The most incredible thing I've ever seen

Yesterday I drove north from Phoenix, stopping at Montezuma's Caste National Monument.  It wasn't built by Aztecs, so the European-given name isn't really appropriate, but it's a wonderful example of cliff dwellings.  The Verde Valley of Arizona was a popular trading route, and the Indians who lived here 700 years ago were farmers and traders.





From there, it was about 100 miles to the Grand Canyon.  I planned a trip to the Canyon about 20 years ago, but had car trouble on the way and couldn't complete the journey.  I'm so glad I was able to see this place, finally!  No words that I could say here can add to what anybody else has said to describe it.  It is simply the most beautiful place I have ever seen.  To walk around with hundreds of people who are feeling exactly the same thing is an amazing experience as well.  Surely, God is by far the greatest artist ever!

Crossing the desert

On Saturday, I drove across the desert from Southern California to Phoenix, Arizona.
Here are the pictures...



As I drove through southeastern California, there were beautiful mountains to the right.  These are the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument.





After passing Palm Springs, with its "oasis in the desert" look and its entertainment complexes, the Joshua Tree National Park is just to the north of the highway.  It's actually a combination of two deserts.  The one farther north, which I didn't drive through, actually has the Joshua trees (they kinda look like combinations of a tree and a cactus).  Apparently, the temperatures aren't as consistently high up there, and they can survive.  The lower part of the desert (the Colorado desert), which I saw, was very dry and very hot.  It had some scrubby plants, but nothing much higher than your head.

As I crossed into Arizona, I saw a dust storm blowing in the distance.  It was probably about the size of a house, not much bigger than that.  Sometimes drivers have to stop for big ones.

I had never seen a great big sajuaro cactus growing in the wild.  There was a section of I-10 where they were growing all over the place on both sides of the road.  I couldn't get a picture until I stopped at a rest area.  They appeared to be about 15 to 20 feet tall.



Temperatures on the highway rose to 111 degrees!  At night, it only fell to about 82, even though it was 104 at 7:30 and 102 at 8:30pm.  They expect EVEN HOTTER days this week!

Two libraries, two days

On Friday, I visited the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California.  Yorba Linda is in the eastern part of the Los Angeles area, just above Anaheim.

The visit starts with a film specially made for the museum.  President Nixon actually narrates quite a bit of it, which is kinda spooky, but cool.  What I liked about this museum was that they didn't sugar-coat the Watergate affair; it was addressed at length.  In the film, Nixon is candid about his successes and his failures.
He and Pat's gravesites are at the end of a beautiful garden path, and just beyond that is Nixon's birthplace, moved here from nearby Whittier.

Flag from President Nixon's casket

Nixon was an accomplished pianist.  He often
played at White House gatherings.

Chandelier from mock East Room

Nixon always said he was "born in
a house my father built."

Presidential limousine

Richard on left, Pat on right

I had hoped to be at the southeastern border of California by nightfall, but a traffic jam on the freeway leading in that direction forced me to backtrack to the Anaheim/Fullerton area for the night.  While standing outside the hotel room about 9 p.m., I could see fireworks in the distance.  It was Disneyland!

Reagan and Hollywood

Thursday, I visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The Reagan Presidential Library is in Simi Valley, northwest of Los Angeles.  They actually have President Reagan's Air Force One plane built into the museum.

Here are some more photos from the Reagan museum...

Reagan's burial site

It was fun to go to Hollywood, but the Walk of Fame area is a little on the dirty side.  It's real touristy, but there's also a lot of crazy, weird characters around there.  Here are some of the stars I saw on the sidewalk.  They stretched for about 7 or 8 city blocks in either direction on both sides of the street.  There were also stars on Vine St. for 2 or 3 blocks.

Central California

On Wednesday, I drove from the San Francisco area toward Los Angeles.  This is actually quite a long drive on Interstate 5 freeway.  There are hills to the right (west) and farmlands to the left (east) all the way until you have to cross a mountain range separating Central from Southern California.  Up in those mountains (at Lebec) is where I spent the night.  Thursday will be my sightseeing day in Los Angeles.

Hills to the east

Farms to the west...Saw a lot of fruit trees,
a big cattle operation, advertisements for
cherries and pistachios.

Water seems to be a huge issue here.  There were all types of canals, aqueducts, and other water delivery systems.  There were also signs encouraging lawmakers to do more to get more water to the area.




The biggest city in this central region is Bakersfield.  I arrived there in time for supper, so I stopped at the restaurant/theater of country music legend Buck Owens, the Crystal Palace.  Had a great steak, and the museum of his stuff is cool, too, for an old-time country music fan.

The End of the Lincoln Highway

On Tuesday, I drove into San Francisco to complete my cross-country journey on the Lincoln Highway.  Lincoln Park is on the western edge of town, with spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge and downtown in the distance.  At the bus stop near the Legion of Honor museum, I found the marker of the Western Terminus of the Lincoln Highway.  This part of my journey had come to an end.

San Francisco sits on a peninsula in the bay, and the city is built on numerous steep hills.  I couldn't take a picture of it, but I drove that crazy Lombard Street section that goes steeply downhill through a series of s-curves.  Tourists were everywhere taking pictures and videos of people driving down that street!   It was actually a really pretty street, but I bet the locals get tired of all the attention.  Here are some views of downtown San Francisco.

I had lunch at Fisherman's Wharf, which was the central shipping district for many years.  Now, it's pretty touristy with the container ships docking somewhere else.  You can see Alcatraz clearly from the shoreline.  Everyone's cooking seafood, and gulls and pigeons are everywhere waiting for you to drop something.




I couldn't resist; I HAD to take a cable-car ride.  I'm so glad I did!  The cars are turned around manually at the end of the line on a crude turntable, and the driver stands upright about 15 feet behind the windshield.  On the 2-3 mile trip to the shopping district, they make several stops in the middle of the street, and traffic has to stop for them.  People board and disembark, and a conductor gets their tickets or money.  I looked around downtown for a few minutes, then rode back to the Wharf.  The hills are incredible, and you can smell the brakes!

I'll be in Southern California next as I begin to wind my way home...

California, Here I Come!

Monday started with the drive over the summit of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, just across the California line from Reno.  These mountains, while higher than those in Nevada, were covered with trees, mostly tall pines.  I had basically not seen a tree all the way across Wyoming and Nevada until I came to the Humboldt River valley in eastern Nevada, and then only a few.  The place where the highways cross over the mountains is Donner Summit, named for the party of pioneers traveling the California Trail who couldn't get over the mountains in time and suffered terribly in the winter here.

On the way down out of the mountains toward Sacramento, I passed through Auburn, a town proud of its "Gold Rush" heritage.  They have preserved and re-used much of their "old town," and they have a HUGE sculpture of a famous citizen panning for gold in a prominent place.  As in many towns near the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in California and Nevada, they had their own "Chinatown" because there were so many Asians working on the railroad.

This is what Lincoln Highway signs look like in this part of California.

Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, near where the first gold was discovered in the 1840s, was also a stopping-off place for new settlers in the area (sort of the place where they could stop, rest, and say "we made it").  It has been reconstructed and is a state historic site.

The Lincoln Highway didn't go straight into San Francisco from Sacramento.  It turned south, through the farming territory of Central California, then circled around toward Oakland, where drivers caught the ferry into San Francisco.  On my way through this territory, I saw a lot of vineyards and fruit trees in the San Joaquin area, then stopped for the night in Tracy.  Here is an LH monument I saw in Galt.






My last stop of the day was at a convenience store I had heard about in Lathrop.  It's decorated as if an alien spacecraft had crashed into its roof.  Kooky, huh?