On our road trip to Anacortes last summer, day three ended in Bellevue, Washington, where we spent a couple of days visiting our older daughter and her fiancé’s family. The day we arrived we went for a walk in the Bellevue Botanical Gardens. The gardens are a beautiful getaway just east of downtown. We arrived at about 7:30pm, 40 minutes before sunset, so the Sun was low in the sky.
There were great contrasts between the Sun-illuminated trees and the places in shadow.
As I wrote last month, we took a road trip from Los Angeles to Anacortes, Washington in July. Taking the inland, US-395 route, our first day took us to Reno, Nevada, and our second to John Day, Oregon.
John Day is a nice small town in eastern Oregon, just over halfway through the state going north on US-395. John Day and the John Day River are named for a hunter from the back woods of Virginia who was attacked by Indians near the mouth of the Mau Mau river 1812. He survived the attack and people started calling the river the “John Day River.” It is interesting to note that he spent no time near where town of John Day is today.
We arrived in late afternoon, checked into the Best Western John Day Inn, and started to think about dinner. We were lucky, the Outpost Pizza Pub & Grill was just a couple of blocks away. I had an interesting chicken dish they call Alice Chicken. It was grilled chicken topped with bacon, mushrooms, cheese, and a sauce. It was pretty good.
We were up early the next morning. After the hotel-provided breakfast, we headed east out of town on US-26. US-395 turned north in Mt. Vernon and we left it behind. Our destination for the day was Bellevue, Washington, but on our route is the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument. The national monument has three fairly wide-spread units in central Oregon. Our route would take us by the Sheep Rock Unit.
We turned off of US-26 onto Oregon 19 about five miles east of Dayville. We had a nice 20 minute stop while the highway repair crews ferried us through a very long stretch of one-lane road as they were repaving. Oregon 19 follows the John Day River through a very pretty canyon. After a few miles we came to the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center, one of the major facilities in the national monument.
Unfortunately for us, the center is closed on Mondays. We continued our drive north and stopped at the Foree Picnic Area. There are two short and easy trails here, the Flood of Fire trail and the Story in Stone trail. These trails, both less than a half mile (one kilometer) round trip, take you up the hillside into some interesting rock formations. There is a nice parking lot and information about the formations and trails at the trailhead.
The hills above the John Day River Valley are impressive. They are capped with a layer of lava that was laid down in a large eruption near Burns, Oregon, seven million years ago. This layer is known as the Rattlesnake Formation. Click on any picture to see a full-sized image.
In July, we took a two-week road trip from Los Angeles to Anacortes, Washington and back. We took the inland route, up US-395. Our first day took us up through the San Fernando Valley, on to the Antelope Valley Freeway, past Mojave and Red Rock Canyon and merging onto US-395 just north of Inyokern. The drive up the eastern Sierra is just magnificent. I wrote about our 2011 trip up a similar route and included pictures. We arrived at our hotel in Reno at about 4:00pm.
On our second day, we went north from Reno, past Honey Lake, through Alturas, and then into Oregon. Our target that second day was John Day, Oregon.
We passed through Lakeview, Oregon at about lunch time. We tried to see the Old Perpetual Geyser that is just north of Lakeview, but we couldn’t find it. We stopped for lunch at the Chandler State Wayside 17 miles north of Lakeview. It was good to get out and stretch our legs.
About five miles north of the wayside, in a place called Valley Falls, Oregon 31 splits off from US-395 heading to La Pine. We went left, staying on US-395. Coming up to the junction you get your first glimpse of Abert Rim. This is a very impressive uplift of basalt almost 2,500 feet (760 meters) high. Click on any image to see a full-sized version.
This closer view of Aber Rim shows the basalt cap. According to Wikipedia, Abert Rim was formed over five million years ago when lava flows covered what is now eastern Oregon. Faulting lifted the rim up, creating the dramatic features we see today.
We took a road trip up to Washington state in July. I took a lot of pictures and I am still going through them. Look for some road trip posts in upcoming months.
Having no other ideas for a post this month, I am bringing you a post of cat pictures. After all, this is the internet. As you read this, know that you are being watched.
There is a good story behind how we got Napoleon and his sister Dahlia in our house. We had two cats, Sam and Mandy. Sam was an outdoor cat and the king of the area around our yard. Sadly, he got mouth cancer and had to be put down. With him gone, suddenly there were all kinds of feral cats hanging around. They had probably gotten used to stealing some of Sam’s food.
There was one small, black cat that we noticed. She was very shy, but my older daughter earned her trust. Our younger daughter named her Papaya. One day when we were sitting outside and this now friendly cat was sitting hear us, my wife said, “Oh, my, that cat is pregnant.” Sure enough, a while later on March 12, 2012, Papaya gave birth to five kittens in a box on our back deck. From there we got them to the garage an finally inside the house.
But now we had seven cats. Mandy, Papaya, and the five kittens, Bertie, Rosie, Fermi, Dahlia, and Napoleon. Seven cats is too many cats. A cat lady took Papaya. Bertie and Rosie went to family and we had four cats. Mandy died a couple of years later and Fermi has gone to live with my older daughter, leaving us with the two cats.
And that is how we got Napoleon.
Last weekend, after a nice brunch at Meet in Paris (or is it The Paris?) in Culver City, we drove over to UCLA to visit the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden. I hadn’t been there since I was an undergraduate at UCLA and I believe I only went there once. It is really a treat.
Located at the south east corner of campus, the garden is very well maintained. The plants are plentiful and healthy, the paths are clean, and there is a bit of wildlife in the pools along a little creek. Parking on the weekend is easy either along the street or in parking lot #2.
It was a pleasant day, with the high overcast providing a pretty backdrop to the trees overhead.
I have finally got around to looking at my old black & white photos from the late 1970s and early 1980s. I was given a film scanner for Christmas in 2020 and so have been able to turn these old Tri-X Pan negatives into digital images, bringing them into the 21st century. It has been a great walk down memory lane.
One set of pictures were taken at Knapp’s Castle, a ruined mansion in the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara. I was visiting friends in Santa Barbara around 1980, and we headed up the San Marcos Pass road, turning onto East Camino Cielo at the top of the hill. The road to Knapp’s Castle is about 1.5 miles down the winding Camino Cielo. As we walked out to the ruins, the view of the Santa Ynez Valley and Lake Cachuma were spectacular. (Click on any picture to get a full-sized view.)
The ruins are just that — ruins. The mansion was built in 1916 by George Owen Knapp, the founder of Union Carbide. It burned in a wild fire in 1940. As you drive around the back roads of the Southern California mountains, you will occasionally come across the remains of a burned structure. Ironically, the most common thing left after a fire is the fireplace. The rock structure of the fireplace survives. Lake Cachuma is in the distance.
Some other rock walls survived the fire. Here the Santa Ynez Valley is visible through the small window in a surviving wall.
The USGS had come through in 1956, dutifully marking the location. I tried to look up the marker using the word “BURRO” which is inscribed on top of the marker, but had no luck.
The friend who accompanied me is silhouetted against the western sky as we make our way back to the car.
It is interesting to note that, while I did take a full roll of 36 photos that day, today I would have taken far more. I do admit I like the ease and convenience of modern digital photography.
Last Thanksgiving we travelled to Anacortes to be with family. My in-laws moved there over 10 years ago and we have come to like this small community in northwestern Washington. A great feature of Anacortes are the Community Forest Lands. The Community Forest Lands are almost 3,000 acres of forested lands and lakes on Fidalgo Island where Anacortes is located. Cranberry Lake, the largest lake in the Forest Lands, has a parking area very close to my in-law’s house. On a cool and damp but not wet day, I took a walk around Cranberry Lake.
Cranberry Lake is at the north end of the Forest Lands, near the Washington State Ferry terminal that connects the San Juan Islands with the rest of the world. It also connects to Canada too, but that’s a different story. There is a steep dirt road up to the parking lot at the north end of the lake. The spillway is next to the parking area and you have a beautiful view south over the lake.
At the parking area there is a nice map that shows the local Forest Lands (this view only includes Cranberry Lake). The trails are well marked and very well maintained.
On my hike, I took the the trails that closely followed the shoreline. There are some beautiful views of the lake.
Back in 2016, I took a stroll through Lovric’s Sea Craft in Anacortes and wrote a post about it. I had a chance to go back last Thanksgiving so I through I would post some new photos. But first, a little more background on Lovrić.
Founded in 1965 by Croatian immigrant Anton Marion Lovric, Lovric’s Sea Craft is a full-service maintenance and mooring facility with extensive facilities for maintaining sea-going vessels. It is the largest private dock north of Seattle. Located along Oakes Avenue, it is just a mile or so from the Anacortes Washington State Ferry terminal.
I was there last fall on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It was a nice, cool day, with the Sun peaking through the clouds. There are several old buildings on the property, all in some form of use. Since it was a work day, I stuck to the public areas of the facility. (Click on a picture for a full-sized version.)
The facility is packed with boats, as some appear to be berthed there permanently, others are awaiting work.
There is old equipment all around the facility. I came across this story about Lovric’s published last March. It describes some struggles at the facility with a major wind storm and a filing for waste clean up from the State of Washington. That there is clean up needed is not a surprise.
The neighborhood above Lovric’s is nice, with great views north across the Guemes Channel with views of Guemes Island, Cypress Island, and, on a clear day, the Canadian Rockies.
The weathered wood on the old buildings looks nice.
This lift has seen better days.
Repeating the first photo so Facebook picks this one for the thumbnail.
We come to the end of 2021. I look forward with hope to the new year. Off we go, like these geese, high in the sky over Samish, Washington.
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