Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label travels

A Day on the Freeway

My Alphabe Thursday theme—Places I've Been Last year, the Husband and I drove home from San Diego, about 465 miles, in one day.  As young selves, the Husband and I were great long-distance freeway drivers. We each could go hours without stopping. Now, we want a bathroom, as well as our bodies need to stretch out of our cramped sitting positions, every 90 minutes or so. When I'm a passenger, I entertain myself by taking photos out the window, of which I'm sharing some with you today. Hope you enjoy the road trip up southern and central California. Our trip home started on Interstate 5. Almost immediately we were startled by the towering San Diego California Temple (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) at the side of the freeway. This is the northern edge of San Diego County. This terrain has always intrigued me. Not sure why. Just north of here starts a bunch of beach towns. See the two people sticking cameras out their windows on the lef

East of Eden

My Alphabe Thursday theme—Places I've Been East of Eden is about 28 miles away from where we live in Hollister. We first drive west and then south to get there. I'm sure that the above photo clues you into the fact that the East of Eden about which I'm talking is where John Steinbeck based his novel and several other novels and short stories. Namely, Salinas and Salinas Valley. Salinas is where Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902. The house on Central Avenue where he was born and lived until he was a young man is today a restaurant. Unfortunately, the day the Husband and I visited the National Steinbeck Center , a couple blocks away, the restaurant was closed. That didn't stop us from walking over to the Steinbeck House and take a look around. Have you ever read East of Eden ? It's an amazing story. Very powerful and rich in detail. The screenplay for the TV mini-series with Jane Seymour follows the novel's line more than the 1950s movie

The Diridon Station of San Jose

My Alphabe Thursday theme—Places I've Been The Husband and I were waiting for Amtrak at the San Jose Diridon Station this afternoon. We weren't going anywhere, other than back home, jiggity-jigg. We were picking up my godmother who had been up in Sacramento. Sitting alongside the track gave me the wanderlust. Sigh. Once upon a time, the Diridon Station was called the Southern Pacific Depot and Cahill Depot. Built in the mid-1930s, it's a gorgeous brick structure designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style. The depot was restored in the 1990s and renamed after a Santa Clara county supervisor. I'm guessing Diridon was the guy who made the big push for getting the funds to bring back the station's beauty. According to Wikipedia, the station's platform was used to represent a Connecticut train station in the movie Marnie by Alfred Hitchcock. As the Husband and I sat by Track 4, I wondered if trains used to stop closer to the building. Toda

The Carquinez Strait

This is the Carquinez Strait, about 37 miles northeast of San Francisco. It's where the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers run into the San Francisco Bay. Carquinez comes from the Spanish word Carquines , which is for Karkin, the name of the Ohlone Indian tribe who once lived in the area. This is the Carquinez Bridge, which stands at the west end of the strait. It's actually two parallel bridges, a cantilever bridge built in the 1950s and a suspension bridge built in 2003 to replace a 1920s bridge that engineers determined would not hold in a big earthquake. These photos were taken a few years ago when the Husband and I, along with friend BB, took a trip to Napa for the day. On the way home, we stopped for dinner in Benicia, which sits on the north shore of the Carquinez Strait.  It's a cute place with lots of art glass studios, boutiques, and restaurants. Also, the once-upon-a-time California capital made lots of interesting California and national history. For in

Baker, California

My Alphabe Thursday theme—Places I've Been The Husband and I stopped in Baker, California fifteen years ago around this time of the year. Baker is a small town located at the point where Interstate 15 and California State Route 127 meet. Highway 127 takes you to Death Valley National Park, while Interstate 15 heads to Las Vegas. Each place extreme in its own way. We were heading back home from Las Vegas, which was our first visit there together. Talk about surrealism. Las Vegas, that is. But, that's for another day. Baker is in the Mojave Desert. It's known for having the tallest thermometer in the world—134 feet high.  The electric sign was built in the early 1990s to memorialize when Death Valley recorded 134 degrees Fahrenheit on July 10, 1913. You've heard the saying, "It's so hot you could fry an egg on a sidewalk." Standing next to the thermometer is a sculpture of a pan of fried eggs. How appropriate. Alphabe Thursday i

Aromas, California

Today starts another round of the alphabet at Alphabe Thursday , hosted by the delightful Jenny Matlock. My theme this time round is places that I've visited far and near. So, the first place is Aromas, California, which has the distinction of being within two counties—San Benito and Monterey counties—as well as being within a few miles of the borders of Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties. With a population of about 2,700, this incorporated town is about 18 miles west from Hollister where I live (hence the www.take25tohollister.com signature). But, it was only last year that I first visited Aromas when Friend Jenn and I checked out several artists who were taking part in the annual open art studio tour of San Benito county. These photos were taken then. Five things I like about Aromas. Aromas stays green longer than Hollister. I suppose it's because Aromas is nearer to the coast and gets refreshed by the ocean fog that rolls in.  Aromas is a small town fu

John Steinbeck Said . . .

The Husband and I had a wonderful time wandering about on our monthly 23rd date. We saw quite a lot of amazing and interesting stuff and met some very nice people during  our travels.  One of our stops was the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas. If you're into John Steinbeck, you'd like this museum. It's all about Steinbeck and his works. There was so much for me to see, to read, and to absorb as I went from exhibit to the next. Reading the honesty and wonder in Steinbeck's words was like breathing in oxygen.

Another Year of Picking Tomatoes with the Mama

Sixty-nine pounds of organic tomatoes. That's how many pounds of tomatoes the Husband, the Mama, and I picked at the Live Earth Farm in Watsonville yesterday.  The farm was having its last u-pick day for tomatoes, and, we were quite fortunate to learn about it just in time. I have gotten spoiled. Maybe the Husband and the Mama have, too. For the last four years, we have picked enough organic tomatoes to freeze and use until the next tomato season. Frozen organic tomatoes taste almost as if they were just picked. That's reason one for me saying I am spoiled. Reason number two is that I like seeing Mama enjoy herself as she picks tomatoes. I think it brings her back to the days of working in vegetable seed research. We bring her little green bench so that she can sit as she pick tomatoes in solitude under the warm sun. "Don't go too far," she always tells me, as I go to find my own row of solitude nearby, while the Husband walks toward the far end of the f

The Ilocano Tribe

Check out other A to Z Challenge participants by clicking here . In 1985, I spent several days camping in Havasu Canyon with the First Husband-to-be. Havasu Canyon lies just outside of the western border of the Grand Canyon National Park.   The Havasu campground is on the Havasupai Indian Reservation and run by the Havasupai tribe. Havasupai means people of the green blue water.   Havasu Canyon is kno wn for its gorgeous waterfalls that run down to the Colorado River. And , yes, the pools of water were a spectacular green-blue color when we were there. I've seen photos on the Internet that show they stil l are. To get to the campground back then, you either flew in on a helicopter or h iked the winding 10-mile trail down to the canyon floor. I was (and still am) a slow walker, so the First Husband-to-be got to the campground office before me. The reservation was under my name so he and the office manager patiently waited for me to get there. The two men were talk

Flying with the Eagles

Check out other A to Z Challenge participants b y clicking here . The Loneliest Road in America truly sums up the stretch of U.S. Route 50 through ce ntral Nevada. I had no idea Nevad a had so many desert valleys until I drove this national highway.  You get over one mountain range and voila ! It's deja vu—a nother endless valley floor with a mountain range staring from afar. In the late 1980s, the First Husband and I decided to drive cross-country, from San Francisco to New York. However, the first day of our adventure began with a dental emergency and a pain that would eventually make itself known as cancer for the First Husband. After several days of checking with doctors, we got in our red Mazda pick-up truck and headed east, with an open mind that we would turn back at Denver if the First Husband did not feel well. I don't remember how we decided to take U.S. 50 rather than the more direct U.S. 80 through Nevada to Utah. Most likely it was the ro