June 14-25, 2008

June 14, 2008 – We left early to drive across the mountains to Route 101 on the western coast of California. The road was really twisty turny with short curves. A sign on the side of the road warned “No trailers longer than 32’ from king pin to rear axle”. It was about 80 degrees when we left Redding early in the morning and about 83 degrees a little more than half-way across the mountains. We stopped for a picnic lunch and then continued driving. On the west side of the mountains the temperature started to drop and it was 60 degrees by the time we got to the coast! Most of the road doesn’t really go along the coast, but when it does it is very scenic with all of the rocks, waves and driftwood. We watched a so-so movie at a Visitor Center and then went to the Lady Bird Johnson Grove. Lady Bird Johnson dedicated this grove of redwood trees in 1969. There is a really nice 1 mile trail that is just long enough and just short enough to really enjoy. There is a pamphlet with explanations for each of about 15 stops along the trail. Other than the very flowery “artsy” prose it was very informative. There were quite a few people on the trail and you could walk it quickly or take your time. All in all, very nice. We drove the alternate scenic route instead of following Highway 101 along the east side of the National Park. Then we took the alternative scenic route off of that road and ended up on a dirt road right along the coast! The GPS told us to take a right turn to get back to the main road and we ended up on the road to a prison! We drove on to Crescent City to spend the night. Mark was fascinated with the Curly Redwood Motel across the street from the restaurant where we ate dinner. It was made completely with the curly redwood from ONE redwood tree 18’ in diameter providing 53,000 board feet of wood. Curly redwood happens when a redwood tree is damaged somehow and the wood starts to grow in swirls instead of straight. Once it starts, the whole tree becomes “curly”.

Sunday, June 15 – We rode around the Crescent City harbor and marveled at the jetty made with concrete “jacks” to keep the jetty in place during tsunamis. Lots of crab boats, crab pots, seine fishing nets. The lighthouse was interesting. Driving back south along Highway 101 we saw surfers out in the waves and also people in kayaks riding the waves like surfers. We drove into Eureka and saw some really well renovated old houses. After lunch we headed back over the mountains and stopped to see the old LaGrange Gold Mine. They built 26 miles of ditch, pipe and trench to bring water from a lake to mine the gold. Then they used water pressure to actually disintegrate the mountain and run it through the sieve and take out the gold. They took $3,500,000 worth of gold out of the mountain while the mine was operating. Eventually the gold was gone. Then they used the 26 miles of pipe and the “monitors”, called “monsters”, to build the new highway from the middle of the state to the coast. All very interesting. We drove past Whiskeytown Lake and saw lots of people enjoying their weekend in and near the water with boats and floats. We drove back to the motor home.

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Monday, June 16 – We went to Wal-Mart to do some shopping and then picked up the mail and did paperwork.

Tuesday, June 17 – We drove east to Lassen Volcanic National Park. It was only about 50 miles or so from the motor home. We entered the Park at the north end, stopped at the Visitor Center. The Visitor Center was actually the old home and museum of Mr. and Mrs. B. F. Loomis, who photographed the eruption of Mount Lassen in May 1914 after waiting with his camera ready for 2 days. The Loomis’s lived in the area and photographed the mountain until they died. They established a Museum in honor of their 20 year old daughter who died and displayed all of their Lassen Peak photos and “things” in the Museum. It is now used for the Visitor Center and the Ranger Station. There were 2 pretty good movies about the area. Also, there were some neat displays about plate tectonics. One of them said that the oceanic plate was 37 miles and the continental plate is 134 miles. We are assuming that they meant “deep” because they certainly are not that long… We drove on the Park road with a few stops for scenic photos along the way. The trail to Bumpass Hell is about 3 miles round trip, but the trail just opened for the season the day we were there so they were suggesting that you do the trail with hiking boots AND ski poles. We decided NOT to take the trail… However, that is really the best place in the park to see the fumaroles, mud pots and “geysers” so we didn’t get to see them. There is one more place where you actually drive BETWEEN 2 boiling mudpots. One is more visible then the other. One just vents a lot of sulphuric steam. The smell wasn’t too bad, but other people were complaining. The whole drive was very interesting, but there really wasn’t that much to see… We drove back to Redding on a route further south than the road we came over on.

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Wednesday, June 18 – Worked on Sonny’s IRS papers. Mark changed the nozzle on the Hydro-Hot water heater. The electric was finally hooked up at Home Port in Port Mansfield!

Thursday, June 19 – This was a very different afternoon! We learned how to ride Segway’s and then did a 2 hour tour of the Turtle Bay Exploration Park, the Sundial Bridge, and Caldwell Park. We were both surprised at how quickly we learned how to balance and ride the Segway. These were the new Segway I-2 models with a post that you just leaned on to steer right or left and go faster, slower or stop. If the POST moves left, so does the machine. If you lean forward, you go faster. If you lean back and “dig in your heels” you slow down or stop. It became very easy very quickly and was lots of fun. After that we drove just about 15 miles north to see the Shasta Dam and Lake Shasta. It is the “second largest dam in the US” but it doesn’t tell us second in what way – concrete used, electricity generated, water held back, …

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Friday, June 20 – Betty and Joe’s Anniversary. We left Redding and headed WAY down I-5 for 70 miles to Orland, which is just off of I-5 west of Chico. Mark had been reading about things to do in this area and found the Yo-Yo Museum and read that the Championships were being held on Saturday. What he didn’t read carefully was that they were being held in Minnesota! We didn’t find that out until we were happily set up in our campground for two days, so we decided we would just explore Chico and the area anyway!

Saturday, June 21 – We headed east to Chico past miles of olive trees. Some of them were darker green than others. We stopped to look at them but they all had green olives. Each limb had LOTS of olives growing on it. They can be picked by hand or by a machine that vibrates the truck of the tree and the limbs are “beat” with a stick to make the olives fall off. Black olives and green olives are the same olives, but the black olives are riper than the green ones. Once the olives are picked, they must be either “processed” or pressed within three days. If they are pressed, the olives are ground by grinding stones that take the flesh off of the olive and discard the pits. What remains is pressed. If they olives are not fully ripe, they will not have a satisfactory amount of oil in them. They are turned into olives that we eat by being processed with brine according to various formulas. The olive tree is about 2500 years old as determined by carbon dating in the Mediterranean. They were introduced to California in the late 1700’s by the Spanish. Olives are usually harvested in November.

We arrived in Chico and found that the Chico Museum didn’t open until noon. So we walked around town, visited the Yo-Yo Museum and were entertained for an hour by the salespeople and the customers in the Yo-Yo section of the store. We ended up buying a “good” yo-yo for the kids (and Brian) to try to use. I couldn’t make it work any better than a 99 cent yo-yo! We had lunch and walked back to the Chico Museum – only to find that it really was closed for renovations! The lady in the Chamber of Commerce kind of forgot to mention that when we told her we were going there when it opened at noon! So, we went to the Bidwell Mansion instead and it was GREAT. John Bidwell came to California on the FIRST wagon train. He actually lived every part of the California history through the wars with Mexico, John Sutter’s camp and businesses, actually carried the first gold found on Sutter’s land (or in California for that matter) to Los Angeles and send the news of the gold strike to the world. He found gold on the Feather River near Chico, established a town on the Bidwell Bar, got tired of gold mining and bought 28,000 acres of land to start farming. He realized that if he grew things he would need a market to sell them so he set aside part of his land for a town and gave away plots of land to anyone who was willing to build a house, a school, a church or any public building. The ranch/farm was on the Little River and so the area became known as El Rancho Arroyo Chico, shortened quickly to Chico. John Bidwell ran for governor of California 4 times but was defeated every time, mostly because he refused to play the game of politics and promise something that he could not deliver OR promise other people favors if they would lend him their support. He also ran for President of the US once. He did get elected to represent California in the US Congress. There he met Annie Kennedy in Washington, DC, and decided she was the only woman for him. He was about 50 years old at the time. Four years later Annie and John were married and she moved with him to California. They were especially concerned about the Indians who had been displaced from their own land and set aside some land for about 250 Indians to live and work at jobs on the ranch. Annie set up a room inside their house specifically to bring the Indian women and girls in and teach them how to sew. While she taught them to sew she also taught them about Christianity. John Bidwell came from Chataqua County in New York from a farming family. He recognized how good the land was in this valley and tried all kinds of different crops and trees. He grew prize winning wheat, set up a mill to grind it into flour, had the general store, and did just about everything. He really did see what needed to be done to prepare for the future. They donated lots of land for public parks. After John’s death (of a sudden heart attack working in the fields when he was 80 years old) Annie had to work hard to keep the finances in order after the set-back they had suffered just before John’s death. She sold off some more of the land and got their finances back in order. Then she gave the City of Chico 2200 acres of land for a city park. She said that if she gave it away she would never be tempted to sell it for monetary gain. She died 18 years after John.

We still were looking for interesting things in the area, so we drove about 30 miles to the Oroville Dam and Lake Oroville. The dam is an earthen dam, but it does have a concrete core at the base. It has a lot of concrete other places too, but they still call it an earthen dam. The spillway was the size of an 8-lane highway! In the Visitor’s Center we met a ranger whose family is from Palestine, TX… The regular movie that they show Visitors wasn’t playing because they were doing a training video for a new worker. We watched the rest of that video about the town of Oroville, and then we watched a very informative video about Ishi. Ishi was the very LAST surviving Indian in the area. There had been rumors of Indians in the hills, but no one had ever seen one until one day some surveyors saw an Indian spearing fish from rocks in the river. He ran away but they found where they lived. No one was there except for a very feeble old woman. The next day when they came back the camp had been deserted and there was no one there. A couple of years after that, an Indian came walking into town. No one knew quite what to do with him so they put him in the jail to keep him safe. Then a couple of professors from the Anthropology Dept of the college came to see him with their list of Indian words. They were able to converse slightly. They took him back to the college and he lived in the Anthropology Building. An Indian never says his own name, so he couldn’t tell them his name. They named him Ishi, taught him that name and we pleased when after he learned it he never said it aloud again. This made the professors think that he had totally taken the name as his own. He showed them all of the Indian ways to do things. He even took them back to his old Indian home and they camped as Indians for a month while he showed them how the Indians lived. A couple of years later he died of TB. All of this is very famous because of the tremendous amount of knowledge the professors were able to gain from this one man. They felt that he was very wise, very patient. He thought that two of the best things the white man ever invented were matches and glue.

We wanted to drive over the dam to the Recreation Area. We were both amazed at the boat launching ramps on the far side of the dam! They are so steep and so long. There are hundreds of boat trailer parking spaces. Of course, some of them end up under water if the water lever behind the dam gets high… The pictures will tell the story.

So, we had a great day even without a yo-yo championship!

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Sunday, June 22 – We drove to the West Sacramento KOA and set up for 3 nights.

Monday, June 23 – We drove into Old Town Sacramento and started our day at the Visitor Center. The Wells Fargo Museum was right next door and we spent an hour in there. It was great! There were pictures of the Pony Express riders and maps showing where they rode, their “horse change” stops, their “rider and horse change” stops and the end of the line. There were 190 stations in the 196 mile route. They used 500 horses and 50 riders. They carried 20 pounds of mail in their specially made “saddle cover” that had four compartments. The Pony Express used young men and boys aged 14 to 24 who were small, short and couldn’t weigh more than 125 pounds. They actually liked orphans best because they wouldn’t have any grieving parents to explain things to if the rider got killed. However, only one Pony Express rider was ever killed. More outpost attendants were killed, but only one rider. The mail could go from Sacramento, California, to St. Joseph, MO, in only 10 days. It cost $5 to send ½ ounce in the 1850’s – a lot of money. But it opened up the country for communication. The Pony Express started in April of 1860 and ended in October 1861. On October 24, 1861, the telegraph lines were completed and messages could be send instantly, which made the Pony Express obsolete in only 18 months. Two days after the completion of the Overland Telegraph Line the Pony Express ceased running! During its operation, the Pony Express took in $90,000 at a cost of $200,000.

Ben Holladay had sold the originators of the Pony Express the mail route contract that got them started, and after the Pony Express ended Holladay bought back some of the way stations they had set up. In 1866 Wells Fargo purchased the Pony Express assets along with the remnants of the Butterfield Stage that Holladay owned for $1.5 million. Wells Fargo then provided armored car service and mail service via stagecoach in combination with their already established banking and financial services. They were so dependable that writers would often instruct their readers to “respond by Wells Fargo Express”. Wells Fargo transported people inside their coaches and valuables and mail in the locked “treasure box”. They continued to use the Pony Express logo until the business was sold in 2001. There are hundreds of stories about the drivers, robbers and passengers of the Wells Fargo stagecoaches.

After that we did a walking tour around the city Old Sacramento with a “doctor from the period” dressed in 1950’s clothing. We learned a lot. We saw the offices of Stanford, Crocker, Hopkins and Huntington who, along with Charles Wilson, were the ones who gave Theodore Judah the money he needed to build the railroad along the route that he had determined. Judah had the whole route mapped out, but after a falling out with the “Big Four” he traveled to New York to get other money to build the railroad. He got typhoid fever crossing Panama and died in New York. The Big Four hired another man to build the railroad and got it done. Irish and Chinese laborers were indispensable in the building.

The old city of Sacramento is right at the confluence of the Sacramento and the American Rivers and was prone to flooding. In 1850 and again in 1852 the city was flooded. In 1853 a project was proposed to raise the entire city by 12’. It wasn’t until another flood in 1862 that project took hold. A brick retaining wall was built completely surrounding every street in the city. Wagons of dirt were brought in, the level of the streets were all raised 12’, new wooden sidewalks were built, first floors became basements, second floors became first floors and new doors were put in. Since the retaining walls were under the streets, there will still empty spaces between some of the buildings and the retaining walls. If you weren’t careful when you walked around the raised city, you would go off the edge and be 12’ lower. Eventually the residents built arches from their buildings to the retaining walls and put plank sidewalks over these archways and the unfinished holes were covered up. There is at least one café in town that is open to the street but the dining is on the bottom floor, 12’ below the street level. It is great because you can really see how it all was done…

In addition to the flood of 1852, there was also a fire that burned down most of the city. The original structures had been built of wood and canvas (sometimes from ships that sailed up the river and then had no crew to sail back down the river because they all jumped ship to go to the gold mines!). The few brick buildings in town were just fine, so everyone rebuilt with brick or stucco and used ingenious ideas for fireproof roofs. One building used brick and mortar, sand and metal to make their roof fireproof.

As an aside, parking here is exorbitant. You would think you were in New York City or Boston! The parking garage, which is very nice and very convenient, costs $1.25 per half-hour for the first 2 hours and then $1.00 per half hour after that – for a maximum daily charge of $13.00! Wow!

After the tour we went to the Railroad Museum. This is not a plain old railroad museum. It is devoted to the history of the Transcontinental Railroad and they do a great job of presenting the information! They have lots of big trains too, including a great setup of a dining car and sleeping car that actually rocks and has sound effects like you are really moving on the train!

Some interesting facts:

Standard time was started because the railroads had to have a set time to run. Agrarian time was normal with farmers getting up when it was light and going to bed when it was dark – whatever time that might be. But the railroads needed to have a more precise time. So, a signal was sent along the telegraph lines and at that precise moment every train station set their clock to 12 noon and that became the official time.

There were actually 2 golden spikes commissioned for the final spike for the Transcontinental Railroad and they were made to order for a friend of Leland Stanford. This has always been a mystery, but then a second spike was found in an attic and the rumor was confirmed. The friend had given the first spike to Stanford to take to the ceremony and it was hastily engraved with the date. The second spike was later engraved properly with the correct date. Since the anticipated date and the actually date were 2 days apart, the first spike was engraved at the site. The second spike was engraved later well after the actual event. There is a receipt showing the TWO spikes were made for the man’s order.

Crocker was one of the original businessmen involved in the project, but then he resigned so that he could be a contractor and make lots of money from the project during construction.

The railroad was operated like a monopoly and there were quite a few law suits against the Big Four for monopolistic practices. Nothing really ever happened…

We came home, got the mail, took care of it, watched Faith’s video of India, and went to sleep!

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Tuesday, June 24 – We started out the day at the Heidrick Ag Center looking at LOTS of old tractors and farm equipment and trucks. Quite a collection! The Fordson tractors were made by Ford & Son, who couldn’t use the Ford name because someone else was already making tractors using the Ford Tractor name…

We went to the Leland Stanford Museum but didn’t take the house tour. We read the information available, but this isn’t the best place we’ve been for information…

Then we drove a few blocks to the Sutter Fort. Now, that was well done.

John Sutter (who left Switzerland as Johann) moved to a city in Switzerland other than the home of his family and was unable to find good work since he wasn’t part of any guild or brotherhood in the new town. He married and had a child and then 4 more kids. He heard all the stories about America and left his wife and children in the care and sailed for America. He traveled around the United States, sold supplies in Missouri for a few years and eventually heard about California so headed there on a wagon train across the Oregon Trail. Every time he met a person of some importance, he would get a letter of introduction from them and use those letters of introduction to get loans to purchase supplies. When he got to Portland he tried to get a boat to San Francisco, but all of the boats were full. So he took a boat to Hawaii because people said you could get to San Francisco easily from Hawaii. He spent six months trying to get to San Francisco, but he spent that time getting more letters of introduction. When he did finally get to San Francisco he was able to use those letters to again get credit to purchase supplies. He decided that instead of digging with a shovel he would sell shovels! He got a land grant of about 50,000 acres from the Spanish on the condition that he was able to get 12 families to settle in his “town” and that he protect the Spanish empire from the encroaching Americans. Sutter “impressed” the Indians of the area and using the Indians and some laborers he brought with him from Hawaii he built the adobe Sutter’s Fort with 18’ high walls 3’thick. In 1841 he expanded his fort when he purchased the Russian Fort for $30,000 using a note that he never repaid. He dismantled the fort and brought the materials, livestock and equipment back to expand Sutter’s Fort. He wanted to establish his own trading post/city/kingdom and be the beneficent ruler of all of his people – and make money. His settlement was called New Helvetia. He raised sheep to spin wool to weave blankets to sell to every settler who needed one. He grew every kind of vegetable, raised cattle, planted wheat and started a mill to grind flour. In 1844 his son came over to help him run his business and was soon followed by Sutter’s wife and other 4 children. In 1846 the United States “acquired” California but Sutter had helped so many American immigrants that even though his fort was “Spanish” he was protected by America. Sutter used to give food and lodging to anyone who came by. He figured that they would buy their supplies from him and be customers as long as he treated them right. John Bidwell, who we were so impressed with in Chico, worked for Sutter as his right hand man for a couple of years. He was Sutter’s chief clerk and then handled the moving of the materials at Fort Ross to Sutter’s Fort.

In 1847 Sutter decided that lumber was in such demand he should have a saw mill. James Marshall had the same idea, but Sutter had the money and Marshall had the ability to do the work so they formed a partnership. On January 24, 1848, as James was checking the sluice to make sure that there was no silt in it, he found some nuggets of gold at the bottom. Marshall took the nuggets to Sutter’s Fort and closed the door to show them to Sutter. Sutter checked some books and found out how to test the nuggets to see if they were really gold – soft between your teeth, reacts in a certain way to an acid,… They determined that it WAS gold. They tried to swear all of the employees to secrecy, but the word leaked out and the gold rush was on.

All of Sutter’s employees, including John Bidwell, left him to go hunt for gold in the mine fields. Thousands of squatters swarmed over his fields destroying and stealing his crops and cattle. In three years Sutter was ruined. He spent the rest of his life trying to get either the state or the federal government to compensate him for the damage done to his lands. He died during a trip to Washington DC in 1880 never winning any compensation.

It is one of those kind of sad stories in American history. Sutter did so many things right and had so many good ideas and wasn’t afraid to do what it took to make things happen. Unfortunately, things just happened TO him that he couldn’t anticipate or change. Very interesting.

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Wednesday, June 25 – We left Sacramento and drove all 53 miles to Vallejo! We will leave the motor home here while we drive to Los Angeles to get Rachel and Abby and also Brian.