Sacramento Capitol & Stanton Mansion

Sun - Nov. 7th

Just a couple pictures of the University of California at Davis campus, where we went for a walk on Saturday afternoon. They have an arboretum with a two and a half mile walking and biking path that runs along a creek. Davis is the 6th most bike friendly city in the country, with 50 miles of bike paths and more bikes per capita than any other city in the country, over 40,000 bikes. Among other ag related fields, they teach wine making and beer brewing. They have a wine cellar that holds over 60,000 bottles and can brew 45 gallons of beer a day.

On Sunday we took a tour of the Capitol. The Capitol is eight blocks from the river. Like all the other buildings in the area, it frequently flooded. So they jacked up all the buildings and put another story underneath them that was allowed to flood and not used. Today the bottom floor is a museum and the first floor offices have been restored to their original state of the early 1900s for viewing.

The current governor's office is in the east wing that was built in 1952. Arnold bought this grizzly for $30,000 when he and Maria were on vacation in Colorado and donated it to the state.




Down all the hallways of the east wing are these window box displays of all the counties and metro areas, showing their products and points of interest.

Just below the dome is this marble statue of Queen Isabella pledging to Columbus that she would finance his voyage to discover the new world. It was purchased by some rich guy and donated to the state, only requesting that it face west.

This is a view to the west from the second floor inside the Capitol. If you zoom in, you can see the Tower Bridge in the center in the distance.

This is the Assembly Chamber done in shades of green to represent the regular people like farmers, while the Senate Chamber is done in shades of red to represent the nobility based on the British House of Lords. They also have Lincoln's portrait in the Assembly for the country folk and Washington's in the Senate for the aristocrats.

Vietnam Memorial. The 40 acre grounds, spanning 12 city blocks has species of plant life from nearly every part of the globe. In the early years, the Capitol was on the outskirts of town. It had to be fenced in to keep the cows and deer out of the gardens.

The World Peace Rose Garden has over 600 rose bushes and little signs all over, like the one below, that were written by the school children of the area.




There are walking paths all over amongst the flowers, trees, cactus garden, vegetable garden and memorials.

This is a memorial to the fire fighters. There is a wall nearby with the names of all those that have lost their lives fighting fires since 1850.

Another view of the fire fighters thru the crook of a very large tree.

This one is for peace officers lost in the line of fire and the woman and child on the bench represent the families they left behind. This is in front of the justice building.

Leland Stanford State Historic Landmark was the headquarters for three governors in the turbulent 1860s. It is now the state's official reception center and a museum. As a pro-union civil war governor and president of the Central Pacific Railroad, Stanton negotiated political and business deals that helped complete the transcontinental railroad. His only son died of typhoid at 16 and they started Stanford to educate other children in his memory. After his death, his wife donated the mansion to the Catholic church for an orphanage. It was used that way for about 40 years and then as a home for teenage girls. It was eventually sold to the state and restored to it's original state and opened in 2005.

Old Sacramento on the riverfront tomorrow.

Tarra

Redding, Ca. Mt. Shasta

Fri & Sat - Nov. 6th & 7th


Taken at a rest area about 60 miles south of the Oregon border.








Taken near Weed, California. Hmmm. I wonder if that town was named in the 60s.

Mt. Shasta is a snowy, volcanic peak of 14,162 feet.

We see lots of these, as the timber industry is huge here. I saw a picture like this in one of the tourist magazines, with just one log the size of all these together. It completely filled the truck all by itself. The caption said this sight was common as late as the 1970s. I can't imagine how they got them in and out of the trucks and thru the sawmills.

We took the 6 mile scenic drive from the city of Shasta Lake to Shasta Dam. The dam is the second largest concrete gravity dam in mass in the U.S. It is 602 feet high and 883 feet thick at the bottom. It was built from 1938 to 1945. Shasta lake is the largest in California with 365 miles of shoreline and 30,000 surface acres.

During dam construction a ten mile conveyor belt, the longest of its type in the world, was used to haul 12 million tons of gravel and rock from the Sacramento River in Redding to the dam site, where it was stock piled over a four year period.

The five tubes where the water comes thru from the turbines are each big enough to drive a Greyhound bus thru.

The Sundial Pedestrian Bridge in Redding connects the north and south campuses of the Turtle Bay Exploration Park and is part of the Sacramento River Trail. It was 11 years from inception to completion in 2003 at a cost of $24 million. It is 720 feet long and 23 feet wide with 2,245 glass panels, each 10 square feet , and lit up at night from underneath by 219 lights. It weighs 1,600 tons, the same as 400 elephants. It is the first steel, inclined pylon, cable stayed bridge in the U.S. The design was so complex, it required creating new software to make the engineering calculations.

It is the largest working sundial in the world. The massive 210' pylon leans due north and casts a shadow over a concrete circle with markings for every quarter hour to tell the time as the shadow passes over them.

Here is John looking at the noon time marking.

The bridge will hold the weight of 6,000 people, but it would be impossible to fit that many people on it.

Here is John again, walking on the lit up bridge at night.

The Texas Rangers won the World Series last week. They were once owned by George W. Bush, but he sold them in 1998. So now we know. It takes about 12 years to recover from George W. Bush.

Tarra

Ashford & Medford, Oregon

Wed & Thur - Nov. 3rd & 4th

View of Mt. McLoughlin 9,495 ft. as we were driving south toward Grant's Pass.




Headquarters of Harry and David's at Medford, the world's gourmet fruit and food gift company. They give $5.00 bus tours of their farm and factory by reservation. Check them out at www.harryanddavid.com. I bought my favorites, chocolate and wine.

Rogue Creamery at Central Point is famous for their blue cheese. We bought John's favorites, cheese curds and beer. Check them out at www.roguecreamery.com.

Historic Jacksonville Cemetery started in 1850s. Sometimes we just find cemeteries an interesting place to walk thru. One man's grave stone said, "Killed by Indians."

Different sections of the cemetery were marked with street signs like this for Oddfellows, City, Jewish, Catholic and Paupers.

Then there was the Redman section. We had never heard of this organization, so I just included the signs, in case anyone else was interested in reading about them.

Jacksonville is also home to the Britt Gardens Jazz Festival that is held outdoors on a hillside in Britt Park, just a short walk from the cemetery. It was the hillside estate of Peter Britt, a photographer who came during the gold rush in the 1850s.

Lithia Park in Ashland starts right downtown next to the Shakespeare Theater where the Oregon Shakespeare Festival takes place for about 8 months a year and has been going on since 1935.

There are many miles of trails in the park. We hiked along the Ashland Creek for a couple of hours and up a hill for views of the city. What an incredibly beautiful hike!

This town is just overflowing with theaters, art galleries, wineries, breweries, B & Bs, boutique shops and nifty and elegant places to eat. You get the idea, a very neat town, but you could spend a lot of money here.

We did some hiking at a couple of other places, including along the Rogue River below the Table Rock mesas, but the pictures are all from Lithia Park.

The beautiful surroundings reminded me of Robert Frost poems I remember from when I was a kid.

This is when we hiked uphill for views of the town.

You can see a bit of the Shakespeare Theater above the trees here.

What a great place to spend my birthday! And to top it off, John said to me, "We're as Tight as Twin Fiddles in a Bob Wills Band". How sweet. Then he admitted it was the title of a song, but he couldn't remember who sang it. I bet Mark knows, don't you?

I could just sit here all day, which is what some people appeared to be doing.

This is at the town square at the entrance to the park. The statue has drinking fountains on each side. It was believed or claimed to be healing mineral waters. The smaller set of fountains was added later, with 8 fountains, when they were trying to promote the fame of their healing waters. Unfortunately, due to the water's pungent taste and aroma, the plan didn't succeed. We tasted it and it was really bad.

We drove thru Scenic River Memorial Park near our campground on our way home. We thought this stone was interesting. Why would someone buy a stone for nobody?

Back home and heading for California tomorrow.
Just one more piece of that peanut butter fudge before I go to bed.

Goodnight.

Tarra

Roseberg, Oregon in the Umpqua Valley

Fri, Sat, Sun - Oct. 29, 30 & 31

We set up camp late Friday afternoon in Roseberg, Oregon at the Douglas County Fairgrounds and Umpqua Park. We were camped right next to the South Umpqua River, so I went for a walk on the bike path along the river.

There were three other campers in the campground, so it was nice and quiet. When we woke up Saturday morning there was a horse show going on at the fairgrounds, a cross country meet in the park and motorcycle drivers training in the parking lot next to us. Wow!

So we walked the bike path to check out the downtown. I took this picture when John said, "Look, Kelley Forney's for sale. Isn't that where the Klampett's moved to when they struck oil?"

In 1959 a truck carrying two tons of dynamite and four and a half tons of ammonium nitrate exploded downtown leveling 8 city blocks creating a crater 52 feet in diameter and 12 feet deep. 14 people died and many were injured.

Happy Halloween, everybody! Guess where we are going trick or treating...

Here's a clue. This is the Henry Estate Winery.

Yes, the Umpqua Valley Wine Tour. It's almost as good as chocolate.

This is at Julianna Vineyard.

First we drove to Myrtle Creek over this bridge to see a couple of the covered bridges that Oregon is known for. At one time they had over 300. Now there are about 50 left.

The Neal Lane Bridge is one of the shortest in the state at just 42 feet long. Built in 1939, this one lane bridge still carries vehicle traffic over Myrtle Creek in a residential neighborhood.

The Horse Creek Bridge, built in 1930, has been moved to the Millsite Park in downtown to preserve it and is only used for foot traffic.

This was our first winery stop. The Pyrenees Vineyard & Cellar is brand new this summer and what a beautiful setting, right along the South Umpqua River.

Abacela Winery overlooking the town of Winston. We also stopped at the Wild Rose Vineyard near Dillard.

Melrose Vineyard. We also stopped at Delfino Vineyards, Becker Vineyard, and Palotai Vineyard & Winery. At Palotai I bought a bottle of Bulls Blood Wine after the gal pouring the tastes told me this story. According to history, Suliman, the Ottoman leader, had a force of 100,000 and was preparing to attack a group of about 2,000 Hungarians. Realizing they were about to be slaughtered, they figured they might as well break into the wine casks and enjoy their last night on earth. So the wine was flowing everywhere and they got rip roaring drunk. When the superstitious Ottomans saw them the next day staggering around as if in a trance, all covered in what appeared to be blood, they got spooked and decided it was a bad omen. So they retreated and the Hungarians survived. So the wine is a blend of several different grapes that has supposedly been handed down over the centuries.

On the way home we heard a song on the radio called "You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly". We looked at each other and started laughing. It seemed funny. Maybe it was just the wine. Later we heard Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty singing "I'm Getting Fat and Sassy". We decided it is definitely our new theme song.

Cheers,

Tarra

P.S. I got my days mixed up, so the post about Crater Lake before this one should have been after it.