Wednesday, Nov. 6th - Tuesday, Dec. 31st
We arrived in Portland Wednesday and spent three nights seeing the sights and visiting with John's cousins David and Karen. We all went to Chang's Mongolian Grill on Wednesday night, always a favorite with us.
Thursday they drove us downtown and we rode the Portland Aerial Tram that went into operation in 2006. It is located at the intersection of S.W. Moody and Gibbs and costs $5.00 round trip. It is the most transportation diverse intersection in the country with aerial tram, commuter trains, cars, buses, shuttles, a street car, a soaring pedestrian bridge, a shipyard, a cycle track and the densest bike parking in America's #1 Biking City. Oregon Health and Science University paid $40 million of the $57 million cost. In comparison, one mile of four-lane freeway costs between $60 million and $300 million. OHSU operates the Tram and the city maintains it. A seasonal Farmer's Market is one block south of the terminal and the South Waterfront Greenway is two blocks southeast.
It goes from South Waterfront to Marquam Hill at a speed of 22 MPH. It travels 3,300 linear feet and rises 500 feet during the four-minute trip. Each of the two cabins holds 79 people. There are only 2 two-lane roads from downtown to the Marquam Hill neighborhood where OHSU is located and two hospitals owned by the Shriners and Veterans Affairs. It links to the OHSU campus at the top and 20,000 people a day use it. The terminal links to 4T Trail, a self-guided tour by train, trail, tram and trolley, and several hiking trails. The upper deck has the largest enclosed sky bridge in North America and the patio offers amazing views of downtown Portland, the Cascade Mountains, Mount Hood and Mt. St. Helens on a clear day. The trams are named Jean and Walt in honor of the first female engineering graduate and the first African American graduate from OHSU. The station names are from a local tribal language, Chumanchal meaning on the river and Chemeffu meaning on the mountain. We stopped for a late lunch and beers at Zoiglhaus Brewing Company and watched a little football in the evening.
Friday we went hiking at Powell Butte Nature Park near Dave and Karen's home. The 612-acre park is on a 600' tall extinct volcano with 9 miles of hiking trails and spectacular views of Mt. Hood, Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens. Mt. Adams is 70 miles away, 12,281' elevation, last erupted over 1,000 years ago and is still considered an active volcano. Mt. St. Helens is 51 miles away and 8,363" elevation. The 1980 eruption blew off more than a cubic mile of the mountain. Mt. Hood, Oregon's tallest peak at 11,249' elevation and 40 miles away, is also an active volcano. Karen fixed us salmon for supper. Yum, Yum!
Thanks again Dave and Karen for supper, tours, entertainment and just putting up with us in general. We left on Saturday and spent the night at Rolling Hills Casino in Corning, California. Sunday we drove the rest of the way to John's sister's and spent the next week with Kathy and Barb, watching old westerns and eating out a few times. Yeehaw! Good times! We left the following Sunday and spent two weeks at Soledad Canyon Thousand Trails Campground near Acton California, about 30 miles north of L.A.
Twice while we were there, we went into the nearby town of Palmdale to eat at the Hibachi Grill Buffet at the Antelope Valley Mall. They had these excellent little cupcakes. They used those little egg roll wrappers for liners in the cupcake pan and they made the nicest little tasty, crispy crust on the cupcake. No wasted cupcake left on paper liners or in the pan to clean up. What a pretty, tasty and clever idea!
Tuesday we caught the Metro in Acton into Union Station in downtown L.A. to do some sightseeing. This is the MTA, Metropolitan Transit Authority building just outside Union Station. It was completed in 1985 and has a 7,000 gallon aquarium inside that cost $300,000. It is the third largest transport system in the U.S. by ridership with 9,892 employees.
Waiting room inside Union Station.
Across Alameda Street from Union Station is El Pueblo de Los Angeles, the historic plaza where the city started. This statue is King Carlos III of Spain who ordered the founding of L.A. in 1781.
This new statue in the plaza is called Transportapueblos (Companion of Migrants) by Mexican artist De Alfredo Guiterrez. It is in recognition of the many difficulties faced by people who journey from their homes hoping to find a better life in the U.S. He has made a series of these coyote sculptures positioned along the train route through Mexico from its southern to its northern border. Having crossed the border, migrants still need support, so he has created his first coyote statue here at El Pueblo for those coming to and from Union Station. They display vital information, such as maps, messages from family members and telephone numbers of legal organizations and services. A reminder that some among us have made a brutal journey from intolerable circumstances to seek a better life for themselves and their families, just as many of our ancestors did.
A block away is the oldest church in the city (1822), Nuestra Senora De Los Angeles, named for the image over the door of Our Lady of the Angels from a chapel in Assissi, Italy, for which the city is also named.
View inside.
Memorial gardens honoring the approximately 693 early residents of Los Angeles who were buried here next to the church.
Walking by the U.S. Federal Court House toward City Hall.
City Hall where we went to the observation deck at the top for views of the city.
Facing northeast U.S. Federal Court House 1940 along left side. MTA building right of Union Station at top center. San Gabriel Mountains upper left. Just off the upper left of the picture is China Town, about straight over from the MTA.
Closer view. Union Station 1939 lower left corner with corner tower. MTA at center and USC Medical Center 1933 white buildings toward upper right corner.
City Hall South Lawn at bottom and Grand Park Extension to its right. 2009 Police Administration Building in front of trees and 1935 L.A. Times Building to its right. LAX is in the center on the horizon. Catalina Island is just off the horizon in the upper left corner. The Wells Fargo Center is the big tall brownish looking building in the upper right corner.
Criminal Justice Center 1972 is on the right side of the picture with the Hall of Justice 1926 on the right side of it outside the picture. The Hall of Justice was seen in several old TV shows, including Dragnet, Perry Mason and Get Smart. Directly below us is the start of the 12 acre Grand Park, which extends uphill for at least six blocks to the Department of Water and Power at the top of the park. The Mark Taper Forum and Ahmanson Theater (both 1967) are just to the right of the top of the park and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion is to the left with the 2004 Walt Disney Concert Hall just beyond it. All concert and event venues within about two blocks of each other.
Up Grand Park a short ways, looking back at City Hall. Botanists divide the world into six floristic kingdoms. The Floristic Gardens of Grand Park have flowers and trees from each kingdom, to pay tribute to all the people who have settled in L.A. bringing their customs, foods, celebrations and plants native to their original homes.
About half way up the park is the Court of Historic American Flags. It's an interesting history lesson. This is just a small part of it. Each flag has a plaque explaining its history. There is the 48 state flag of 1912 that flew for 47 years and the 1861 flag of 32 stars that flew over Fort Sumter. The Lone Star flag of the Republic of Texas flew seven years until 1846 when they became the 28th state. There is the 1846 California Bear flag flown by a small band of American settlers resisting Mexican authority when they captured the town of Sonoma, the 1873 Pine Tree flag, the 1775 Bunker Hill flag, the Bennington flag flown by the Green Mountain Boys, the 1774 Taunton flag, the 1775 Moultrie flag patterned after the uniforms worn by his men, the 1775 Star-Spangled Banner, the only U.S. flag to bear more than 13 stripes, immortalized by Francis Scott Key, carried on the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and raised over Tripoli as the Barbary Pirates were subdued. The Lake Erie flag was flying Sep. 10, 1813 as Captain James Lawrence lay dying after a fierce battle he lost to the British and said, "Don't give up the ship!" Three months later at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry flew this same flag. When the battle was ended, he sent a message with these immortal words, "We have met the enemy and they are ours." The 'sons of liberty' often met under the branches of a stately elm, where they planned the Boston Tea Party. In reprisal General Gage ordered the removal of the tree, which caused the colonists to design the Liberty Tree flag in 1775. The Gadsden flag was created in 1775 by S.C. Congressman Gadsden for the first Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Navy. It was a yellow flag with a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike and the words "Don't Tread On Me". The flag was also hoisted by Revolutionary War hero, John Paul Jones. The rattlesnake had 13 rattles and, by 1775, was being printed in newspapers, on money, banners, flags, uniform buttons, etc.
Looking back toward City Hall again. The Grand Union Flag Jan. 1, 1776, created in the spirit of the times, had 13 stripes symbolizing the unity of the colonies while retaining the British crosses of St. George and St. Andrew, expressing the feeling of kinship with England and leaving an open doorway for reconciliation. On June 14, 1777, Congress resolved the flag to be 13 stripes alternating red and white with 13 stars on a blue field representing a new constellation. Details were left to the individual flag makers resulting in many different interpretations. Legend and history credit this early design to Betsy Ross of Philadelphia. Congress passed a third flag law in 1818. One star would be added for each new state, while the 13 stripes would always remain.
This totally tugged at my heart, especially since Ukraine has been so much in the news lately. The inscription says, "In memory of 7,000,000 Ukranians, victims of Russian Communism, who lost their freedom, property and life by order of the Soviet Government during 1932 and 1933. Genocide by starvation in Ukraine."
Looking back again.
Almost to the top of the park. Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on the left.
Peace on Earth sculpture by Jacquez Lipchitz in front of Department of Water and Power.
Next to the Pavilion there was a large group of mostly older people with very large instruments waiting for their ride to a symphony performance, I assume. How on earth do they manage to cart all that equipment around with them?
Just around the corner is Walt Disney Concert Hall.
A few street scenes.
A little park area with some funky looking trees among all the huge buildings.
World artwork on AT+T building.
Richard J. Riordan Central Library is the third largest library in the U.S. It holds over six million volumes, three million photographs, the fifth largest map collection in the country and serves the largest population (18 million) of any publicly funded library system in the U.S. Library cards are free to California residents and items checked out may be returned to any of its 72 branches or the Central Library. "The foolishest book is a kind of a leaky boat on a sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in anyway." A quote from The Delights of Reading by Otto L. Bett.
Inside, the library is four stories below ground and four above. It's huge.
Sculpture garden outside library.
From the library we went up these six flights of stairs...
...with a little waterfalls running down between them. The skyscraper on the right side of the steps with the words OUE Skyspace on the side is the U.S. Bank Tower. It is 70 stories tall, the tallest building west of the Mississippi. It is L.A.'s tallest open-air observation tower, over 1,000 feet above the city, open seven days a week from 10:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M. There is an enclosed glass slide at the top around part of the outside of the building for which you can buy tickets. The library sold its air rights to the tower, meaning they can't add on to their building any higher than it already is, but the bank tower could add that many more floors to their building. They could also buy air rights from other buildings and add that many more floors to their building. An interesting system.
At the top of the waterfall stairway looking back at the library.
The sculpture is "Uptown Rocker" by Lloyd Hamril 1986. The building in the background is where we thought we would have a late lunch on the 34th floor for the views.
When we got there, we entered from a walkway that came into the building on the sixth floor. It took us a while to figure out how to get down to the main lobby and the elevators. Then we found out the restaurant doesn't open until 4:30. Oh well. So we walked back to the Cal Marketplace and had a really nice pasta and sandwich at Corner Bakery. Angel's Flight Funicular Railway runs from Cal Marketplace down to Hill Street two blocks below, across from Grand Central Market. It was built in 1901 by Col. J.W. Eddy, lawyer, engineer and friend of Abraham Lincoln. Said to be the world's shortest railway, its two counter-balanced cars run on the same cable in opposite directions. It is estimated that it has carried more passengers per mile than any other railway in the world, over 100 million in its first fifty years. It was recently featured in the movie La La Land and many other movies dating as far back as 1918. It has also been featured in many TV shows, books and songs, including one by a favorite author of ours, Angel's Flight by Michael Connelly, also made into a mini series. Wikipedia has a lot of interesting stuff about this little funicular railway. Sorry I neglected to take a picture.
Then we did a short walk through Chinatown and ended up back at Union Station to catch the Metro back home. Wednesday we drove into Palmdale and had lunch in the Antelope Valley Mall at a Mexican place and went to Walmart.
Thursday we went to Ventura and stopped first at the Channel Islands National Park Visitor Center. They have a nice little museum and film about the islands. The islands have the largest seal and sea lion rookeries in the world. Each year tens of thousands of northern elephant seals, northern fur seals, Guadalupe fur seals, harbor seals and California sea lions congregate on the beaches to breed and rest. The kelp forests are one of the most productive habitats on earth. Over 700 plants are native to the islands with over 60 found nowhere else on earth.
Coast Guard boat. They also have a nice garden with some of the island plants.
In the gardens there were a bunch of these animal sculptures that appeared to be made out of vinyl siding.
Momma and baby skunk.
Island Fox.
Next we stopped just down the road at Surfer's Knoll Beach for a short walk.
Then we went to the small Ventura County Museum with a nice little garden.
This postcard in the museum shows what the county used to look like with oil wells and orange groves before the growing L.A. metro area spread into their county. By the 1930s California was the source of nearly 1/4 of the world's oil output.
There were several pictures like this on the outside walls all made of tiny pieces of tile.
We walked across the street to tour Mission San Buenaventura and Museum. There were 21 Spanish missions founded by the Franciscans. The first nine were founded by Father Junipero Serra. This one was the ninth and last one he founded before his death. It was founded in 1782 and was dedicated on Easter Sunday with a High Mass on the beach of Santa Barbara Channel, the same place where Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo claimed California for Spain in 1732. The system of missions was started when Serra decided to travel to the New World in 1749. Padre Serra was canonized as a Saint by Pope Francis in 2015.
The Chumash natives who lived at the mission built a system of aqueducts with a watercourse that ran about seven miles. They had flourishing orchards and gardens which were described in 1793 by English navigator, Captain George Vancouver, as the finest he had ever seen. During the mission era whaling ships would anchor near the mission to trade for food and cured cattle hides, called Yankee Dollars. Pirates sometimes pillaged missions.
In 1834 the Mexican government secularized all the missions divesting the priests of control. Much of the land was sold or given in large land grants to ranchers. In 1862 President Lincoln issued a proclamation that returned the main part of the missions back to the church.
All that remains of the original mission is the church and its gardens and the church currently serves 2,000 families.
Holy relics are traditionally a bone fragment, especially that of a martyr, with the permission and certification of the local ecclesiastical authority and used in solemn processions. The mortal remains are associated in some manner with the holiness of their souls, which await reunion with their bodies in resurrection.
It was the only mission with wooden bells and they are the only full-sized wooden bells in the world. They were made in 1782 and are held together with rawhide straps and metal plates on the interior that sounded when hit with a stick. The muted sound may have avoided attracting pirates who could here metal bells from the channel. When Teddy Roosevelt was here in 1903, he climbed the belfry and sounded the bells.
I'm sure this weird chair must have had some special purpose, but I couldn't figure it out. Maybe you straddle it backwards and get a massage? You suppose that was a service they offered in the old Spanish Missions?
Next on the agenda was the original Ventura County Courthouse built in 1912, now City Hall since 1971. They have a very nice art gallery along the hallways inside. We had a late lunch at Duke's Grill on the beach in Ventura. John had shrimp and I had snapper with Vera Cruz sauce, very hot and spicy.
Painted steel chair.
Look closely at these orchids to see they are made of tiny flamingos.
Colorful murals replicating cave paintings of the Chumash native peoples found in the Venture/Santa Barbara area, some of the best in the country. They were made by layering plywood and hanging the pieces away from the wall to give them the free-floating effect of clouds. The 9' 4"wooden statue of Father Junipero Serra is carved from 80 to 90 basswood planks by volunteers from the Channel Island Carvers. The community project took 14 months and 10,000 volunteer hours.
Friday we visited Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, the original and current flagship of six cemeteries and four additional mortuaries. The main gates at the entrance are said to be the world's largest wrought iron gates. It covers 300 acres with over 250,000 people buried here and over a million visitors each year. It was established in 1906 as a not-for-profit cemetery by a group of San Francisco businessmen. Dr. Hubert Eaton took over management in 1917 and is credited as being the "Founder" for his innovations, including upright grave markers, bringing in works of art and being the first to open a funeral home on cemetery grounds. He was a firm believer in a joyous life after death and was convinced that most cemeteries were "unsightly, depressing stone yards". He envisioned a great park with towering trees, sweeping lawns, splashing fountains, beautiful statuary and memorial architecture. Originally they refused entrance to blacks, Jews or Chinese.
This is a closer view of the Great Mausoleum in the background. It covers the whole length of this picture. It is fashioned after the Campo Santo in Genoa, Italy. The most highly sought after internment places are in the mausoleum. Michael Jackson is interred somewhere in there. There are three non-denominational chapels in the park, The Little Church of the Flowers, The Wee Kirk o' the Heather, and The Church of the Recessional, all exact replicas of famous European churches. Over 60,000 people have been married here, including Ronald Reagan and his first wife, Jane Wyman in the Wee Kirk. Inside in the Memorial Court of Honor they have a replica of Leonardo de Vinci's Last Supper made of stained glass.
Many famous people are buried here, probably thousands, including Humphrey Bogart, Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable, W.C. Fields, Nat King Cole, Gutson Borglum, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sr., Walt Disney and his whole extended family, L. Frank Baum (author of Wizard of Oz), Don Drysdale of baseball fame, Wally Byam (founder of Air Stream) and the list goes on and on. The only one we stumbled across was this one of Louis L'Amour in a highly prized spot just outside the front steps of the Great Mausoleum with a great view of the city. Sort of funny that the only one we found was the author of the books about the Sacketts.
The Hall of the Crucifixion was built in 1957 to display the panoramic painting The Crucifixion by Polish artist Jan Styka. It is the largest permanently mounted religious painting in the world, 195' x 45'.
I put this picture in just to give you some idea how big this picture really is. You can see John sitting down in front waiting for the curtains to open. When they do open, this photo would not show the entire painting by any means. It was way longer.
They have a twenty minute audio with it explaining who all the people in the picture are and what they are all doing.
This picture is also in the hall. Together they are the two largest religious themed paintings in the Western Hemisphere.
This is the plaza outside the Hall of Crucifixion with some of the almost 1,500 statues that are on the grounds. Some of the more famous ones on the grounds are exact replicas of Michaelangelo's
David, Moses and La Pieta all carved from marble from the same quarries in Carrara, Italy.
The Forest Lawn Museum next door is a world famous art museum. It displays art and artifacts and hosts rotating fine art exhibits by some very famous artists, including Rembrandt, Matisse and Goya. It was named one of the top ten free museums in the country. Trip Advisor named it the number one art museum in L.A. It's supposed to have exact replicas of the British Crown Jewels, but we didn't see them. They must have been out on loan to another museum. That's okay, we have seen the real ones at the Tower of London. This guy was cruising around the parking lot, just advertising what a lovely send off you could get here, I suspect.
Probably the most famous painting in the museum is Song of Angels by William-Adolphe Bouguereau 1881.
This was a little alcove of Lincoln artworks. There were also western bronzes by Remington and Russell. They have one of the largest stained glass collections in North America with over 1,000 pieces primarily from France and Germany from 1200 A.D. through the present, including portions of William Randolph Hearst's former collection. They even have one of the approximate 1,000 Easter Island statues, which was rescued from the bottom of a fishing boat in 1952 where it was being used as ballast. These statues average 13' tall and weigh 14 tons each. They are carved from tuff, a type of volcanic stone. Most were sculpted between 1100 and 1600 and they are positioned facing away from the sea. The island is about 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There are a dozen statues in museums around the world, but they are no longer legal to remove from the island.
There was an exhibit in the museum by Chen Meng with photographs taken from a drone. This one was taken from 80' above Venice Skateboard Park which opened in 2009. One of the few oceanfront skateparks in the world, it hosts guests from around the globe. The area referred to as "Dogtown", which is neighborhoods in Santa Monica, Ocean Park and Venice, is considered the birthplace of modern skateboarding. When drought struck California in the 1970s, many swimming pools dried up and teenagers from Dogtown turned to these abandoned spaces to experiment with new skateboarding techniques.
The Louvre Museum in Paris from 120' above. I knew it was big when we were there, but this really put it in perspective. It is the largest art museum in the world with over 782,000 square feet of exhibit space. It was originally a fortress and subsequently a palace, but has functioned as a museum since 1793. It was built in several phases, the earliest in the 12th century. The glass pyramid in the central courtyard was completed in 1989 by I.M. Pei, a Chinese-American architect. When the galleries are open, the line of tourists winds through the courtyard for nearly half a mile.
The Statue of Liberty from 300' above on Liberty Island in New York Harbor was a gift from France in 1886. The 11-point star that forms part of the statue's base was a preexisting military fort that was begun in 1807 to help protect the city. The 151' tall statue is aligned with the fort so that it faces ships as they enter the harbor.
Above City Hall and Grand Park downtown L.A.
Above Walt Disney Concert Hall. Built in 2003, it was meant to resemble the billowing sails of a clipper ship and is home to the L.A. Philharmonic and offers free tours.
Taken from 200' above, this small, octagonal home is perched on a 29'-high concrete column in Hollywood Hills. This 1960 home, known as the Chemosphere, is accessible from below by a small funicular and a patio connects it to the steep hillside. It was designed by John Lautner who once did an apprenticeship with Frank Lloyd Wright, designer of a number of iconic L.A. homes and others around the country.
The first aerial photos ever taken were in France in 1858, but none of them have survived. The oldest surviving aerial photos are of Boston taken in 1860, the first aerial photos made in America, taken from Samuel King's hot air balloon, Queen of the Air. A German pharmacist used pigeons to send and receive messages. In 1903 he invented a time-rigged camera that he strapped to the pigeons breast and it took pictures, so he could track their movements and habits. It soon became a useful military tool. This is a castle in Kronberg, Germany framed by the pigeon's wings.
This is the center of the Court of Freedom section of the cemetery with several patriotic artworks.
At one end is The Republic statue. With it to my back, I took the picture below.
Looking toward the 13' tall statue of George Washington at the far end, that looks like a tiny black stick in front of the Freedom Mausoleum. This is just one very, very tiny part of the cemetery.
This is a closer view of the mosaic the Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull above. It is 20' x 30' (3 times the area of the original) and is made of 700,000 pieces of glass (some only 1/32") in about 1,500 specially blended shades. It shows a five-man drafting committee presenting their draft to Congress on June 28, 1776. It shows 42 of the eventual 56 signers. He rode horseback long distances (100s of miles) to each of their homes to paint their faces in person. It was placed in the U.S. Capitol rotunda in 1826. An engraving of this painting is on the reverse side of the $2 bill. Jefferson is on the obverse side and his home, Monticello, was originally on the reverse, but that was changed in 1976. The $2 note was first issued in 1862 and has been in production ever since, except from 1966 to 1976. Over 590 million $2 bills were printed in 1976. Printing $2 bills is twice as cost effective as printing $1 bills. They each cause 5 cents to manufacture. It was estimated in 1976 that if $2 bills replaced approximately half of the $1 bills in circulation, the federal government would be able to save about $26 million from 1976 to 1981, due to reduced production, storage and shipping costs. That's $114 million in today's dollars. They are currently in production and circulation, but the public just does not seem to like to use them. Most bill acceptors in vending machines, self-check outs, transit systems and other automated kiosks are configured to accommodate $2 bills even if it is not stated on the machine. Who knew? When we left here, we stopped at Souplantation (aka Sweet Tomatoes) for lunch, one of my favorite places to eat.
Our next stop was Griffith Park Observatory.
We have been here several times, but John wanted to check out the views before sunset.
We could see old downtown L.A. to the south, where we were on Tuesday.
And the Hollywood Sign to the northwest.
The 1923 Hollywood sign was originally wood and sheet metal. By the 1970s, the 45' tall letters were thoroughly dilapidated. New letters with steel frames were paid for by celebrity donors from Gene Autry to Alice Cooper. In 1978 workers poured concrete bases and the steel framed letters were lifted into place by helicopter.
View out toward the Pacific Ocean and another city skyline as we hike back to the car.
Sunday Nov. 24th we drove to Long Beach and caught a boat out to Catalina Island for the day.
"Twenty-six miles across the sea Santa Catalina is a-waitin' for me,
Water all around is ev'rywhere, tropical trees and the salty air.
But for me the thing that's a-waitin' there's romance, romance, romance, romance.
Forty kilometers in a leaky boat, any old thing that'll stay afloat.
When we arrive we'll all promote romance, romance, romance, romance.
Santa Catalina, the island of romance, romance, romance, romance."
In 1958 The Four Preps hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #6 on the Billboard R+B charts. It became one of the few songs in history to be played on radio one million times.
Our view as we arrived on Catalina. William Wrigley, Jr. left school at the age of 13 and had a string of business failures. He grew a small business selling soap into the world's biggest producer of chewing gum. He had a fondness for repeating "we are a 5 cent business and nobody in the company can ever afford to forget it", acknowledging the debt he owed to the rank and file of America for buying his product. The town of Avalon was destroyed by fire in 1915. In 1919 Wrigley purchased the island and quickly transformed it into a vacation spot for those most loyal to the Wrigley brand, tired shop clerks, artisans, boy scouts, etc. In 1926, his wife Ada purchased the most complete set of chimes in the world and placed them in a beautiful Spanish-style tower. There are 20 bronze chimes, the longest 13'. They play the song Avalon and are still playing today. The island is 21 miles long and from 1/4 to 8 miles wide, 76 square miles. The elevation is 60' to 2,125'. It's length runs parallel to the California coast 26 miles away. The San Pedro Channel between it and the coast reaches a 3,000 foot depth midway.
Our first stop was the island museum. Errol Flynn loved sailing his yachts (yes, he had two) to the secluded coves of Catalina Island, but stopped when tourism ceased for the duration of WWII. He joined the USO, which used the isthmus of the island for fine tuning their new shows for the overseas troops. The isthmus served as a site for Coast Guard training during the war. When not entertaining trainees, he hunted wild boar in the island's interior. Johnny Weissmuller won five Olympic gold medals and played Tarzan in movies from 1932 to 1949. He was often spotted sailing his yacht around Catalina with friends, Humphrey Bogart and Errol Flynn. John Wayne often sailed his yacht, the Wild Goose, to the island and enjoyed scuba diving. In 1948 a local had a heart attack 35 feet underwater. He dove down with no equipment and brought the lifeless body to the surface. Zane Grey, Harry Carey, Jr. and director John Ford were also regulars here. Lauren Bacall said Bogie bought the boat, Santana, and was happily enslaved, enjoying nothing more than sailing around the island.
Wrigley gained controlling interest of the Chicago Cubs in 1921 and established a spring training camp for them on the island, bringing national attention to his new vacation paradise. He was the first baseball owner to bring a major league club out west for spring training. Wrigley Field on the island was the first baseball field to bear his name. The Chicago ballpark was first known as Weeghman Park, then Cubs Park and was renamed Wrigley Field in 1926. Regular season major league baseball didn't arrive on the West Coast until the Dodgers and Giants made their moves west in the 1950s. They trained on the island until 1951, except 1942-45, when it was used by the military. The team stayed at the island's fanciest hotel, St. Catherine's on Descanso Bay. Several years of bad weather, including a snow storm, convinced them to move to Mesa where they still train today. Today the ball field is a golf course and the original building is now Catalina Island Country Club. Son Philip K. Wrigley owned the Cubs from 1932 until his death in 1977. He often sat in the grandstand "where the real fans are". He made sure the hot dogs were hot, the beers were cold and the prices were reasonable. He allowed a number of radio stations to broadcast the games at a very low fee, ensuring the team received wide media coverage and the team enjoyed a national, not just regional, fan base. In 1972, Philip Wrigley established the Catalina Island Conservancy and donated most of the island to it.
Norma Jeane Baker (aka Marilyn Monroe) at 16, when she lived on the island with her first husband, James Dougherty, from 1942 to 1946. He was stationed on the island with the Merchant Marines. He went on to become a well-respected Los Angeles police officer and helped invent the SWAT team, but is most famous for having been married to Marilyn Monroe.
One of the first promo moves Wrigley made was to sign up for a float in the 1920 Rose Parade. The boat on the float was built entirely of Toyon berries, native to the island. Being no flowers were used, it was challenged. So four ladies, their chaperons and two men spent the whole night before the parade fastening on flowers, and it won first prize in its division. The four women on the float, representing the Catalina seasons, were also the first to appear in swimsuits in the Rose Parade.
There was a special exhibit about Ester Williams. At age 16 she was the winner of three national swimming championships. The gold medal in the 1940 Olympics might have been hers, if WWII had not canceled the games. At 18 she signed a contract with MGM Studios, beginning a two-decade long movie career in which she swam an estimated 1,250 miles. Two of her 26 films, Million Dollar Mermaid and Jupiter's Darling, were filmed in part on Catalina. She swam through watery movie sets filled with dazzling props and synchronized swimmers and performed daring physical feats. In Million Dollar Baby, based on a real life Australian swimmer, she performed a dive from a 50' platform. The impact of her metal crown with the water broke three vertebrae in her neck, one of many injuries throughout her career. That year 1953, she was voted #1 female star. Because of the film's financial success, MGM nicknamed her the Million $ Mermaid, which she also used as the title of her 1999 autobiography.
During WWII she entertained and visited troops abroad. Images of her in bathing suits were popular pin-ups. She influenced naval recruitment and U.S. Navy swimwear during the 1952 movie Skirts Ahoy! After being told actors would have to wear regulation clothing, including gray cotton knit bathing suits, she confronted the U.S. Secretary of the Navy. She first modeled regulation suits and stated no woman would join after seeing it. Then she reappeared in a navy blue suit made with a new stretchable fabric. She became the official spokeswoman for the bathing suit company and sold 50,000 to the U.S. Navy on the spot. She married four times, had three children and her last film was 1963's Magic Fountain, directed by Fernando Lamas, her husband at the time. In later years, she lent her name to the Ester Williams Backyard Pool and Spa Company, created a teaching video for parents called "Swim Baby Swim" and created the Ester Williams Swimsuit Collection. In 1984 she commentated on TV during the first ever Olympic synchronized swim event, a sport she nurtured into being.
This sound vibration sculpture was on the rooftop patio and it played bird calls of endangered and extinct birds.
Wrigley set up a clay factory at Pebbly Beach in 1926. Catalina Clay Products became internationally famous, soon producing enormous numbers of tiles needed for embellishment of the Avalon Casino. It worked at capacity for three years producing tiles for roofs, floors, walls and patios. In 1930 the factory's twelve kilns were producing between 10,000 and 15,000 pieces per week, Visitors could get vases, flower bowls, bookends, candle holders, lamps, tiles, pitchers, etc. When the factory closed in 1937, the molds were sold and Catalina dinnerware continued to be produced on the mainland until 1942. The bright, solid color dinnerware continues to be highly sought by collectors.
This telephone switchboard served Avalon for 55 years until 1978. It was the last station of its kind in the U.S. and was replaced by an electronic dial system. Cross channel telephone cables were too expensive to install in the early 1890s. Brothers Otto and Oswald Zahn implemented a military-style, carrier pigeon service between Avalon and their home in L.A. The first message flown to L.A. was in 1894 and took 54 minutes to arrive. This system was used until 1898. In 1902 the first commercial wireless telegraph tower in the U.S. was erected on the hill above Sugarloaf Point. In 1923 Wrigley persuaded the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company to install two telephone cables on the ocean floor across the 3,000' deep San Pedro Channel. They were 23 miles long, weighed over 300 tons each and were the first American-made, sub-marine cables.
We had shrimp and fish and chips at a Mexican place near the beach.
We took the bus up to the Wrigley Memorial Botanical Gardens where William Wrigley, Jr. is buried.
It was a couple miles of hiking, but lots of interesting island and desert plants along the way.
There are some huge pine cones here. This was a kind of half a broken one and I have a big foot.
Canary Islands Date Palms.
Dragon Tree on the left and a bigger Dragon Tree on the far right.
Golden Barrel Cactus.
Silver Dollar Plant from South Africa.
Elephant Foot Tree from Mexico.
Red Aloe from South Africa.
Another Dragon Tree and Sotol on the left from Arizona and Texas.
Another strange aloe plant and sotol to the left.
Finally here. John refused to climb the steps up into the memorial, but I was ready for more. Marble has been quarried on the island, but pink and green marble from Georgia were used for desired finishing effects. Blue flagstone rock from Little Harbor on the island was used in the enclosed alcove at the top. Wrigley established a tile plant that produced red roof tiles and colorful, handmade, glazed tiles. Aggregate stone was quarried and crushed and bonded with white cement and sandblasted to reveal and accent colors and textures. Nevertheless, another 13,400 sacks of white cement from the East Coast were needed to bond the aggregate in addition to 9,900 sacks of gray cement from the Pacific Coast used for the foundation and other non-exposed parts. There are 114 tons of reinforcing steel. The memorial was completed in 1934 and is 232' wide, 180' deep and 130' high with an 80' tower. Just a little grave stone marker to be remembered by.
Looking back at Avalon Bay toward L.A. from inside the memorial.
The bus dropped us right back here by the beach, so we could take the boardwalk over to the casino. Just across the street here from the beach is this nice little building with restroom, changing rooms, towel rentals, snacks, drinks and ice cream for folks who come for the day to use the beach. The first bathhouse here was in 1888. Early one-piece suits were considered shocking. The city passed an ordinance in 1919 forbidding public nudity and requiring bathers to cover their bodies from their shoulders to below the knees.
There were lovely tiled pictures like this on the walls along the walkway over to the casino.
In 1928 Wrigley had Sugarloaf Rock blasted away to build the casino. It took 14 months and cost $2 million. On the top floor is the world's largest uninterrupted dance floor. The movie theater seats well over 1,000 and was the first to be equipped for both silent and sound motion pictures.
The Catalina Island Yacht Club has been in continuous operation since 1924, except 1942 to 1945 when it was used by the Merchant Marines as a training center.
Views of Avalon from the casino.
Palm trees, aloe plants and ice plant (or blue chalk plant, very common along the coastal dunes) near the casino.
Descanso Bay resorts behind the casino, where the Hotel St. Catherine's used to sit.
They have glass bottom boat tours, parasailing, etc.
A few of the pictures that were hanging in the Bluewater Restaurant, where we stopped for a beer and crab dip. This one said 406 lbs. in the corner of this picture. They claim to be the birthplace of big game sport fishing. The sport of big game fishing originated in Avalon Bay when Charles Holden caught a 183 lb. bluefin tuna in 1898. He was towed by the tuna for over 10 miles and battled it for 3 hours and 45 minutes. It inspired him to form the Tuna Club of Santa Catalina Island, dedicated to the conservation of marine resources and good sportsmanship among anglers. It was once common for vast schools of tuna to arrive in early summer within view of the island, amazing onlookers with their spectacular leaps after flying fish.
The Duke with a couple of marlins. The world's earliest sportfishing capture of the broadbill swordfish was here in 1913. The striped marlin was caught here first in 1903. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was an avid reader of the battles taking place between the anglers and the fish off Catalina. In 1929 he arrived ready for combat and hooked a large marlin, which put on an acrobatic display, but gave up within minutes. Over drinks he said he couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. The contest was over so quick and seemed so effortless, it was inexplicable. Maybe the fish knew who he was messing with and just gave up.
This one said 336 lbs. and time - 56 minutes. The pictures were from the Avalon Tuna Club that existed here on the island from the 1940s to 1970s. They targeted the leaping tuna or albacore, also the bluefin tuna, yellowfin tuna, marlin, dorado, broadbill swordfish, white and black sea bass, halibut, calico, barracuda, bonita and various rockfish. Zane Grey had a home on the island that is now a 17 room hotel. In 1920 he caught a 418 lb. broadbill swordfish. The record stood until the wife of the president of the tuna club caught one that was two pounds heavier. Zane was a boisterous member who loved to regale other members with the details of his catches. He was suspicious and announced publicly that such a petite little lady could not have reeled it in without help -- a clear breach of club rules. He was asked to apologize to the lady or submit his resignation to the club. He did both. Other members of the Tuna Club included Cecil B. DeMille, Stan Laurel, Charlie Chaplin, Bing Crosby, George Patton and a number of presidents were guests. In 1935, Mutiny on the Bounty with Clark Gable, the most expensive film ever at the time, $2 million, was made here on the island. Six Tahitian villages were built with over 600 cast and crew and over 3,000 costumes. It was one of the top grossing films of the 1930s and won an Oscar for Best Picture. Harry Houdini flew to the island in 1919 via Chaplin Airlines (Charlie Chaplin's brother) to film the silent movie Terror Island. Houdini said Catalina was the most ideal spot he had ever seen and he intended to come back and build a magnificent home. Trivia tidbit: Harry Houdini was the first person to fly an airplane in Australia.
This postcard depicts one of the flying fish tours on the Blanche W, named for one of Wrigley's granddaughters. It said they were 12 to 22 inches long and flew as fast as 40 mph for distances as great as 100 yards, only to drop back into the water when their wings became dry. The 64' long boat was equipped with WWII era 40-million candlepower searchlights to simulate the silver streaks of large predators, which propelled the fish from the sea into the night air. The trip aboard the 98 passenger boat was a quintessential part of the renowned Catalina getaway. In over 90 years, it treated over one million tourists, including Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and many Hollywood celebs, to flying fish excursions, tours to Seal Rocks and cruises to Isthmus Cove. It was decommissioned in 2015.
Bird of Paradise flower in a garden near where we got back on the boat to return home in the evening.
Monday we toured the Andre Pico Adobe at Mission Hills in the San Fernando Valley. It is the second oldest adobe in California (after the nearby mission) and the oldest two-story adobe in California. Ranchito Romulo, as it was first known, was built in 1834, enlarged in 1846 and the second story was added in 1874. It is a City of San Fernando Landmark. Just think if DeLamere had kept the bank, community hall and the bar! They were all landmarks. It could have been a regular tourist trap, like Wall Drug. Well, maybe not.
The little cabinet next to the rocking chair is a buttermilk rocker. You just filled it up and you could rock it with your foot, while you sat rocking the baby or doing some mending.
This old Thomas Edison phonograph had no volume control. Notice the rolled up pair of socks in front of it. That's where the expression "put a sock in it" came from. Instant volume control!
Knife and trunk of Tiburcio Vasquez mid-1800s. The legendary, controversial Vasquez, son of a prominent California family, traversed the passes and foothills of the state, robbing and terrorizing inhabitants and romancing others. Remembered for his womanizing and crimes purportedly committed in the name of justice for his people, the bandido/outlaw, folklore hero to some, traveled with this trunk packed with his personal effects. His knife is all that remains with the trunk. He left his trunk with the first settler in the region and never returned. He was captured in present day Melrose Place in West Hollywood and hanged for murder in 1875 at the Santa Clara County jail in San Jose at age 30. Vasquez Rocks in Antelope Valley, one of the bandido's hideouts, is named for him. The trunk was kept in the family and it was donated to the museum by a granddaughter. There are pictures of President William McKinley and his wide inside the lid.
A kind of old-fashioned air freshener. You would fill them with nicely scented dried flowers and wave them around the room. They also had a tiny machine that looked somewhat like a pencil sharpener and was used to sharpen razor blades during WWII when the blades were rationed and hard to get.
They had a lot of stuff in this old adobe house.
Did you know that Sears got its start with a box of rejected watches. Richard Warren Sears was the agent at the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway in Redwood Falls, Minnesota when a local jeweler rejected a shipment of gold-filled watches from Chicago. He sold them to other station agents raking in a tidy profit. He ordered more, advertising in circulars he designed, precursor to the famous Sears catalog. By 1886 he had quit the railroad, moved to Minneapolis and established R.W. Sears Watch Company, a mail order business. He was soon advertising nationally and moved to Chicago and hired watchmaker A.C.Roebuck. He was wealthy enough to retire in 1889 at the age of 26, so he sold out and moved to Iowa. Isn't that where everyone moves to when they retire? He missed the excitement of merchandising and returned to Minneapolis. He and Roebuck teamed up and started the mail order business, Sears Roebuck and Company. By 1893 he once again moved to Chicago. Sears retired in 1908 in poor health and died in 1914. The company's annual sales had grown to $40 million. Over 100 years of success and now they are struggling. Nothing remains the same, but they had a good run.
Old homemade cart sitting on the front patio.
They have a room with Paul Knapp's arrowhead collection. His family bought a ranch in Burbank in 1902. They were told the area would never amount to anything but jackrabbits and cactus. He was 11 when he found his first arrowhead near their home embedded in a skull. In his lifetime travels all over the U.S. he collected over 30,000.
There was also a knife engraved "Guerrero-Valiente Costena" meaning warrior-brave man from the coast, possibly owned by one of Joaquin Murrieta's outlaws, known as the Mexican Robin Hood during the Gold Rush days of 1850. The family herded cattle in what is now Hollywood and lived a lifetime in Burbank.
When we left the Pico Adobe Museum, we stopped at the nearby San Fernando Mission Cemetery.
Most of the graves had these in-the-ground vases for flowers. They look almost like sewer covers for draining the RV. John managed to find Chuck Connor's grave, so he was pretty pleased with himself.
We will have to come back tomorrow to tour the mission. We stopped for supper at Pico Rico in Santa Clarita, carnitas and garlic shrimp. Mmm, Mmm!
Tuesday we were back to tour San Fernando Mission, the oldest and largest two-story adobe in California, established in 1797. It was the 17th mission, established in 1797. It is one of the largest missions and is the Archival Center of the Archdiocese of L.A. This is the West Garden where we entered from the gift shop. There were workshops, carpentry and pottery shops, saddle and blacksmith shops in the doorways along the left. The chapel is in the background.There are two bells in the garden that were cast in Spain in 1686 and 1720. From 1797 to 1846 there were 3,158 baptisms, 2,449 burials, 842 marriages. There are several thousand early settlers in the cemetery along with some very famous celebs who are buried there now.
Wine cellar. The mission ranch covered 121,542 acres. In 1819 the livestock numbered 21,745 cattle, sheep and horses. In 1806 they produced 12,868 bushels of corn and wheat. They had orchards, vineyards and gardens. They produced tallow, soap, hides, shoes, clothes, blankets, wine, olive oil and iron work.
Tile maker for making the curved clay roof tiles.
Completed in 1822, the two-story convento is the largest original mission building in California.
It took 13 years to complete and has four foot thick adobe walls.
There is the famous corridor of 21 Roman arches throughout the convent, unusual Moorish arches above windows and doors in the living quarters of missionaries and guests.
All the convent rooms are authentically furnished. They also have a room, called the Madonna Room, with hundreds of donated Madonna statues, plaques, paintings, rosaries, etc.
All of these missions have elaborate reredos, a large altar piece or ornamental screen behind the altar covering the rear wall.
The Bob Hope Memorial Garden on the grounds is where Bob and his wife, Dolores, are buried.
It's a very pretty little area with a winding walkway throughout to lead you by their graves under the bandshell-type roof. There is also a marker nearby in memory of the 2,425 native Americans who were interred here at the mission from 1797 to 1852.
This tray was made in Frenchtown, New Jersey and donated to the mission. Seems like an odd thing to donate to the mission. Dr. Pepper, the friendly pepper upper, was introduced at the Louisiana Purchase Expo in 1885, one year before Coca Cola was introduced.
Across the street from the mission is the East Garden.
This is the flower-shaped fountain copied from the original in Cordova, Spain.
There were lots of bird-of-paradise and roses.
Cacti, palms and other rare trees.
Statue of Father Junipero Serra near the fountain. The 21 missions ran roughly near the coast from San Diego to the San Francisco Bay area, each about a day's travel from the next, along the El Camino Real (The King's Road) forming a nucleus for settlers and today's cities. At age 56, he was visualizing missions from southern California to Alaska. He died at Carmel (his favorite mission) after the ninth mission was established. He is recognized as California's first citizen and greatest pioneer. The state selected his statue to represent it in Statuary Hall in the nation's Capitol. 30,000 Indians lived in mission villages by 1808. Their almost complete abolition from the missions after they were secularized by the Mexican government, was a tragedy of a peaceable people left without the friendly direction of the Friars, sheep who had lost their shepherd with the wolves encircling them.
From here we went to the nearby, free Museum of San Fernando Valley in Northridge. It's not really too much of a museum. They are still in the organization stage. They had a very interesting film about a guy who was a pilot during the war, got badly burned in a plane crash and ended up directing movies. It was very good, but I can't remember the guy's name.
The one interesting exhibit they did have done was about Billy Barty, founder of the Little People of America. He also founded the Hollywood Shorties, a softball team that played charity fundraiser games against Hollywood celebrities. He was born in 1924 and started acting at age 3. The film Wedded Blisters was shooting on a sidewalk near their home. He walked into the scene, flipped over, stood on his head and began to spin. From then on he had steady work. He was 3'9" tall and had cartilage-hair hypoplasia dwarfism. In 1942 he attended L.A. City College, majored in journalism, lettered in basketball and football and wanted to be a sportswriter. He died in 2000 and is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale. He was an advocate trailblazer in the entertainment industry for little people, often the butt of the joke for comic effect, but always wanted to play a normal role. He also worked on the L.A. County and City Commissions on Disabilities to reform access policies for little people. The Hollywood Shorties were originally formed as a softball team by Billy Barty (Willow) and Jerry Maren (the Lollipop Kid) in 1949. The team consisted of recognizable-but-typecast older actors and stuntmen, including Felix Silla (Cousin Itt from Adams Family), Billy Curtis (Mordecai from High Plains Drifter), and Tony Cox (from Bad Santa), all ranging in height from 3'5" to 4'9". The games were charity events against celebrities, professional organizations and faculties of high schools. They began as a rare outlet for little people to get publicity. As their skills increased, so did their membership and popularity. In the early 70s, they started playing basketball games. In the museum they had video clips from their games running on a loop. They often socialized at the original Bob's Big Boy in San Fernando Valley. The Hollywood Shorties actors were seen in Return of the Jedi, The Ewok Adventure, Ewok: The Battle for Endor, Willow, The Fall Guy, Faerie Tale Theater, Short Ribbs, Garbage Pail Kids, This is Spinal Tap, Under the Rainbow. Ryan Steven Green made a documentary called The Hollywood Shorties for the 2016 SXSW Film Festival. There are 200 medical conditions known as dwarfism. The first time little people were seen on film was the 1932 Freaks by Todd Browning. In 1939 little people were brought to L.A. from all over the world for the filming of The Wizard of Oz. Many remained in L.A. In the 1940s California had one of the most densely inhabited little people populations in the world. All of this was kind coincidence and very interesting, as I had just watched an old black and white movie at our campground that week called Terror in Tiny Town. It was a black and white western and the entire cast was little people, and totally not politically correct for today, but it was very funny.
All-American Canal coming over the mountains to L.A. It doesn't look like it in the picture, but that's a powerful amount of water coming down that hill. We stopped for supper at Topper's Pizza in Santa Clarita. Very good.
We had several inches of very, heavy, wet snow at our campground on Thanksgiving Day. Very unusual for this area. Lots of really big branches fell under the weight of the snow on quite a few campers. My very smart husband had the foresight to not park under any trees! Lucky us.
Saturday after Thanksgiving we were heading south toward L.A. (near San Bernardino) and beyond to Yuma.
It was amazing to me to see 10 to 20 cars every so often parked on the shoulder along this busy 4-lane highway, with both adults and children just out playing in the snow, sledding down hillsides, building snowmen and having snowball fights.
How funny people act when they are not used to seeing snow!
I-5, oh my! Can't wait to get past L.A. traffic, but it took us several hours. We sure will appreciate the warm, sunny weather and the lack of traffic when we finally get to Yuma.
We spent the night at a truck stop near the Salton Sea and arrived in Yuma the next day, Sunday Dec. 1st. We will probably be here for the next two months.
We were out for a walk one of our first days here in Yuma and they were harvesting a field of cauliflower right beside our campground, about a hundred yards from our campsite. Kind of fun to watch.
All loaded up on the truck and ready to go into town for processing and shipping.
Our front dash all decorated up for Christmas.
We are into the holiday spirit now! For the next two months, I will be line dancing in the morning, swimming in the afternoons and going to a couple of movies every week.
Dec. 21st at Yuma Lakes Campground, getting ready to join in the Golf Cart Christmas Parade. We saw ten movies in December and hope to see another ten or so in January.
New Years Eve we went for a drive to look at Christmas lights.
Then we headed to old downtown Yuma to watch the big head of lettuce drop at 10:00 PM. We were home and tucked in bed by 10:30.
Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!
Wishing everyone a spectacular New Year!
Tarra and John
