SAN DIEGO ZOO

On another day during our week in early December we visited the famed San Diego Zoo. Jo and I had been there several years ago, and we found a few changes. There is an aerial tram to take visitors diagonally across the park, connecting the entrance area to the lower area near the bottom of the canyon. We were there on a cool day, so most of the animals were “out and about”, not sleeping in dens as is often the case in the middle of the summer.

  Sorry that I do not remember the name of these animals. Senior moments?

 

Reindeer in the elephant enclosure.

 

 Flamingos

 

The panda display was popular with the visitors on our day. Luckily for us there were relatively few people at the zoo that day..

 

 

This two hump camel seems to be in his winter coat.

OLD TOWN SAN DIEGO

 

The first part of the San Diego area settled was virtually abandoned after several years. It has been redeveloped with buildings replicating the original buildings in the area. It now is a California State Park, with commercial development for tourists surrounding it. It is now in a large mixed residential and commercial area.

 

Street scene. Many of the buildings are occupied by craftsmen showing the kind of activity conducted in the building originally, such as a blacksmith’s shop, tin shop, and general store in the background.

Here is the square.

This church outside the state park remains in use.

 

A building developed adjacent to the state park was built and is maintained by the LDS church commemorating the Mormon Battalion. In several rooms it tells the story of the U S Army recruiting Mormons then living in Iowa and other parts of the Midwest to form an all Mormon battalion to go west. The battalion was not intended to be used for any fighting by the army, and it did not do any fighting. Its purpose was to get civilians into California to bolster the U S claims to the area during a war with Mexico. It took the battalion (the lightly trained men were accompanied by wives and older children) about 6 months to make the trip to southern California. By the time they arrived the war with Mexico was over. The rest of their 1 year  enlistment period was used in doing construction in the San Diego area. Money earned by the members of the battalion was used to finance the large migration of the Mormons into Utah.

 

The docent, a senior citizen doing mission work for the Church, demonstrated the equipment used by members of the battalion by dressing up a tourist in the guided tour with some of the items supplied by the Army – rifle, canteen, ammunition pouch, etc. We highly recommend the museum. It uses some unusual display techniques, including talking portraits such as those seen in Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies.

SAN DIEGO VISIT DECEMBER 2012 NIXON LIBRARY AND BIRTHPLACE

 

We used a timeshare week beginning Dec.1 to visit the San Diego area. The timeshare resort was in Solana Beach near the Del Mar racetrack. We had a  nice one-bedroom 2 bath unit equipped with a flat screen TV and even a dishwasher! This was our first road trip in our newly-acquired 2008 Prius. We got 44 mpg on the way over and 47 mpg on the way back.

On Dec. 3 we visited the Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, about 80 miles north of San Diego. While it rained on the way up, the rain was mostly over with by the time we arrived and when we left 3 hours later the sun was peeking through the clouds once in a while. I was no fan of Nixon, but the visit prompted me to read for the first time the Woodward and Bernstein book “All the President’s Men”.

The focusing problem with the pictures in the first posting of this series of blogs was not in the camera but in the software and my not understanding quite how it worked. Now that I have learned, I have deleted the fuzzy images and inserted the sharper  ones. 

This display told about  Nixon’s campaign for the U S Senate in 1950. He used a yellow Mercury station wagon and he stood on the rear fold-down tailgate for speeches.

And here is the front of the car. I do not recall having seen a Mercury station wagon of this vintage before.

 

One of the displays was statues of world leaders with whom Nixon met during his career in politics. Shown are Winston Churchill, Charles Degaulle and Konrad Adenour. There was a disclaimer in a sign that Nixon had selected the persons whose statues appeared and their presence did not constitute and endorsement of any by the Library.

 

This is a replica of the Lincoln Room of the White House.

And here is his limo.

 

Jo in front of Nixon’s birthplace, a rather modest home which then was in a citrus grove. The building has not been moved.

 

Closeup of the inscriptions in front of the house.

 

Behind his birthplace is the helicopter in which Nixon often flew. The picture below gives an idea of its size. It would carry 18 passengers. 

The following are shots in the Rose Garden behind the main building.

JEEPERS CREEPERS TRIP TO CHILDS POWER PLANT NOV. 29, 2012

 

The Jeepers Creepers had a nice but long trip to the site of the Childs Power Plant along the Verde River on Nov. 29. Five vehicles took 14 members and guests to this historic remote spot Flowing springs at the head of Fossil Canyon provided enough head of water to supply two generating stations.   Both have been decommissioned by Arizona Public Service Co. and the Fossil Creek road down the canyon is closed with no plans to reopen it.

We gathered for a coffee break at the Mazatazal Casino south of Payson.

 

 

We found a nice spot for our lunch, with a fire for cooking hot dogs, etc. along the banks of the Verde River close to the power plant site..

More eager eaters!

 

And still more.

 

 

Falls on Fossil Creek upstream from the power plant and along the road accessing it from Camp Verde.

test blog on gateway computer

 

I recently got a small Gateway computer with a  10” screen for easy portability. I just finished installing blog software on it and this is a test  using sample pictures as I have not yet downloaded any photos to this machine.

I

Chrysanthemum

Monument Valley AZ

JEEEPERS CREEPERS FIRST TRIP OF 2012 – 2013 SEASON - BACK WAY TO MT. LEMMON

On November 8 five vehicles with 10 Jeepers Creepers members and two guests made the long trip south to Oracle and up the Oracle Control road to Mt. Lemmon and Summerhaven in the Catalina Mountains about 30 miles from Tucson. The road has some maintenance and does not require four wheel drive, but it is a bit bumpy in two lower stretches and for the last few miles.

Our coffee break was at the Tom Mix Memorial rest stop. Do you remember western movies starring Tom Mix? He died near here in 1940 in a car accident.

Austin Hulcher told me that years ago the Jeepers Creepers attempted to take the Oracle Control road but found that it had been closed for the season after starting up it. As far as we know this is the first time the group has gone over this road.

Left to right in front of the monument, standing: Mike Williams, Tom Holz, guest Jerry Caldwell, Elsie Holz, and Mary Ellen Hulcher. 

Seated: Steve and Linda Robertson,  guest Candy Caldwell, Jeff Clyde and Jo Clyde  Strong.

Missing are Austin Hulcher and Bill Strong

 

Jo and Bill Strong, the group leaders for the outing.

Our road wound around foothills and valleys for many miles like this before getting serious about gaining elevation. In all we had  24 miles of unpaved road between Oracle and the paved Catalina Highway at the top. It led us down the mountain to Tucson.

Our lunch stop after we picked up everything , just a mile or so from the Catalina Highway. A fire burned the canyon in the background. There are homes at the top but it appeared that none were destroyed by the fire. If we were to take the trip again,  we should use one of several spots where the road gets into Ponderosa pines before reaching this windy site.

GRAND CANYON AND HOME FROM SUMMER TRIP

The last stop of our 2012 summer trip (almost 7500 miles in 5 months) was at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, where we met Barb and Mike Williams, Barbara's daughter Laura McNurlen, Laura’s daughter Katie, and the newlyweds, Nathan and Mattia McNurlen, for a weekend. Our sightseeing was limited to the western part of the park served exclusively by the free shuttle bus system. We returned to Mesa on October 8.

There are so many great views of the Grand Canyon that it is hard to edit the pictures down to the better ones.

Here is a great view of the Bright Angel Trail from the South Rim traversed by the mules through the trees at the bottom and to Plateau Point in the upper left. A branch from this trail goes to the river where hikers can cross on a pedestrian bridge to reach Phantom Ranch at the foot of Bright Angel Canyon coming down from the North Rim.

 

This shot gives a bit of the impression of the depth of the canyon. The inner gorge is at the bottom of the far right area of very dark rock.

This view is from Hermit’s Rest at the western end of the developed South Rim. It is one of he few places in the park from which the Colorado River may be seen. In June 2011 I travelled over 180 miles on a commercial rafting trip down the river, including the part shown here.

 

Here is our group – Nathan and Mattia McNurlen, Laura McNurlen, Jeff Clyde, Barbara Williams, Jo Clyde Strong and Mike Williams.

At the El Tovar Hotel gift shop, we found this display of china replicating the patterns used in the Santa Fe railroad dining cars. We rarely see pieces like these in antique stores in our travels. We now have our morning coffee in one of four Santa Fe cups!

 

Late in the day we visited Yaki Point a little east of the hotel complex area as the sun was going down. The shadows nicely highlight the formations in the canyon. Bright Angel Canyon is at the left.

 

 

And here is Bright Angel Canyon (in the upper part of the picture) the next day when the sun is nearly over head.

While on the trip I decided to part with the 1993 Nissan convertible I have driven for nearly 5 years, so here it is all spiffed up for sale. A young man from a nearby neighborhood had been admiring it during the summer, I found out, and as soon as he spotted it in the driveway he stopped to confirm that it was for sale. He bought it a few days later.

So on November 1 we replaced the convertible with this 2008 Prius in my favorite color. We are looking forward to learning how to get the 50 mpg of which it is capable.