pacific Ocean to officially celebrate the end of our westward half of US-50 even though the highway stops in West Sacramento. Wine tastings have gotten to be big business here in CA…they’re no longer free and generally run $15 per person although if you buy two bottles of wine they comp one of the tastings…and they also take about an hour and a half sitting out on the veranda instead of crowding ‘round the tasting bar like it used to be here and still is pretty much everywhere else…in CA they’ve turned the tasting room into a profit center.

Our first stop…of an intended 3 but after one and a big lunch we were too tired to do anymore…was at the La Crema Winery owned by the Jackson Family (of Kendall-Jackson fame). We sampled 2 Chardonnay’s and 3 Pinot Noir’s (one of the latter twice as our server brought the wrong one out). We spent 20 minute or so talking to a guy that turned out to be the director of employee safety…he bought us a bottle of the Chardonnay we liked and presented it to us…we would not have paid $55 for a bottle of wine. Connie picked out another Chardonnay and one Pinot Noir that we brought home…all in all two full tastings and 3 bottles for an outlay of $90 isn’t too bad…it’s CA after all and you have to pay Disneyland prices for everything.

We then headed to the Garden Cafe for lunch…ribs and pulled pork…and while CA does a lot of things well BBQ really isn’t one of them. It wasn’t bad…we ate it…but it wasn’t really great either.

This is our waitress…with her paisley and lace pants we wanted to tell her “The 60s called and they want their pants back.”

We continued another 12 miles west to the Pacific then drove home via the Pacific Highway and Petaluma CA.

Sunday after Mass…we did some chores ‘round the house including sawing off the broken piece of T-molding I talked about before and sat outside under the shade tree for lunch. Neil was doing some calibration on the bird lens…and got some nice shots of this cooperative Western Scrub Jay.

He even hopped over to the leaking hose bib in the neighboring site for a drink.

Monday we were going to head up to Sacramento again…but it’s 55 miles from here and neither of us really feels like going…so I think we’ll just stay ‘round here and sit in the shade again…although we are going to head over to the Exchange area for a haircut and a stop at the GNC for some Lysine tablets. Dinner will be leftover chicken curry from the other night…and we’ll have to just drink at home since the Elks Lodge isn’t open today. There’s a dive bar outside the gate near where we had the sushi the other night…but it looked even too low for our standards.

Interesting things found on the net.

A grasshopper walked into a bar. The bartender says “we’ve got a drink named after you.” Grasshopper says “You have a drink named Bruce?”

I ran across an article today that talks about a study completed by the UN…the article is here. The article headline says “U.N. Predicts Disaster if Global Warming Not Checked” and here are a couple of quote from the article. “…governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.”…and…″the question is will we be able to reverse the process in time? We say that within the next 10 years, given the present loads that the atmosphere has to bear, we have an opportunity to start the stabilizing process.″…and…many similar predictions of doom and gloom by the end of the century.

The article’s dateline…June 29, 2989…so maybe, just maybe…the disaster isn’t quite as imminent as the climate warriors claim it to be. Sure…the temperature has been warming for the past 100 years or so…but we’ve been able to accurately measure temperature only since about 1800 and all previous temperature graphs going back millions on millions of years are based on ice cores which may…or may not, it depends on whether you believe in the “settled science” that climate warriors preach…represent anything.

The fact is that the earth has had ice ages before as well as much warmer periods in history than we have now…and another fact is that climate changes. Solar flux, volcanic activity, asteroid impacts…all of those things affect the temperature of the planet. Now I’ll admit that it’s possible that people and their use of fuels might be contributing to the rise over the last 100 years…but I think the jury is still out on whether that’s the only thing in play…my guess is that people play a part but of an unknown significance. What we really need to ask ourselves is…do we want to torpedo the economy of the country to significantly lower our emissions? It’s a great idea in principle…but if renewable energy was so great the power company infrastructure would have already changed over. Wind and solar power availability are plentiful in the vast desert and farming regions in the center of the country…but there is no viable power grid to get that many megawatts of generation capacity to the coasts where the power needs are higher…we’ll need trillions of infrastructure spending to produce that. Add in the inherent inefficiency of solar and wind power compared to steam or gas turbine plants…and we need to triple or quadruple US power prices to make non carbon energy possible. Climate warriors also ignore the carbon cost of making all those solar panels, windmills, transformers, high tension towers, and copper wires that carry the power…not to mention any environmental costs of building that much infrastructure in the middle of nowhere…not to mention the cost of getting all the aforementioned pieces to where the plants and transmission lines need to be built.

I’m all for reasonable efforts to lower carbon usage…but let’s not bankrupt our country to try and stave off disaster when the two (or 3 depending on which chart you believe) countries ahead of us in carbon emissions are doing nothing to slow their emissions down and…at least according to the climate warriors…need to have a free pass and not be required to help since they are “less developed countries”.

If it is serious enough to bankrupt the US…then Brazil, China, and India…not to mention Europe…need to bankrupt themselves as well.

Cyas.

Ok…we got to Travis AFB Fam Camp in Fairfield CA as I discussed last time. The nice lady at the office moved us from our original site 6 to 71…she said it was better but on getting there it was certainly a nicer site but getting into it was more difficult as all the nearby sites had trucks and vans parked so that there wasn’t a whole lot of clearance.

Nonetheless…the guy directly across the street gladly moved his van and we got backed in…took several back and forth movements as there was limited space but we got backed in just fine and setup. We started both of our A/C units but by about 2000 or so we turned them off as the weather was cool and the breeze was in the 25 knots range so plenty of ventilation.

We had a late lunch…and by the time for dinner Connie vetoed our original plan of Taco Tuesday at the Elks about 15 miles north…Neil woulda vetoed it if she didn’t as neither of us really felt that great. We did feel like sushi…so we headed to a place literally about 500 yards from the Fam Camp but outside the base…the reviews said it was the best inexpensive sushi place in the area. I can agree that the sushi was excellent…but with a total bill of $75…it wasn’t cheap…but it was really good and Connie had enough leftovers for lunch the next day.

We had no plans at all for Wednesday except to rest. We got up late, had leftover carne asada venison stuff and cheese omelet for breakfast, and our big activity for the day was to walk across the street from the Fam Camp to the Exchange/Commissary complex. We needed some more papaya enzyme pills from the GNC, needed to check out the package store to see what we needed to get later when we drove over with the car…Ima not carrying all that booze back…and most importantly we needed a green pepper for our dinner.

Afterwards…Neil did some calibration work on his bird lens…but had to quit until tomorrow as the wind was too much to get the work done correctly.

For dinner…Neil really outdid himself. A couple of months back…Connie found a recipe for curry that use coconut milk as the primary sauce ingredient…we all agreed that it made a much more complex and tasty sauce than the chicken stock base we used before. However…he made some improvements on it. He used the wok and sautéed some green pepper, onions, and mushrooms then set them aside. Next…high heat on the wok and he seared 4 boneless skinless chicken thighs until almost done and set all of that aside. Next…put the veggies…the trinity you know (onions, mushrooms, and peppers) back in along with a couple of cloves of minced garlic, 5 tablespoons or so of freshly grated ginger…and a whole pastel of spices…curry powder, garam masala, coriander, crushed red peppers and several more. Let all of that toast awhile until fragrant…then add a can of coconut milk along with some chicken stock and cream…after all we need enough leftover sauce for another meal…and put the chicken back in. Check the spice…it needed some more salt and some hot sauce…and let it simmer for 5 minutes or so. He had previously started some rice with saffron in it and they finished the rest of the meal right about the time the rice was done. I gotta tellya…it was truly outstanding…deep, rich sauce, crispy chicken and yummy rice and veggies. And best of all…leftovers for tomorrow.

We never did start the A/C units back up today…it got to the low 80s but with the breeze and low humidity the weather was gorgeous.

Ok…I promised you some photos from the primary tourist attraction in Carson City so here we go.

As you may…or may not…know…prostitution is illegal in almost of the US…the one place where it is legal is in Nevada…but not the whole state, just a single county that contains Carson City. In the bordellos in NV…usually known as “ranches” the employees are primarily interested in providing a service that the community perceives as needed. Ima not debating whether it should be allowed or not…or whether it’s immoral or not…that depends on your personal religious and/or moral beliefs…just documenting the facts.

Just east of downtown Carson City is an area where these establishments are located…so we decided we should go over and get a couple of photos for ya…some of them establishments actually give tours but Connie wasn’t interested in them…so we passed.

Sign at the entrance to Kit Kat Road where several of the establishments are located.

This is what a modern whorehouse looks like I guess…more like a motel to me.

We couldn’t believe that it actually said Cathouse on the sign for this one.

And looking the third direction…these three are all within 25 yards or so of each other.

We headed back towards town and stopped by the original famous one…it’s named the Bunny Ranch…and was actually owned and operated by the federal government for 10 years or so after it was seized in a tax case…can you believe that the US government actually owned and operated a bordello in the late 80s and early 90s?

Unfortunately…we couldn’t get a decent picture of it…but there was this sign on the road into it. There was another one that said Speed Limit 69 as well…but Connie’s iPhone photo didn’t work.

Remember that “lockstep out of touch conservative majority Supreme Court”? Well…today they issued the final decisions of their term…and Justice Gorsuch…one of the aforementioned out of touch conservatives…well, he voted with the 4 liberals on the court for the 4th time this term in producing the 5-4 majority on a case. This one involved a guy in OK who was arrested in 2007 on child pornography charges and convicted in 2010. He was sentenced to 3 years in jail and 10 years of supervised release. After serving his sentence and 2 years into his supervised release…he was found with more child pornography. The judge…following a federal sentencing law…immediately sentenced him to 5 more years in prison. The problem is that he and his lawyer thought that this was a new crime and hence unless he was convicted beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of his peers then he could not be re-sentenced to prison…since he completed his original sentence and was not released early on parole. The majority held that his constitutional right to a trial by jury was violated and ruled the sentencing law…or at least a portion of it, it is not clear in the  articles I saw…unconstitutional.

I would have voted with the liberals in this case too…not because they’re liberals but because a Justice is supposed to be a constitutionalist and not a conservative or liberal…he/she is supposed to rule based on interpreting what the constitution says.

The other major case announced held that federal courts had no business in determining whether gerrymandering was legal or not…holding that both Democratic gerrymandering in MD and Republican in NC were constitutional under the rights granted to the states in the constitution. Gorsuch in this case voted with the other conservatives. Naturally…the media is all up in arms about this second one but is wholeheartedly applauding the first…small wonder, eh?

So…maybe all the scare stories in the media you read in the media are just a little over blown…since although they trumpet the unfairness and lockstep of Republican appointed judges every chance they get…actual case decisions get decided based on different things. Just last week…a case was reported out 7-2 including 2 of the liberal justices…and the conservative viewpoint carried the day in that case.

Ok…Thursday we headed off for a trip to the CA state capitol…we got there a couple minutes later for the 1100 tour we were aiming for as parking was…in a word…abysmal…but caught up to it at the first talking point stop on the tour…this was after we went through the practically a strip search admittance process…Neil used to work in the Pentagon and it’s easier to get in there than into this building. 

The only really interesting point made on the tour…and while it sounds good I’m not entirely sure that this is true it does make for a good story…anyway the person who is shown on the CA state seal is the Roman god Minerva/Greek god Athena. In both cases…she was born as an adult from her father Jupiter/Zeus. When CA became a state…the requirement for a territory to apply for statehood was a minimum population of 60,000 people. California went from just a few thousand prior to the Gold Rush to having an increase of over 100,000 just in the year 1849…as such…they went directly from no official status to statehood, bypassing the traditional Territorial status…and hence CA was born as an adult state…thus mirroring Minerva/Athena…or so the story goes.

The state seal…showing Miverva/Athena, the Greek word eureka (I found it…referencing the gold discovery at Sutter’s Mill the previous year) and 31 stars since CA was the 31st state.

Senate chamber…decorated in royal red like the UK House of Lords as the upper house.

Nice chandelier.

Assembly chamber…again decorated in agrarian green like the House of Commons or lower chamber in the UK.

Inner dome.Interestingly enough, it’s 90 feet below the cupola and outer dome in the exterior picture below…our tour guide…who looked about 12 despite claiming to have graduated from college…did not know why the interior and exterior domes were so far apart.

The California Bear symbol…although actually it was purchased…er, adopted…from Colorado by Governor ‘Ahnold” Schwarzenegger back in the early 2000s on the spur of the moment as the state symbol is the extinct California Grizzly bear…this isn’t a California Grizzly…and is in fact not even a grizzly at all…or even an actual bear…but rather some sort of stylized LSD trip artistic interpretation…looks more some wacky this-is-what-I-think-a-bear-should-look-like bear but definitely not a grizzly…but this is California so we have to make allowances I reckon. And trust me…Ima real bear…ifn ya wanna know what one of them bad boys looks like just scroll up…Ima right up there in the masthead. With the capitol staff…it is known as Bacteria Bear from al the people that touch it…and it has it’s own twitter account according to our 12 year tour guide…it tweets as @BacteriaBear but not very often.

Exterior shot…the interior dome is actually just barely visible between the columns above the portico…well at least the sky behind the columns is blocked out by the upper parts of the interior dome. Tours used to be allowed to climb the 90 foot steep stairs up to the cupola…but the Highway Patrol/State Police put a stop to that years ago for safety reasons.

This statue of…strangely enough…Columbus final appeal to Queen Isabella for funds to go and discover the New World…is located under the rotunda. It dates from the 1860s and was donated by a prominent Sacramento banker for the new Capitol Building in 1883. During the renovation in the 1970s it was temporarily relocated but was returned after work was complete as the citizenry determined over the objections various native people’s groups who claimed that Columbus never made it to California but his discovery of the New World ushered in an era of genocide, subjugation and colonialism of native peoples. 

And that was our day. We stopped by Mackey D’s for lunch, Home Depot for a couple of items and were back home by 1400. Dinner will be Italian sausages with mushrooms, peppers and onions…we don’t have any buns so no sausage Sammies for us…we’ll have pasta of some sort with garlic and cheese instead.

Interesting things found on the net.

I have posted this one before…but it’s getting into summer time and therefore yellow stripey thing season…so here’s a quick way to help you identify which ones are bad.

Cyas.

We had a 103 mile trip from Carson City NV over to…originally but not where we ended up…Coloma CA. Before I get to that though…there was a Supreme Court decision issued this week that deserves a few words about what they said and, what it means, and what the hue and outcry about it means.

The case is Knick, Rose Mary v. Scott, Pa, et al…and concerns the ability of government to take private property without just compensation. Essentially…there have been many court cases that establish that if the government takes your property without your agreement they have to pay you just compensation rather than just taking it. Cities, counties, towns, and states have used the right of eminent domain for 250 years now to take private property for public use…and they must pay the private owner for that taking.

So Scott Township (basically a county) in Pennsylvania passed an ordinance requiring that cemeteries located on privately owned land were required to remain public accessibility during daylight hours. On the surface…nothing really wrong with this as it would allow family descendants to visit the graves of their ancestors when the property had passed to another owner. Petitioner Rose Mary Knick was notified that she was in violation of this ordinance on her 90 acre farm…nobody from the government had contacted her about this prior to the notification and no payment to her for taking her property was negotiated or paid. So Rose took them to court…seeking a declaratory judgement in state court that this requirement was essentially taking her private property for government use without compensation…and therefore unconstitutional. The state court held that she had not demonstrated irreparable harm and therefore was not required to get relief…since the township withdrew the violation when she sued them…even though the town said she had to allow access. Rose in turn filed a federal claim against the township that she indeed had suffered under the takings clause…and therefore was owed compensation. 

The case eventually ended up at the Supreme Court…and the state claimed in their arguments and briefs that all she was allowed under the constitution was a claim to state courts for compensation.

The Supreme Court said that under the US constitution she was entitled to compensation as soon as the taking occurred and that the state was wrong…this overturned a precedent from 1985 (at least that’s what the media said) which held the opposite…but in itself that decision from 1985 was a reversal of decades of previous precedent.

Essentially…250 years of court decisions have stated that if the government takes your property you were constitutionally owed just compensation…but there a single 1985 case that had been used as a precedent in the opposite direction and that you must (under the 1985 case) follow the state court process instead. The problem with this is that state courts historically favor state government associations over private citizens…and also that the constitution which supersedes all state laws provides relief on taking.

As it turned out…the vote in this case was 5-4 with the majority being the justices typically branded as “conservatives” and the minority the “liberals”. What they actually said though…was that the right in the constitution says what it says supported by 250 years of court cases…and that if the government takes your property then they are required to compensate you for that taking. Not that they can’t take it…eminent domain is well established legally…but they can’t take it without compensation and that a citizen is owed compensation immediately when the property is taken.

So…reading about this in the news this week…it hasn’t been about the guaranteeing of rights in the constitution…it has been all about “conservative over-reach” in overturning “well established Supreme Court precedent”. The problem is that…at least in this case…there are competing and opposing precedents and the media, liberals, and Democratic Party are insisting that the sole case that falls in their favor is the one that should prevail rather than the other 250 years of precedent.

Now there’s nothing really earth shattering about this case…other than that it again established that rights enshrined in the Constitution are just that…inviolate.

So let’s talk a bit about “Supreme Court precedent” and how those “out of touch conservative judges” have violated it. At least that’s what you might believe from reading the media this week. Seems to me though…that if the government takes your property they must pay you for it is a mighty fine idea.

From what I’ve read this week…this is an egregious violation of Supreme Court precedent merely for political gain…but the real issue here for the liberals is the Roe vs. Wade decision which may…or may not…come up for a Supreme Court vote in the next year or three. What the media, liberals, and Democrats are trying to establish here is that any Supreme Court decision is “settled law”…much like the climate warriors declare that global warming is “settled science”…and thus not liable to be changed. Making this point now presumably helps the Democrats in some future abortion case where they can claim that Roe v. Wade is “settled law”.

While that’s a valid argument…it’s a bit hypocritical. On the one hand…Democrats are demanding that the single contrary decision on the takings clause should be respected as the last word in constitutional law instead of the other decades of precedent. On the other hand however…an interesting fact is that many other Democrat priorities (Jim Crow laws, same sex marriage abortion) were “settled law” the other direction under decades of Supreme Court decisions…at least until they weren’t because a liberal majority Supreme Court reversed the precedent. It is hypocrisy to demand that precedent be honored when it suits your demands and that precedent should be overturned when it doesn’t. It’s not “out of touch conservative justices” just because they disagree with your interpretation. The country has been debating whether the Constitution says what it says or whether new rights can be invented beyond what the document says…that’s the fundamental argument between strict and loose construction…and that debate will likely never be settled.

So why all the hue and cry over this decision. Simple…politics and not a darned thing more. Anything that Republicans or the President wants…the Democrats are guaranteed to be in opposition. They’re not alone though…the reverse also applies. The greatest problem facing the US today…well, not the Iranians, not the Russians, not abortion or voting rights or anything else…is the fact that our leaders…both in the administration and the Congress and from both parties…are more interested in making the other side look bad, getting reelected, getting even, and appeasing their constituents than in doing their job.

“Settled science”…just like ”settled law”…is an oxymoron. It’s only settled until a Supreme Court decision changes it…slavery, Jim Crow laws, and marriage between a man and a woman only were all “settled law”…until they weren’t…and the right to abortion didn’t exist until a liberal leaning court invented it in Roe v. Wade.

The other 2 decisions this week from this supposedly biased “out of touch conservative” Supreme Court…well…they did not overturn any previous precedent…probably because they decided it was right to begin with. And both of them went what you would think of as the liberals way despite the conservative majority…apparently the biased Supreme Court may not be as biased as the media and Democrats claim.

Politicians…fire ‘em all and start over I say…it couldn’t be any worse.

Ok…on to the travel day from Hell…or maybe hell, I can never really decide whether that’s a proper name and requires capitalization or not…best as I can figure out it’s proper and upper case H if we’re talking the religious Hell and lower case if we’re talking about non-religious interpretations. Just like the S word and the F word…there are so many meanings depending on phraseology, tone of voice, context, and facial expression.

As expected…our RV GPs routed us not over Spooner Pass west of Carson City and through the tunnel exactly as tall as our rig (at least at the outer edge of the 2 lane westbound tunnel, and whether the construction was currently blocking the left hand lane and hence preventing us from driving on the centerline where the tunnel is taller…and it’s only a 100 foot long tunnel so we would have no problem temporarily driving in the middle)…and through downtown South Lake Tahoe. Instead…we headed south a dozen miles then west over Luther Pass to intersect US-50 south of South Lake Tahoe and thereby miss both the tunnel and the downtown traffic…trust me, we’ve been there in Li’l Red and the traffic is brutal.

We had a couple of 6% grades up and down, but not too many curves so although the traffic backed up behind us a bit it wasn’t too bad. Neil was in front with the rig and after the first 2 passing lanes we went through where we immediately got to the right to let traffic pass…well, it turns out the drivers in the DPRC of California…well they are damned if they’re going to stay behind an RV and will gladly pass you in the passing lane area…even if the passing lane area is going away and the lane line for the second lane has stopped and there are arrows telling you to go left…well, they’ll just pass you anyway and force you almost into the rock wall. So…after the first two times…Neil just watched the remaining passing area distance and moved back to the left to block the assholes as they tried to rocket past. It was either that or put Big Red and the rig into the wall…and that just ain’t happening. Sure…we pissed off some CA drivers…but then anybody who has ever driven in the state knows that they’re mostly inconsiderate jerks, don’t believe in blinker fluid or adequate separation between vehicles, and don’t believe in not cutting you off either…according to the lady at our RV park in Fairfield CA drivers are just in a hurry but don’t mean anything by it…apparently they don’t believe in common courtesy on the roads in this state.

Once over the final pass…and it was about a 25 mile downhill on the west side of all the mountains…we got off at Placerville for the 7 mile trip up to our planned stop at American River Resort.

If you don’t want to read all the gory details ya can skip forward a bit…the too long didn’t read version is that if you ever plan on stopping in the Coloma CA area…that’s where Sutter’s Mill that started the California Gold Rush is located…then whatever you do do NOT stop at American River Resort. (Editor’s note: I may have to reconsider a portion of the comments below on the resort…when Neil complained via email he apparently got ahold of somebody with the authority to Make it Right as Mike Holmes would say…he was told the refund was processed but would take 3-5 days to show up. However…the campground is definitely not big rig worthy even through they claim it is…and it’s not any rig with 2 A/C units worthy in the summer when the weather is hot. I’ll report back if the refund actually hits our account.)

We got there about 1300…and were told we couldn’t check in until 1400. No problem…our site was occupied but it turns out they had moved before 1200 to the site across the road because of…you guessed it…bad power in our assigned site 66.

We finally got checked in shortly after 1400, went to our site and backed in…it was a pull through supposedly but the road up to the site entrance was 6 feet wide with a ditch on each side…and we would have had to negotiate our way over a 2 feet deep 2 feet wide ditch to get in…so we ended up going around and backing in.

We measured…as always…the voltage at the pedestal…100-103 volts instead of the normal 120-123…which clearly won’t work. The rig has a power management system which cuts off at 103 to prevent damage from low voltage to our equipment.

Went back to the office and complained. They said “no other sites available”…you’ll just have to deal with it. Told them that we would have to leave…they said “absolutely no refunds”. Now I can understand no refunds for a no-show…but their website talks about a reservation being a commitment for both them and the RVer…and to my mind if they failed to provide the full hookup site we reserved and paid for then we should get a refund. The on site manager refused…Neil has an email in to the park owners to see if we’ll get our money back.

So we left…and did I mention the 13% and 14% curvy road we had to negotiate 8 miles to get there. And did I mention that at the bottom of each and every one of these hills there was a curve marked 15 mph so we had both no starting momentum to get up the hill and then had to essentially stop at the end of the downhill to negotiate the curve. It sucked I tellya.

We made it back down to US-50 and went another 40 miles west to Rancho Cordova CA…where we stopped at the Elks Lodge 2484. We’ll spend 3 nights here before proceeding on to Travis AFB in Fairfield on Tuesday. The good news is that (a) we’re at the Elks Lodge for cheap booze, (b) they have spaghetti dinner on Monday, and (c) we’ll take care of one of our Sacramento Fun Stuff© stops on Monday as we’re only 20 miles from downtown…and oh yeah, (d) it’s only 50ish miles to our next stop in Fairfield.

Dinner Saturday was at the Golden Arches…Connie didn’t feel well by that time but said a few fries sounded good and Neil had a fish sandwich. Sunday we did nothing except Mass…and then Neil made venison burger carne asada flavored tacos on soft corn tortillas for dinner. They were really good…and best of all there are leftovers which will make perfect omelet fodder for breakfast one day soon.

**Pro Tip…Note to self:**

If it’s going to be 97 degrees outside…make sure you have 50 amp power so you can run both A/C units…we’re barely staying below 92 this afternoon. Fortunately…the sun has peaked so it’s starting to go down a bit…and we’ll be gone most of tomorrow afternoon and hopefully won’t get home until it has cooled down a bit. 30 amps just ain’t cutting it.

Monday we headed out to Sutter’s Fort…which wasn’t actually a military fort…just a fortified settlement/trading post in the days before California became part of the US. It wasn’t really all that great…it was abandoned in the 1850s and mostly washed away by local flooding. However…it was rebuilt in Disneyland like fashion by the state in 1893…reconstructed to look old but very little of the buildings are actually old. Still…not a bad destination for our $5 each entry fee…although at $10 each it would have been overpriced.

So…who was John Sutter who founded the fort. Well…he was a German deadbeat essentially…after serving in the Swiss militia and as a merchant he abandoned his wife, 5 children, and debts in Europe and came to America (nice guy, huh?)…ending up in the Spanish owned California territory and established his fort near what would eventually become Sacramento as a safe haven for immigrants from the east after their journey.

Outside the fort…we spotted this duck…which we originally thought was a mallard…but it’s got a blue vice green head and markedly different chest and body coloration than a mallard. It’s got to be some sort of hybrid between a mallard and something else…or perhaps just a local color variation as there were 3 or 4 of them all pretty much identical.

Heading inside we saw a room where immigrants were housed.

In the gift shop we spotted this volume for sale…I’m surprised that in the liberal bastion here in the DPRC they would allow such a book to be displayed since it’s not politically correct. The Donner Party you’ll recall was stranded in the Sierra Nevada Mountains during the winter of 1846-47…there were 87 people in the group of which 48 survived…and they only survived through becoming cannibals and eating their dead. So…Donner Dinner Party seems a bit macabre to me.

The only original building on the site…it contained Sutter’s office and the offices of the doctor and other administrative staff.

The interior of the fort…instead of the original 2 foot thick adobe brick walls it’s constructed of just a double layer of modern bricks overlaid with what appeared to be stucco…it probably only vaguely resembles the original in both construction methods and design/layout.

Reconstruction of a bee-hive oven used for making bread.

Conestoga wagon reconstruction…although they did apparently use period building techniques as the wood members are roughly finished and the iron appears to be blacksmith made rather than forged/machined like it would be today. The canvas is a definite giveaway at the non-originality…no way 150 year old canvas would either look that good or be displayed outside.

We headed home for Happy Hour and dinner at the Elks lodge. Dinner was excellent spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread…probably the best we have ever eaten outside of what Neil cooks…and apple pizza for dessert…think apple pie on top of pizza dough covered with whipped cream. Neil even liked it…and usually apple pie is way down his list of acceptable dessert options.

Monday morning…we deliberately didn’t get going too early as we only had 55 miles to go to our destination at Travis AFB in Fairfield CA and checkin wasn’t until 1300. We pulled out of our space bit before 1100 and after dumping at the dump station and waiting for the food delivery truck to get out of the loading dock so we could leave we headed on westward on US-50. It’s an 8 to 10 lane freeway at this point…and again was full of California drivers who pay no attention to speed limits, turn signals before changing lanes, adequate clearance before pulling in front of you, and assorted other bad driving habits. On the way…we tried to stop at a Walmart to get lunch and have a potty break…but it turned out to be a dirt turn around area with ruts in it and not the entrance to the. Walmart…the rig has a little boo boo on the LR slide skirt that we’ll have to see about getting fixed…it dragged a bit when the wheels on that side went into one of the ruts. Neil has an email into the New Horizon folks to see how hard a fix it is…I’ll post a shot of it later once we have a better idea of what we’ll need to do.

Oh yeah…we got some photos of the biggest tourist attraction in Carson City the last night before we leave…I’ll post them next time as this has already gotten too long since I went down the Supreme Court precedent rathole a bit.

Interesting things found on the net…just a couple for ya this time.

Spare tire cover speaks for itself.

Cyas.

OK…on to more Carson City NV Fun Stuff©

It turns out that political shenanigans aren’t limited to today’s time…they’ve been around for hundreds of years. For instance…back in the ‘30s Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court with more justices that he would appoint…this was solely because the existing 9 justices kept declaring his New Deal solutions to the Great Depression unconstitutional…this effort failed. Now today…most of the Democratic candidates for President are also talking about increasing the number justices or having them serve rotating terms…again the reason for this is that the progressives keep having their demands thwarted by a Supreme Court membership that believes more in “the Constitution says what it says” rather than “the Constitution says what I want it to say”. Turns out that both of these efforts…and similar political shenanigans…have been going on for quite awhile…bit I’m gettin’ a bit ahead o’myself. Don’ worry yourself though…there’s a point to this paragraph once I get to it.

When last we left our intrepid explorers…they had completed their longest day trip of our stop here…back east out past Fallon to Middlegate for the shoe tree…the worst tourist attraction we’ve ever been to…and the best cheeseburger in Nevada…at least according to Middlegate Station Restaurant and we can’t disagree with them although we’ve only had 2 cheese burgers here so far…and returned safely to the rig…that was Saturday.

Sunday we went to Mass…then Monday we set off for a Fun Stuff© day here in Carson City. First up was the Nevada State Capitol building…continuing our tradition of visiting the various state capitol buildings we are near. Amazingly enough…this one hasn’t burned down and been reconstructed like most of them have…although it did have a renovation back in the ‘70s…it was essentially gutted except for the outer walls and interior stone walls then a steel and concrete modern construction methods interior was added on. We spent 45 minutes or so taking the self guided tour which included the Nevada State Museum.

Front view of the capitol building and the fiberglass dome that replaced the original one during the restoration…along with the planting of large numbers of shade trees around the building.

Legislature building…constructed as part of the renovation and the state house and senate moved from the main capitol building to this one next door.

Sara Winnemucca…sort of the patron saint…although she is not a saint, just an ordinary Indian woman…but then that pretty much describes a lot of actual saints…of Nevada. A Northern Paiute woman who became an educator…she was responsible for a lot of the educational system in the state for both her tribe and other native peoples.

And now we get to that political shenanigans thing…

Way back in mid 1864…during the Civil War when Abe Lincoln was President…he was running for reelection in a 3 way race against two former generals that he had fired during the war for incompetence…and as of summer 1864 Lincoln was trailing. By that time…the war itself was all but won…but Lincoln needed to win reelection so as to implement his ideas for Reconstruction in the post war period…he wanted to welcome the southern states back into the fold, free the slaves, and not overly punish them…as opposed to his opponents who planned on a more punitive attitude.

Anyway…Old Abe…or maybe it was the Republican Party…figured out that if they got one more state admitted to the union…and they were targeting Nevada as the Republican Congress had passed legislation authorizing Nevada’s entry into the union in March 1864…but in order for that to happen Nevada had to approve a state Constitution and get it to Washington DC before the election so that an expected victory by Lincoln in Nevada would give him the additional electoral votes he needed.

Nevada approved their new state constitution on September 14, 1864 and mailed a copy to Washington…with expected arrival by October 1. As of October 14…you guessed it…the mailed copy was lost in the mail someplace…with not enough time for the mail to get a replacement to Washington on time. So the administration asked Nevada to telegraph it to Washington DC…all 175 pages containing 16,543 words. This started on October 26…it took some time for the request to make its way to Nevada…but there was no direct telegraph link to Washington from Nevada at the time. So it was sent from Carson City to Salt Lake City, then on to Chicago, Philadelphia, and finally to Washington. Each transmission took at least 7 hours followed by collation of the document and then retransmission…and naturally telegraph operators may or may not be working 24 hour shifts…so the final certified copy of the Nevada Constitution was delivered to Lincoln on October 31…just 8 days before the election. Lincoln immediately issued an Executive Order declaring that Nevada was a state by an Act of Congress…and hence he would have the two additional electoral votes they thought he needed.

During this time however…one of his opponents dropped out and Lincoln ended up winning 55% of the popular vote and by 221-21 in the Electoral College…so much for the pre-election thoughts that Lincoln needed the Nevada electoral votes to win…apparently polling back then wasn’t any better than it is today.

Nonetheless…at least according to the exhibits in the Nevada State Museum…Abe Lincoln went one better than packing the Supreme Court…he packed the entire country. As I said…political shenanigans have been going on since Socrates in ancient Greek days.

Interesting facts about the 1864 Presidential election…Lincoln was the first President to win reelection since Andrew Jackson in 1832 and the first Northern President to ever win reelection…and since Lincoln was actually the nomination of the National Union Party which consisted of the Republican Party and what were called War Democrats…he was the last President that was not elected as either a Republican or a Democrat.

Here’s the exhibit that talks all about the admission of Nevada to the Union.

Next…we stopped at the Chamber of Commerce and turned in our Loneliest Road passports…they’ll fill our and mail our “I Survived the Loneliest Road” certificates and mail them to us.

Next stop…the Nevada State Railroad Museum…which while decent wasn’t as cool as the one we saw earlier back in Ely.

It had some pretty neat models…most of these are in the 2 feet long range and are incredibly detailed.

This plaque tells the story of George S. Sheffield…a cabinet maker who built himself a 3 wheeled vehicle that could travel illegally on the tracks…he later found a broken rail and prevented an accident so he was given a pass to continue traveling on the railroad company’s track. He called his invention a Velocipede and manufactured and sold copies of it.

Grindstone used for finishing forged parts before they were installed on locomotives or used to maintain track.

There are the requisite old locomotives and train cars naturally.

This is the wye…somewhat like a round house only instead of turning locomotives around it was used to move them from one track to another in a relatively small area. Seems like they would end up backwards on the final track though…but perhaps there was a roundhouse or other turn around area elsewhere…or maybe they just backed up instead.

We spotted this flowering plant outside the museum…we have no idea what it is like nothing we had never seen before.

After that…we headed home for lunch and rest…we are using a lot of our time here in Carson City to rest up from the pretty busy schedule we’ve had ever since arriving at the rally in early May.

Tuesday…we scheduled a visit 30 miles up the road to Reno…the primary reason was to get Li’l Red an oil change but in addition we wanted to stop by the cemetery there and get some info on Neil’s relatives who lived in Reno back in the ’70s and ’80s.

Headstone for Eleanor Brooke and Grace C. Frederick…Eleanor is Neil’s great uncle’s mother and Grace C. Frederick is his great-grandmother…at least that’s what Connie decided she was and she’s the genealogy expert ‘round here.

Merle A Brooks (Neil’s great aunt) and her husband Barton’s headstone. They owned a house in Reno and Neil’s Aunt Rosemerle lived with them along with his grand mother Myrtle for many years before she moved back to Mobile. Rosemerle died and was cremated by the same cemetery…with her ashes picked up by Noel Wesley…who Neil thinks is Rosemerle’s stepson…at least that’s what he thinks and Connie hasn’t figured out whether he was right or not. When the lady at the cemetery said her ashes were picked up by Noel…Neil said he recognized the name and that Noel lived with the family…to his best recollection he was Rosemerle’s husband’s (Charles Wesley) son by his first marriage.

We stopped by the house they all used to live in…pretty nice house if you ask me. Two huge wings with a covered breezeway connecting them…it’s almost like two houses.

Then it was home for lunch…we blew off the lunch out and stopping by the Shoe Tree Brewery as we didn’t want to have to kill another almost 3 hours in Reno before we headed for lunch.

Wednesday…our sole activity beyond buying groceries and resting was an afternoon trip to the Genoa Bar and Saloon in Genoa about 8 miles south of Carson City.

By the way…that’s pronounced not as in Jen-Uh-Wa (first syllable emphasis) like the city in Italy but Jen-O-Wa with the emphasis on the second syllable…we were corrected by the bartender. 

It’s quite a cool little bar…established in 1853…and we still think that after making their way across the Great Basin with it’s many lower mountains…then finding water and flat land here and seeing the Sierra’s immediately west that they just decided to stop.

Interior panos of the bar.

And of course no self respecting western bar is complete without a painting of a nekkid woman hanging over the bar…there were in fact 3 different ones…but the other two were in the glare coming from the doors so no good photos possible.

Outside shots.

We didn’t actually miss the Shoe Tree Brewery as it turned out that the saloon had their Ash Canyon Amber Ale on tap…and we also had a couple of tasty cocktails we had never heard of before. Then it was home for dinner…frozen fish fillets, leftover chicken/rice/cheese stuff from the night before and some corn.

Thursday morning was devoted to fixing our water filter setup…one of the pieces had cracked and the replacement parts were delivered on Tuesday so Neil fixed them. After that we went out and filled Big Red with diesel…it’s 55 cents a gallon cheaper here in NV than over the border in the Democratic Peoples Republic of California…we might have enough to get to Oregon but if not we’ll buy as little there…and give them as little of our money in taxes as possible.

Dinner Thursday was at the Fox Brew Pub…it’s up in town across from the capitol building. This turned out to be one of the better places we’ve tried this travel season. Really great beer…we had their own Naughty Boo Boo which was a most excellent brown ale…in fact it was the best brew we’ve had in quite awhile. We split a salami and pineapple pizza…again really good…while Connie had another brew but Neil saw they had Ginger Beer so he had a Kraken spiced dark rum with Ginger Beer…the latter is like ginger ale on steroids and is a far superior mixer to regular ginger ale.

Friday…another rest and get ready to travel day. Dinner was at Red’s Old Grill…lobstah ravioli…but Ima finishing this post Friday before dinner as all of our other chores are done…Neil even made Blueberry Crisp for dessert tonight. I’ll report on our dinner at Red’s in my next post since we’re traveling tomorrow…since we’re nowhere near water and the ensuring fresh lobstah availability Neil’s not holding out a whole lot of hope for the lobstah ravioli but he’s willing to both give it a try and to be either pleased or disappointed.

Math and Computer Nerds…get ready for this next part.

You too can try to break the world’s record for the largest number of digits of Pi…you know, that constant used to calculate the circumference of a circle amongst many other things…it’s a number that never runs out of digits. Anyway…it turns out that you can calculate the value of pi using something called the Chudnovsky Algorithm…you can read more details about it here…but the short answer is that this formula can be run through a computer to calculate the digits of Pi.

So plug that into your computer(s) and start calculating…the current record is 31.4 trillion digits which was calculated from 9/2018 to 1/2019…but it was google that calculated it using their massive cloud based computing array…so you’ll probably need several billions of dollars worth of computers to beat the record.

The diagram below reveals how the founding fathers were brilliant in inventing the Electoral College for the election of our President…their intent was to make sure that the small states had a voice in the election and that New York, Massachusetts, and Virginia (at the time) didn’t solely determine the Presidency…and proves once again that despite the intense efforts of some to either get around the Electoral College or abolish it entirely…anyway this is why we need it. The orange are and red area have the same population…which shows that if the Electoral College was abolished essentially coastal California/Washington/Oregon (and not even the whole state, just the coastal region) along with the East coast from the waterline to about 100 miles inland…would have more say in the election than center 2/3 of the country. Add in the rest of the populous East and Left coast states…and essentially California, New York, and Florida would determine the outcome. Instead…because of the Electoral College…presidential candidates are forced to run a national campaign including what the Democrats call the flyover states…in order to win the election. I say good-on-ya to the founding fathers…ya got it pretty darned right.

Interesting stuff found on the net.

Only engineers and scientists will probably get this one…basically Schrödinger said that merely observing a process would potentially change the outcome of the process…his example was that if you had a cat in a sealed box you didn’t know whether it was alive or dead and that by opening the box to observe you changed the outcome from “don’t know” to “alive or dead depending on what you observed”.

Tell Schrödinger I survived.

Until my next report from the Democratic People’s Republic of California or DPRC…

Cyas.

After our pretty decent burger in Austin NV at the International Bar and Cafe…we went to bed early as the altitude and the travel day just made us tired. We did stop by and get some milk as ours was bad so we can have cereal for breakfast.

Friday morning…we were on the road after coffee, breakfast, and our limited underway preps needed about 0900 or so for the last 175 miles of our 2 day transit to Carson City NV.

Talk about bleak countryside…the last portion mostly did away with mountain passes…we kept going over these little hills that had chain up and chain down areas on each side…and there were nameplates at the top that said whatever pass and the elevation…but the summit elevations were only between 4,500 and 5,000 feet…and the passes themselves were usually only a few hundred feet higher than the valleys. As we got further westward in the Great Basin…the north to south mountains became more like just a single ridge or two.

Eventually we came down off the last pass…passed through Fallon NV where we were originally going to stay…and after that it was pretty flat to Carson City. On coming around the curve and noticing the really big mountains to our west…those marking the western boundary of the Great Basin…we understood why Carson City was settled…folks had struggled across the Great Basin and found that there was water (the Carson River), things would grow, and they noticed the really big mountains still to their west and said…we’ll just stop here.

Anyways…I forgot to post this image of the ceiling of the International back in Austin…whole lotta felonies with defacing US currency are stuck up there.

On our arrival in Carson City…we quickly found Comstock Country RV Resort, got checked in, and escorted to our site 135…a nice pull through on gravel albeit a bit short so we had to park Big Red crosswise behind the rig and Li’l Red on the curve to our outside as we’re on the end of the row. The rig we positioned all the way to the front of the site to ensure satellite visibility and to keep the slides out of the trees.

We spent the afternoon resting after doing our regular travel season setup as we’ll be here 8 days…then Neil grilled a steak for dinner and we had the rest of our Beanie Triple Wienie from the other night as a side. It was great…and we started watching some recorded shows on our DirecTV DVR…but by 2115 we were fading fast so it was off to bed for us.

Saturday morning it was time for Fun Stuff©. We headed 100 miles…well, actually only 93…east back through Fallon to Middlegate NV for our first stop.

Yeah…it’s a tree…a cottonwood tree to be precise…but it’s not your everyday garden variety cottonwood tree…no siree it is not. Ya see…it’s actually…

Yup…it is the “Shoe Tree”…well actually it is the new and improved “Shoe Tree” as the original was cut down by heartless shoe tree hating vandals who were never apprehended on December 30, 2010…dastardly criminal masterminds who deserve the death penalty Ima tellin’ ya.

It seems that back in the day…google only identifies anecdotal data and it’s specified as “many decades ago”…a newly married couple (from a Reno quickey wedding chapel) were heading eastbound toward some unspecified home and were camping under the tree…when they got into their very first argument as a married couple. According to the legend…the woman was hot tempered and threatened to walk home. Her husband wasn’t having any of this…so he grabbed her shoes, tied them together, and tossed them into the tree…telling her that she could do it barefoot. He then jumped into the car and headed down the highway to the first bar where he proceeded to start drowning his sorrows and relating the story to the bartender. The bartender convinced him to go back and get her…which he did…and they worked out whatever the fight was about…and just like in the fairy tales they lived happily ever after…returning each year to toss another pair of shoes into the tree as symbols of their undying love.

Or something like that…it is legend and I could not find any actual facts.

Somehow this legend seemed interesting to the locals…who are kinda weird after all for living out in the middle of nowhere (I’ll come back to that in a minute…see if I don’t)…and a tradition was born of travelers tossing a pair of shoes into the tree.

At least until the aforementioned heartless shoe tree hating vandals dastardly criminal masterminds who deserve the death penalty done went and cut down the tree. No matter though…it didn’t take long for the locals to christen another nearby cottonwood tree as the new and improved “Shoe Tree”.

I gotta tellya though…I think the ol’ DLETC really blew it on this one…she drug my bear butt 100 (actually 93 as noted above) miles out into the god forsaken middle of nowhere …to see a tree full of shoes.

Think about that…93 miles…for A. Tree. Full. Of. Shoes. And not a stiletto in the bunch that I could see…even though our Field Trip app (that’s a phone app that monitors your location and tells you when something noteworthy is nearby) said they were there. All I could see were sneakers, flip flops, and the occasional pair of boots.

Most amazing of all…some of them were 50 or 60 feet up in the air and as you can see in the wider shot above they’re across branches that are at most an inch thick…so noway-nohow did anybody climb up there. How many times did they have to throw them up before getting them to stay there…especially as they had to crawl down into the stream a total of how many times less one to retrieve the missed tosses.

Anyways…it was a photo op I guess. Connie the DLETC…well she’s claiming that she only went there because it was 2 miles from our next stop and that otherwise she woulda skipped it…but it was still…93 miles…for a tree…full of shoes.

We headed to our next stop…the Middlegate Station which was both a freight station until the late 1800s or early 1900s as well as serving as one of the Pony Express stations during operation from 1860 through 1861. Middlegate still exists as an unincorporated area along the south side of US-50 and it has a single business that we could see…a combined bar, restaurant, convenience store, gas station, and motel. The joint has 2 claims to fame…they claim to have the best hamburger in Nevada…and Stephen King stayed there for 7 days in the 1990s and wrote a portion of his novel Desperation there.

Here is a photo of a plaque on the front of the bar…serving as absolute 100% living proof that this is the middle of nowhere. Yes…Middlegate…population 18, er 17 as somebody musta died…the Middle of Nowhere.

Me…I always thought the Middle of Nowhere was down in the Atlantic Ocean under the hump of Western Africa and about 2,000 miles southwest from Nigeria. This was based on the old Macintosh operation system 6…back in the early 1980s days of the Macintosh computer…there were these small pieces of software built into the system named Desk Accessories. Anyways…one of these DAs as they were known…well it was Map…and if you called up Map after it loaded you could type in a location and it would locate it on the map for you. Typing in Middle of Nowhere…or MoN, either one would work…took you to this location about where I described it.

So…exactly where…or what…is the Middle of Nowhere. We’ve got some contenders…the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean…Middlegate NV. Now one of my missions is to edumacate ya’ll readers…so I googled it for ya and here’s what I found.

Where it is al depends on what it is…how you define it. According to the googles as President Bush used to say…there are a whole bunch of diners and restaurants that call themselves the MoN…I’ll just use that acronym since Ima gettin’ tired of typing the whole thing…and then there is an album by some band you’ve never heard of…and there’s a MoN movie…and then there’s a song from 2018. Best as I can figger out…there was only one actual definition of MoN to be found…and it was only for the USA. Some guy did the math…his definition for MoN was that it was the location in the USA that was the farthest from any metropolitan area of more than 75,000 people. By his definition…Glasgow MT is the winner…it is almost on the border with Canuckistan in eastern MT. Seems like a USA centric definition to me.

I did run across another page that had a long philosophical argument that the MoN is wherever you want it to be as long as it’s isolated.

Then there is the image above…it’s written down there in brown and white…and since Macintosh OS 6 is no longer with us Ima going with the documentary proof above.

We had a couple of burgers there…they were quite tasty and were definitely the best burger we’ve had in Nevada…but then we’ve only had 2 so statistically that might not be meaningful…but they were definitely really good burgers and not just adequate.

Neil grabbed a few more photos from inside and outside the place.

Whole bunch more felonies here too…seems to be some sort of Nevada tradition.

And a pano of the whole place…the center building is the bar/restaurant/convenience store and the low brown building to the right of the trees in the background is the motel.

After lunch…we headed back towards Carson City with a couple of stops on the way.

Sand Mountain…which was formed from sand from the beaches of the Ice Age Lake Lahotan about 5 miles southeast of it…but you may know it better by the more catchy and easier to remember Northern Paiute name Panitogogwa…which means “giant rattlesnake heading northeast toward a burrow”.

Distant shot…the technical term for it is a sinuous transverse dune…you can see the RVs parked in the dry camping campground at the base…they come here to ride 4 wheelers up and down the mountain.

According to wikipedia…Sand Mountain is 2 miles long and 600 feet high. Neil thought he had captured one of the 4 wheelers up on it when he got the images for the panorama below…but he can’t find it…it woulda just been a li’l black dot anyway.

Aha…found him…he was in the first set of pano images Neil took. This is a highly cropped version of just the farthest left hand of the mountain with the vehicle in it. He was running all the way up to the highest section then coming straight down most of his runs…had to be doing 45 miles and hour going down before coming all the way to his right (image left) to get back into the campground.

With that we headed for our last destination of the day…and I gotta tellya the ol’ DLETC led us astray on this one…although it wasn’t really her fault I guess. It was this abandoned salt mine about 3 crow flies miles southwest of Sand Mountain but about 7 miles by road…or so she thought. She had grabbed the GPS coordinates which we used to try and navigate there…but instead of getting them herself from the google maps satellite view…she copied them off of another web site and that site had mistyped some of the numbers. We went a half mile east from Sand Mountain then turned south and west toward what we thought was the salt mine on an unpaved, mostly sand road for about 4 miles. We could see the remaining salt mine machinery and buildings…but was on the other side of the salt lake from where we were…and while it looked like the road we were on would eventually get ‘round the lake it was getting progressively more and more sandy. We decided that discretion was the better part of valor since Li’l Red isn’t an off road vehicle…so we gave up, retraced the 4 miles back to the highway…and headed home.

Originally…we were supposed to stop in Fallon to get the final stamp we need (you need 5 total) on our Loneliest Road in America Passport to get our “I Survived…” certificates. The nice lady bartender at Middlegate had the stamps though and took care of us…so we just blasted…well, the speed limit is 25 for about 4 or 5 miles so blasted is the wrong term I guess…on through Fallon then took the Carson Highway south and west to Carson City. We stopped by Walmart to get a few needed vittles…we’ve a larger run scheduled for Wednesday but we needed a pepper and onions for tomorrow’s Carne Asada Grilled Pork…and then headed home for dinner.

We were still pretty full from lunch…at least Neil was…so Connie had a microwave chimichanga and Neil had a handful of crackers a little later. We left room for ice cream later though.

Tomorrow is Father’s Day…and to celebrate it Neil’s gonna do laundry. That is OK with him though because Father’s Day is a made up holiday and nobody gives a hoot about fathers anyway. Connie will head off after Mass and lunch to get her nails done…mebbe she’ll make something out of Father’s Day for him later on…then Neil will grill the aforementioned Carne Asada Grilled Pork…which we’ll have on corn tortillas for dinner.

We have more Fun Stuff© scheduled for Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday…with mostly do nothing days on Wednesday and Friday…I’ll report on those later on in the week.

Interesting stuff found in our email this week…but email comes via the internet so clearly this falls under the “interesting stuff found on the net” category.

Cyas.

With our work in Delta UT complete…and with only 94 miles to go to our next stop…we didn’t pull out of the campground until past 1030 to continue heading west…next stop Baker NV, about 10 miles across the state line and the location of the visitor centers and entrance to Great Basin National Park.

If you’ll recall from the other day…I wrote about roads that are “god-forsaken ass end of the middle of nowhere”…and surely enough, continuing west out of Delta was more of that sort of road.

Immediately as we left the city limits…right past the sign that said Speed Limit 65…we passed the one that said “Next Services 80 miles”.

Yes indeed…it was that kinda road…again.

Here’s a shot Neil took through the windshield of Big Red as we drove. Good thing we didn’t need to pee because there wasn’t even a spot where we coulda done so if we needed to…although I guess we could pulled into one of the gravel/dirt roads that very occasionally departed the highway on the way to some ranch or other. Of course…that would have required backing the rig back out onto the highway…and although normally we’re quite fine about that backing out into a 65 mph speed limit highway isn’t something we routinely accomplish. Of course…there weren’t any cars so in all likelihood it woulda been perfectly fine. We saw maybe 10 vehicles going the other way in 94 miles…and almost all of them were RVs of one sort or another…and saw exactly one car going west as he passed us. Predictably…despite the numerous long stretches of highway that were ruler straight and you could see at least 3 miles in front of us…that idiot passed us…well Big Red anyway…on a no passing zone marked curve.

We arrived 94 miles later in Baker and pulled into our campground…Whispering Elms…and I gotta tell ya it’s appearance makes most Alaskan campgrounds look like resorts. Gravel sites, doesn’t look like they ever mow the grass around the utility pedestals, and an owner who should be named Mr. Grumpy to boot.

We backed into our site 21…difficult as Mr. Grumpy led us to the site from the wrong direction which meant essentially no room to back into the site. He left and we turned around in the narrow cul-de-sac and backed in…only to find out that the power wasn’t working. 

Neil checked with our tester and a voltmeter…the 50 amp circuit which we would definitely need for running A/C units…had 120 volts on one side and 0 volts on the other side. He checked the adjacent site…it worked…and wandered up to the office to see what they wanted us to know. At this point…Mr. Grumpy asked us what the heck we were doing troubleshooting his power pedestals…and that he could do that himself. He also said that he had a 50 amp unit in there the night before and it was working fine. Neil told him it wasn’t working fine now…at that point the guy got pissed, left, and sent his wife out to deal with it. The easy to back in site next to us on one side was already reserved for the night and the site on our other side was too short. She asked if we had an extension cord…we do…and told us to just plug into the short site power pedestal and they wouldn’t put anybody there.

I don’t know about that guy…a little later he was friendly and actually only charged us 2 nights instead of the 3 we reserved since there was a power issue…but then we went up the next day to see why the campground wifi quit working and he was grumpy again.

So…long story short…if you want to visit Great Basin National Park you’ll either have to put up with him…or not visit…there were two other “campgrounds” in town but they looked even rougher.

So…getting on to the only reason we stopped here…if it had not been to visit the park we would have just skipped here, overnighted farther west, and then continued on to Carson City where we’ll be Friday evening.

We have mixed feelings about this park…we’re glad we came because it’s another one checked off the list and the views were decent as well as the visitor center and movies…but on the other hand there’s really not much to do here. There are two visitor centers…one for the park as a whole and one for the cave section. We visited both but had zero interest in going into the cave…all of the tours were already full anyway but that made no difference to us.

Other than the visitor centers and the caves…there is a 12 mile scenic drive up to 10,000+ feet on the flank of 13,063 Wheeler Peak. However, the road turned out to be closed at about the 6 mile point at 8,500 feet…here it is June 11 and the road is still blocked by ice and snow. Nuts I tellya.

We did learn something interesting about the park at the visitor center…prior to our visit we all thought that the Great Basin was essentially a large depression…albeit it at fairly high elevation…surrounded on all sides by mountains…the Cascades and Sierra to the west and Rockies to the east. However…turns out that it is a basin surrounded by higher mountains…but it is full of mountains on its own with valleys between them. However…since the surrounding peaks are higher on all sides…none of the streams or rivers in the basin drain to the ocean…they all end up in lakes contained within the basin.

Here’s a 10,000 mile view of the entire basin…as you can see it’s bounded by the Cascades and Sierras to the west and the ranges of UT and western CO on the east…but there are numerous north/south running ranges with lower maximum peaks throughout the basin.

Before we got to the visitor center…we stopped by the Baker Archeological site right outside the park. There was a dig there of an old Indian village but it was completely reburied after the dig was complete. There’s a path through the village with information signs…but all you can see is flat ground so we skipped it.

We did spot this Horned Lark…we’re pretty sure…sitting on the fence at the site though. Took us awhile to figure out what it was…until finally we looked at the second head on photo and could see the yellow throat…until then we had discounted the Hooded Lark as being the species since we couldn’t see the yellow even though the rest of the head/chest and back markings steered us towards it.

Kind of a funky direct on pose with the wind ruffling his feathers…but you can easily see the horn like feathers that give it the name as well as the yellow throat, black whiskers, white eye band, and black stripe across the upper chest.

View from slightly behind him…the horn feather shows up in this one a little better as well.

And Neil got a panorama of the mountains in this region of the park…the peaks are about 7,000 feet higher than the elevation in the valley where Baker is located.

As well as a closeup of either Wheeler Peak or it’s slightly shorter 12,771 foot Jeff Davis Peak…from the visitor center Wheeler isn’t visible as it’s behind Jeff Davis but from the location about 3 miles NW of the visitor center we weren’t sure if we could see past Jeff Davis or not…but based on the profile we don’t think so.

This is the Forgotten Winchester…as you can see in 1914 it was found leaning against a juniper tree in a remote section of the park…having survived over100 years of exposure to the weather. There was no indication what happened to the owner. Neil had heard this story before but didn’t realize it was at Great Basin.

After entering the park proper…

We stopped by the cave visitor center…the main one was outside the park in town…the only thing there worth seeing was the Rhodes Cabin…we have no idea what this is as there was no informational sign nearby…obviously something from the early settler days.

The scenic drive was nice…at least the half of it we got to go on…and the views were also pretty nice but there were no pullouts for photo taking except at the location where road was closed to traffic.

Taken from the top…this is Jeff Davis Peak and/or Wheeler Peak…again, no informational sign available.

About 1000 feet down from the top…we found a pullout we had missed and got a shot of the valley. Baker is right in the center of the photo.

And a close up of the entire town of Baker…yep, that’s it. Toldya it was in the middle of nowhere…67 full-time residents according to Mr. Grumpy with maybe 150 if you include summer only residents.

Connie grabbed this shot from Li’l Red as we drove back into town…a bustling metropolis…two bars, two motels and one place to eat…good thing we were planning on cooking and drinking at home anyway.

After dinner…beanie-triple wienie with 3 kinds of sausage in it…we wandered up to the bar in the campground for a beer. The good news was that they had Alaskan Amber Ale on tap…the bad news was that Mr. Grumpy…who we learned is actually named Chuck…was the bartender. We were the only customers at the bar…he sold 5 different locals their afternoon take out brews and he was much friendlier to the locals than his paying customers. Seems kinda wrong to me…but then that’s just me.

Wednesday after breakfast…we headed out about 0800 for a 60 mile trip west to Ely NV…pronounced Ellie as in Elly May Clampett and not as a long “eye” sound as in Elijah. That is the place you can pickup your Loneliest Road in America passport…it chronicles your drive across US-50 in Nevada and I gotta agree that from what we done seen so far it’s aptly named. We will need to get a total of 5 different stamps as we drive across…then we turn in the passport for a certificate that we survived the Loneliest Road in America. 

Since I mentioned it…a couple of Beverly Hillbilly tidbits. Only 3 characters appeared in all 274 episodes…Jed, Granny, and and Elly May. Jethro (Max Baer, Jr) who appears in 272 episodes is the only cast member still alive at age 81 as of June 2019. His fifth grade education was an inside joke for the cast as he actually has a degree in Business Administration with a minor in Philosophy from Santa Clara University.

I toldya the road was famous…even the GPS in Li’l Red knows about it.

We stopped for about 20 minutes for road construction…they’re doing chip and seal repaving across the pass through the mountains directly west of Baker and Great Basin National Park…as I said before there are a series of north/south mountain ranges separating lower valleys throughout the Great Basin…the passes are all about 7,500 to 8,000 feet high with the mountains another 1,000 or so higher than that…the valleys are down in the 4,500 to 6,000 feet range. 

While we were stopped at the construction flagman…Neil got these pano shots looking both ways from the side of the road…it kinda illustrates the mountain rows separated by valleys I was talking about…well actually he took these as we came back when we stopped at the other side of the repaving flagman, but I digress…they fit better here. These are just about 180 degree views…we continue to be impressed by the deep blue sky color you see out here in the west…and the ridges are 8-10 miles distant.

On arrival in Ely…we stopped by the Bristlecone Pine Convention Center and Chamber of Commerce, picked up our Loneliest Road passports, and chatted for a bit with a nice young fella there who grew up in Jacksonville before moving to Ely…his goal is to ski down the backside of Wheeler Peak in Great Basin National Park on July 4th…with the amount of snow left on the peaks we’ve seen that’s a highly likely outcome. After that…we headed off to our other destination in Ely…the Nevada Norther Railway National Historic Landmark.

It turns out that back in 1905…a copper deposit of about 13 square miles was discovered just west of Ely NV…and at 1% copper in the ore it’s one of the richest copper veins in the US. It was mined from 1906 to 1983 when it shut down due to low copper prices…started back up in the mid 90s for 3 or 4 years…shut down again, and opened again in 2004 and remains open today…as long as the price of copper stays above $2 a pound they can make a profit. The Northern Nevada Railroad was established to move the copper from the mines to customers on the main railroad lines…it originally transported the raw ore but later on in the first incarnation of the mine a smelter  was built at the mine and the railroad transported finished copper. When the mine was reopened in the 1990s…the smelter was not used any longer as a chemical process was used at the mine instead…this increases the copper percentage in the output to about 50% using about 10% of the energy of either the smelting or electroplating copper extraction process and about 10% of the workforce for either of those methods. By that time…better roads and trucks made moving the semi-finished copper by road more economical.

The railroad itself closed in 1983…but when they originally closed they told the workers that they were being laid off…not that the company would be closed. This meant that none of the workers appropriated any tools or equipment since they anticipated they would be back to work in a few weeks…but the layoff never ended. This meant that the entire railroad yard was essentially abandoned in place with tools, paperwork, forms, and everything else needed to run a railroad left on the shelves…which in turn allowed the museum to be almost a perfect replica of the original depot since it was in fact the original depot.

On the grounds there is the museum…which consists of the depot buildings and the still in use engine house which is used for maintaining the rolling stock of the Nevada Northern Railroad…this stock includes both early 1900 steam locomotives as well as modern diesel-electric ones as well as original passenger and hopper cars from 1910. An affiliated for-profit company runs a variety of train tours out of the depot out to the mines and back. These tours range from the $35 a person ride very similar to what we did at Royal Gorge all the way through the $3,766 Supreme Package…which gives you 2 rides, one on a steam engine and one diesel-electric pulling actual trains of the $35 each riders and in which you get to actually be the engine with your hands on the throttle. There’s also a Railroad Reality Week…which for a mere $1,156 gives you a week of living in the caboose, eating railroad food, working on tracks and doing maintenance on the stock…and for a miserly $719 add on price you can get the same Engineer experience…such a deal.

We passed on all of that and selected the $8 each self guided walking tour around the depot…that was plenty of train for us.

Early 1900s passenger car.

One of the administrative offices of the railroad…the supply room we think as it’s still full of all the original pads, pens, and forms needed to run the railroad.

1939 mimeograph machine…hand cranked. It brings back old memories of Connie and Neil’s first semester in college…they were both in the marching band and took over the publishing of the band newsletter named “The Windy Chord”…it was produced for distribution on a hand cranked mimeo machine that while not identical to this one…use the same operating principles and power to produce mimeo newsletters…we can still recall the smell of the mimeo fluid that was used.

Today…they have these superwhamperdyne snow blowers that are bolted to the front of a locomotive…they drive down the track and this huge fan thing on the front sucks the snow in and blasts it 200 or 250 feet to the side. Back in the day…before the superwhamperdyne blower thing was invented they used a basic old snowplow that was pushed by a locomotive.

Coal and water towers used for stocking up the steam locomotives for the run out to the mine and back.

1910 era boxcars…at least according to the Built in stencils on the side.

Old time log carrier.

The old #93 steam locomotive…built in 1909 at a cost of $17,610…used until 1961 when it was retired and donated to the White Pine Public Museum in Ely where it was a static display until 1990. Towed back to the depot then…and completely refurbished and returned service in 1993…still in use today after another rebuild and boiler inspection in 2017…another will not be needed until 2032. As part of this rebuild…axle #2 was discovered to have cracks…calls to the warranty department at the American Locomotive Company went unanswered…so they had to weld build up and then turn down both it and the remaining axles to eliminate cracks.

The photo even has engineers looking at something on the locomotive.

Neil spotted this strange car with the auger on the front of it…no idea what it’s for…looks more like a post hole digging sort of auger than a stone drilling sort of auger though.

Connie was really enamored with the two engineers looking at #93.

Looking from the engine house back through the depot.

And here comes the return of the daily excursion train. It comes back from its 7 mile outbound trip heading behind the gray building on the left from the lower left out of frame to top center out of view down the hill in the shot above. From there it reverses direction to back through the depot, past the engine house, then reverses direction again and proceeds into the depot for debarking. I presume that it departs the same way…although that would require backing up the whole 7 mile outbound leg…which seems unlikely so there’s got to be a turn around down on the other side of the depot somewhere to allow it to proceed ahead out of the depot then curve around to the left to head out. That would also require some sort of turn around at the far end as well as when we spotted it coming back it was going ahead and not in reverse.  

Just about to pass the engine house where we were waiting on it.

Neil tried to get Connie to “make like a hobo” and hop a freight…but she wasn’t interested. ‘Sides…the railroad guys standing nearby woulda stopped us I guess.

After the train had backed about 20 yards past where Neil is standing in the shot above…and past the switch…an action shot as the engineer climbed down and switched the switch the other way so that he could pull ahead into the depot.

Then he proceed ahead and stopped to debark his sightseers in front of the white building past the red cargo warehouse.

Heading into the engine house…here’s a set of refurbished steam locomotive wheels…you can see the attachments points for the rods coming from the piston and connecting to the wheels. I think this is a set for #93…it’s a 2-8-0 locomotive which means it has 2 wheels at the front to help guide it around curves, 8 powered wheels, and no trailing wheels.

This says it’s a foundry pattern…and it might be that just in case the railroad had to have new wheels cast…but it’s sitting on an old milling machine which is used to help re-manufacture the single piece axles to eliminate cracking. The cracks are ground out and then weld filled to build up new material…then the milling machine turns them to be circular again and apply the correct finish and angle.

Interesting thing about train wheels. One might think from looking at the axle that there’s the lip which rides on the inside of the rail…and that the outer portion of the wheel that rides on top of the rail is cylindrical in shape…but it is actually conical in shape.

Think about it…when the train goes around a curve…the inside edge of the outer rail is longer than the inside edge of the inner rail as it’s on the outside of the curve. This means that the rolling distance is farther around the outside rail than the inside. However…the axle is one piece and the inner and outer wheels turn the exact same number of revolutions as it goes around the curve. So…how to account for the longer travel distance on the outside rail? Simple really…the portion of the wheel that rides on top of the rail is conical in cross section with the outside edge being smaller in diameter than the inner. So…as the train goes ‘round the curve…the entire axle shifts to the outside so that the diameter of the outside wheel where it sits on the rail is larger than the corresponding diameter on the inside wheel…hence for one wheel revolution the outside wheel actually travels farther as it’s circumference is larger where it sits on the rail.

We never knew that…until it was ‘splained to us at one of the train museums we visited in our past travels…but it makes perfect sense once you realize how it works…but I digress into minutia again, sorry ‘bout that…but I canna help m’self…I do likes me a good rathole to go down.

Old #93 is getting some maintenance done on it right now…you might have wondered how broke locomotives got moved ‘round the railroad yard to the repair shop and back to the storage area…now you know as hooked up to the back of it is the railroad equivalent of a tow truck. It was built for the Kennecott Mining Company and obviously bought from them sometime after they closed their Nevada operations.

Another old steam locomotive…but there was no indication whether #40 is getting repaired/rebuilt to just a static display.

Ever wonder what the inside of a steam locomotive boiler looks like? Well…wonder no more…here’s the inside of another locomotive…again no idea whether this is a static display or an ongoing restoration. Since getting #93 running again back in 2016 cost a half million bucks…maybe this is a long term project that is waiting on funding for rebuild.

Another shot of #40 with an older diesel-electric #109 in the background. There were a total of about 8 or 9 locomotives in the engine house.

Close up of the front of #93…obviously undergoing some sort of boiler maintenance…this may be just an access plate to the front of the builder as (a) it’s not due for another boiler inspection until 2032 and (b) there’s no series of bolts that hold the boiler end cap on visible. My guess is that juts allows access to the forward end of the boiler cap and other related machinery.

This is how you keep locomotives…or other rolling stock…from rolling away. There are brakes on the wheels of non-locomotive cars and on the coal tender car…but we did not see any on the locomotive itself. Brakes are air operated today with air being needed to hold them off the wheels…so they fail to stop the car without air…and there is also a hand crank on each car to manually hold them engaged to the wheels. Back in the days before air brakes…the train was stopped by the brakeman manually engaging the hand wheels…but mostly by reversing the flow of steam to the wheels and letting compression in the cylinders help slow the drive wheels on the locomotive. However…with no actual brake shoes on the locomotive…these little chock things lock to the track to hold a stopped locomotive in place. Modern diesel-electric locomotives just apply reverse polarity voltage to the drive motors attached to each wheel to stop the train in addition the air powered brakes on each car.

Kennecott caboose #22. Four of these were built in the mid 1950s for their Nevada operations…two remain as of 2019…this one and another one owned by the Heber Valley Railroad and used for sightseeing trains in and around Deer Creek Reservoir in Heber City UT southeast of the Great Salt Lake.

We stopped at the Golden Arches for some lunch and headed back…after stopping at the Great Basin Heritage Center…conveniently located right next to the driveway to Whispering Elms…we now have 2 of the required 5 stamps in our passports that are needed for the”I survived” certificate…ya know it’s the little things that count in life…doncha?

Close up view of one of the ridges from the panorama shot way back towards the beginning of this section of the post. This was taken at the construction stop which was about 8 miles long on the western side approach to the first ridge west of Baker. 

Thursday we started underway preps about 0800 for our 209 mile drive to Austin NV…basically it is the closest town to the halfway point between Baker and Carson City. We were out of the park about 0925, stopped briefly in Ely for DEF for Big Red and gas for Li’l Red…diesel was fine…and again briefly in Eureka for lunch before continuing on to Austin…and I can definitely confirm that “The Loneliest Road in America” is an apropos name. The last pass over into Austin was a real bear…6% uphill and curvy on the eastern side to about 7,700 feet then 7% down and really, really curvy heading down…and did I mention it was raining by that time. The speed limit was only 25 heading downhill and Neil had Big Red in 2nd gear all the way down to Austin…population 192. We pulled into the Pony Express RV right after entering town from the east…a gravel parking lot but it has 7 pull through sites and we quickly grabbed #6. We put on power, de-aired the hitch on Big Red and grounded the front jacks after putting out the slides…and we’re camping.

Dinner was a burger and a BLT and beer at a local joint…and we’ll head out the last 175 miles to Carson City tomorrow…where we’ll stay for 8 nights as we need groceries and laundry in addition to our Fun Stuff©…and we worked a couple of rest days into the schedule as we’re pretty tired after the last few weeks of 2-3 night stops. We ate at the International Bar and Cafe which used to be the Last Chance Saloon but it went bust. Before we knew that our second choice and now first choice was the Silver State Bar and Grill. It it went bust too so it was back to the new and improved International. We passed on the Owl Club.

Sorry…no interesting stuff found on the net this time either…internet connectivity and spare time in Baker was very limited so I didn’t have time to find any. I’ll try to do better. This is all I got for ya.

Cyas.

With our work in Green River done…we headed out Friday morning for the 180 mile transit to Delta UT. Although it was a relatively short day…we were still up and starting to get ready for the move by 0700. The reason is that our sole Fun Stuff© stop in Delta…the Topaz Museum (which ain’t whatcha think)…isn’t open on Sunday. Therefore…we needed to get to Delta early enough to get parked and setup and still visit the museum before it closes for the day at 1700.

Leaving Green River…we headed west on I-70/US-50 past the turnoff for UT-24 where we headed south to Capitol Reef the day before. The road then had a pretty steep grade for about 3 miles as we climbed to the top of the Waterpocket Fold that forms the western backbone of the park. Up close…the fold is a pretty impressive obstacle…but unfortunately there was no place to stop for an up close photo

We did stop at the Black Canyon viewpoint at the top for a couple of photos…then continued on west to Salina UT. Unbeknownst to us…there were another couple of summits we would also need head across…they were labeled summits at the top rather than passes…I’m not sure what the difference is as both pretty much looked like passes through the mountains to us. Once we got to Salina…US-50 diverged from the freeway and we continued west to the intersection with I-15, south a couple of exits, then back off onto 50 for the last 35 miles or so into Delta.

Black Canyon view from the top of the Waterpocket Fold.

Panoramic shot looking south into Salt Wash…our second viewpoint stop on the way to Delta.

We pulled into Antelope Valley RV Park and checked in…the lady at the desk took our money and told us to pick a spot and come back after to tell her which one we took. We got one on the back row away from the road…site 28…since it had good satellite visibility and backed up to the fields south of the campground. We grabbed a bite for lunch and did enough setup to let us start our dishwasher as it was full…then headed off to the Topaz Museum.

You’ll recall that awhile back over in Kansas…we attempted to visit the Granada Relocation Center…or Camp Amache. This was one of the 10 relocation camps where both Japanese nationals and US citizens of Japanese descent were essentially placed into concentration camps after the bombing at Pearl Harbor in December 1941. This was not one of our government’s finest moments…as a later study showed that exactly zero instances of sabotage or anything else supporting the Japanese government during WWII was performed or attempted by anyone of Japanese ancestry. The whole thing was essentially a hysteria induced detention of primarily US citizens…despite it being strongly argued against by many in the administration…including the director of the FBI Herbert Hoover. I can’t imagine that anything similar would happen today…although there are a lot of eerie parallels to the way that US citizens who originated in the Middle East or have Arabic sounding names have been treated since 9/11. Like the Japanese during WWII…a lot of US citizens have been painted with labels that they don’t deserve. Yes…I know that Saudi based terrorists were responsible for that attack…but there’s still a lot of hysteria going around about folks that look like the 9/11 plotters or have names that sound like them. Many US citizens…both naturalized and native born…have been tarred with the brush of undeserved responsibility for those attacks.

Anyway…after all the Japanese and Japanese Americans were essentially kicked out of their homes, businesses, jobs, and lives on the west coast with basically a 1 week notice…they were moved to relocation centers primarily located in the west. Two of these were Camp Amache in Kansas…which you’ll recall we tried to visit a few weeks back but were stopped by the muddy clay roads…and a town in Utah named Topaz.

Once the detainees were allowed to leave in early 1945 and return to their homes…most of the ones in Topaz were from the San Francisco Bay Area…the camp itself was dismantled and sold…almost like the government wanted to eliminate all traces of something they knew was just wrong. Luckily a couple of original buildings and many artifacts were rescued from loss, largely through the efforts of the camp staff and other local residents here in Delta.

Topaz itself was located about 5 miles north of Delta in the middle of the desert…and was the home of 7,000 or so detainees from mid 1942 to early 1945. 

One local resident of Delta…came home after the war and was horrified by the treatment of his fellow citizens…and started a campaign to construct a museum dedicated to the camp. It existed in a small building for a number of years but was eventually replaced by the current building.

Shells collected locally, bleached, and assembled into jewelry and other small decorative items by the detainees for sale.

Aerial contemporary photo of Topaz.

Reproduction of one of the barracks rooms…a family of 8 shared this one with the parents and two small children in this room and the four older children in an identical adjacent room. Each block in the camp had 16 barracks each with 4 rooms this size, a latrine, mess hell, and recreation room.

This is an actual recreation room from one of the blocks…since the entire camp was torn down and sold I presume that a local purchased the building and then donated it for reconstruction later to the museum.

All in all…a pretty nice little museum dedicated to one of our country’s less than stellar moments in history. I can sort of understand the problem the administration faced back then…with the culture differences between Japan and the US…the government was concerned that some of the Japanese here were spies or saboteurs who had been secretly placed there by the Japanese government before the war. Not a correct assumption…but given the times…it is at least understandable if not acceptable.

That was our sole reason for stopping here in Delta…we headed home and had a steak for dinner. Sunday was church and some planning for our next few stops and Monday we’ll head another 90 miles west to Baker NV…where we’ll pick up the start of the “Loneliest Road in America”…US-50 across Nevada.

Cyas.