We have an entire day to spend in Marfa. After a leisurely morning we drove into town (2 miles) and found The Sentinel. It’s either a newspaper supported by a Cafe, or a Cafe that sends all its profits to a newspaper…
We stopped in for Lunch…
It’s a great space in an old adobe building… Inside we can see the steel structure that supports the adobe walls…
Across the street they are building a structure to house artist studios, galleries, and workshops…
We walked around the neighborhood for about an hour. We saw lots of activities going on to support and improve the town…
After we returned to the Villa I looked at the other structures here at the Marfa Yacht Club…
This appears to be a residence…
This is the pool… Closed for the season…
This is another residence…
We invited the occupants of our two neighboring Airstreams to join us for Happy Hours. We always have lots of fun playing Airstream Bingo, finding common things among our new friends…
The skies were threatening, and we saw many flashes of lightning… Or were they the “Marfa Lights”???
An enjoyable time was had by all…
This being Halloween, you can see bonus photos of our grandchildren…
It was a day of mourning and rejoicing over yesterday’s sports results… Dodgers lost, Stanfurd won, Notre Dame lost, USC lost, Alabama lost, Tennessee won, TCU won, CAL lost…
So you are now treated with a picture of the McAnoy Grandchildren; they are at one of the oldest still-operating Bob’s Bigboy Restaurant, in Burbank/Toluca Lake, California…
Tonight we see another show: O Happy Day, a show of Gospel music, at The Hamner Variety Theater…
It’s a grand place…
Oh! Wait… It’s just a metal industrial building with a fake façade
But the show was fun… Gospel music and Hymns! What’s not to like…
We enjoyed the show a lot! I even bought a CD! Now I need to figure out if I have a CD player…
We returned to the Villa, and an enjoyable time was had by all…
We are camped outside St. Louis, in Eureka, Mo. We have a day with no scheduled activities. We did some grocery shopping, caught up on emails and blog writing, and rearranged a few items in the trailer and truck in preparation of tomorrow’s travels…
Tomorrow we head south from here, leaving the interstate and much civilization behind. We are traveling to northern Arkansas along narrow country roads… We will be joining the other caravaners as we all arrive over the next few days. The caravan officially starts 5:00pm Thursday, September 29.
So that was it for today…
So, when I have nothing better to say, I post pictures of the grandkids…
Today is an adventure! We are driving over the Rocky Mountains. We are starting at Green River, UT, at 4,000′ elevation.
But first, here are the three oldest grandchildren, ready for school picture day: George X, almost 7, Ian, 8, and Roisin, 9…
We are heading east on the 70… We are traveling across barren Eastern Utah, into Western Colorado.
Once into western Colorado the terrain gets much more interesting…
We stopped at a little town called Rifle, CO, where we had a little lunch. We enjoyed walking the 100 year old downtown…
We continued on. The 70 winds along the Colorado River. We are slowly climbing, but not too rapidly.
The first of several tunnels we went through…
We crested the Vail Pass at 10,666′, then we dropped down to about 9,000′, then we climbed up again to the west entrance of the Eisenhower-Johnson Tunnel. The elevation here is 11,158. These tunnels are the highest tunnels in the USA.After exiting the tunnel we dropped down to about 7,000′; this is where we turned off for a short drive to the campground: 7 miles long, and another 1,500′ elevation rise.
Last day of summer! (Even though school started three weeks ago – it’s still summer!)
Our grandchildren enjoyed a day at the beach!
We left Puyallop and headed south…
The Columbia River never ceases to please…
Remember when I said one barge on the Columbia River holds enough grain to fill 160 railroad cars? Here is where the barges offload the grain, where it is loaded into the railroad cars…
Portland has some great bridges…
And we are set up at a very nice RV Park in Salem, OR.
With a beautiful sky…
Tuesday, September 7:
We left early – we have a long day… The fog was a nice relief from the heat…
Wait! That’s not fog – it’s smoke!
There are four wildfires to the east of us, just over the hills… The whole length of the state…
At a rest stop we couldn’t see the mountains…
We passed through the delightful little town of Jacksonville, OR, located about 20 miles off the 5, west of Medford… We found out camping spot for the night – Valley View Winery, part of the Harvest Host program…
Still a little smoky…
We were the gusts for dinner at old Airstream friends who live a few miles from the winery… They lave 7 acres and a lovely house overlooking the Applegate River…
Fiery sunset over the river…
After a lovely dinner we returned to the Villa…
Wednesday, September 8:
As we left the winey in the morning we found a few wild turkeys…
We soon returned to California! Yay!
We saw lots of evidence of last year’s fires…
And we had some more smoke as well…
But soon the skies cleared as we approached Clear Lake…
After a tortuous drive over Hwy 175 we arrived in Cloverdale in time for a lovely sunset sky…
Thursday, September 9:
We awoke to clear skies and headed down the road…
We crossed over the Richmond bridge and the San Francisco Bay…
Still a little smoggy, but we could see the Golden Gate Bridge…
Still a little smoggy, but we could make out the city skyline…
Oakland is noted for its giant cargo container cranes…
And downtown Oakland is looking good…
BART running past us… We love cities!
We arrived at our RV park in Marina, just outside Monterey…
We drove into Carmel to stroll the town before dinner…
The beach is lovely, but cold!
We had a delightful dinner at a “Contemporary Mexican Restaurant”. First Mexican food since we left California on July 23… (We don’t eat Mexican food outside California – way too many disappointing meals over the past years…)
Friday, September 10
As we headed out of Marina across the Salinas Valley we saw fields and fields of lettuce…
Soon we saw vineyards…
We arrive in Paso Robles and parked just outside downtown. And a lovely town it is…
We stopped in for a wine tasting, hosted by this charming fellow…
But we are on a tight schedule, so we head south again, arriving at Los Olivos at about 4:00 pm…
We enjoyed a little wine tasting on the front patio…
Plenty of parking in Los Olivos, even on a Friday afternoon…
We parked in the Saarloos vineyard for the night, and shared dinner with Airstream friends at Bell’s in Los Alamos…
Saturday, September 11:
We arrived home in Redlands, California…
We shared happy hours drinking beer on the front porch with our son…
And an enjoyable time was had by all…
Seven weeks and one day… twelve states… 7,000 miles.
It is an exciting day for us today! Most of our grandchildren start school for the first time in 17 months…
3rd grade, 2nd grade, Kindergarten… While the 3-year-old looks on wistfully… (She starts Preschool next week…)
Or as they say in Burbank: “Primer Dia de Escuela! Kinder, Grado 2, Grado 3…”
But on to today’s activities:
We took the truck in for an oil change… I tried to get an appointment for today a week ago, and I was told by the Chevy dealer and the GMC dealer that they were too busy. When I asked the GMC dealer, “What am I supposed to do?” he replied, “There’s a Jiffy-Lube right across the street!”…
We stopped in at Fred Meyer to do some grocery shopping…
After we returned to the Villa Lynda remembered that she forgot one item, so she walked to the nearby Kwik Stop Market…
But they didn’t have what she needed, so she walked a bit further to the Albertson’s…
So after that exhausting round of activity we took it easy the rest of the afternoon. We enjoyed Happy Hours with friends, then we joined others for a post happy hours Happy Hour…
An enjoyable time was had by all…
August 17, 2021
The caravaners toured the Museum of Clean this morning…
Donald Andrew Aslett (born 1935) is an American entrepreneur and author who specializes in cleaning and housekeeping products, services, and techniques. He co-founded Varsity House Cleaning Company, a house cleaning service, in 1957.
He is considered a cleaning expert and has written books about how to reduce the time spent cleaning by reducing clutter, selecting and organizing the efficient cleaning tools, and creating what he calls a self-cleaning house.
In 2011, he opened the Museum of Clean in Pocatello, Idaho, a six-story building with a theater, art gallery, and collection of 6,000 artifacts. The building is a restored warehouse in Pocatello’s historic warehouse district…
They do have the worlds Largest Janitor!
The musem has collections of vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and similar apparatus…
This display is close to home for us… In 1974 there was a winter storm that brought giant waves to San Onofre, at San Clemente, where we typically came 4-5 times per year. Hank “Crawdad” Wilson, a master surfer, who lived in nearby Dana Point, went to surf those giant waves. Unfortunately, his board was in the shop getting some Fiberglas work done. So he grabbed the closest thing in the shape of a surfboard – an ironing board!
He hit the waves and created a surfing legend that day…
(I have no idea what this has to do with clean…)
After the museum we headed north to Blackfoot, ID. To the old train depot…
Because, after all – we are in Idaho…
The potato museum was even more fun than the clean museum… We watched videos of potato harvest, we saw how McDonalds makes their French fries. There is also a potatoe, autographed by Dan Quail…!
And it has a café! We shared a baked potato with a few toppings for lunch…
We returned to the Villa…
This evening we are having a group dinner – baked potatoes!
We wanted to beat the traffic entering Yellowstone, so we pulled out at 6:45 am. We headed from the RV Park in Montana, into Wyoming, and through the Roosevelt Arch…
The early morning drive through Yellowstone was beautiful, but, other than the elk that was standing in the Roosevelt Arch, which delayed our drive for a few minutes, we saw no wildlife…
That isn’t to say that there was no excitement today… Back in Burbank our two older grandchildren boarded the big yellow school bus for the first time… They are heading to Beach Camp! We expect them to return tired, sandy, and sunburned (just a little…).
So we continued through the park. Believe it or not, this is the fastest route from Gardiner, MT to California…
We came upon some geothermal activity. This was bigger than any similar sulfur-smelling steam venting we had seen in all our time here…
But we continued on, traveling south, then heading west, exiting the park at the west entrance…
It took about one hour to travel the park. As we left we saw the lines of cars trying to get into the park. This line of traffic is still 3-4 miles from the park entrance…
So we passed on out of Wyoming, back into Montana, and on through to Idaho.
Somewhere in Idaho we stopped to stretch our legs and eat a snack. We pulled off an anonymous offramp and parked between the Potato Growers of Idaho Association and a FedEx Distribution center…
Back on the freeway we continued south…
We ate lunch at a nice rest stop somewhere in southern Idaho…
We passed over into Utah, and on the Tremonton, where we found a very nice RV Resort…
Aspen Grove RV Resort, Tremonton, Utah. Large sites, concrete pads, full hook-ups. Come back in 5 years – they have planted a tree at each site – in five years we won’t be able to use our satellite TV…
There was another Airstream in the park – pulled by a Porsche Cayenne… We had an interesting chat about tow-vehicles, hithes, and Airstreams in general…
Another interesting feature of the RV Park is that several sites have Electric Vehicle charging stations…!
For our 47th wedding anniversary dinner we selected the finest restaurant in Tremonton… It is a diner at the bowling alley…
We tried to have a toast, but this being Utah, there was no wine…
After a fairly unremarkable dinner we returned to the Villa…
Exciting Day Today! Our four grandchildren are all starting “school” today! Roisin and Ian go to Spanish Camp; George and Evelyn go to all day preschool! After dropping them off, our daughter, Erin, will do nothing. Or something. Or whatever she wants…!
Back at the caravan, we started the day with a Ranger talk at the amphitheater adjacent to Jackson Lake…
We heard a brief history of the Park:
In the late 1920′ s John D. Rockefeller, Jr., with his family, visited Yellowstone National Park. They met with Horace Albright, the Superintendent of Yellowstone. He took the Rockefeller family through Yellowstone, and south into the Grand Tetons area. Albright was trying to get the Grand Tetons National Park expanded to include the valley. The mountain range had become a National Park in 1929, but the valley to the east, known as Jackson Hole, was cluttered with billboards, honky-tonks, and hotdog stands. JDR, Jr. took the bait. He formed the Snake River Land Company, and anonymously purchased 35,000 acres of land; he subsequently offered the land to the National Park Service. Due to various political reasons, the donation was denied. Finally, many years later, against public opinion, and with repeated Congressional efforts to repeal the measures, much of Jackson Hole was set aside for protection as Jackson Hole National Monument in 1943. The monument was abolished in 1950 and most of the monument land was added to Grand Teton National Park.
After we heard about the various sight-seeing options, we headed south… We stopped at the Jackson Lake Dam…
From the roadway atop the Dam we have a great view…
We continued south…
We stopped in to check out the Jenny Lake Lodge… Their dining room is not open except for guests…
We considered stopping at Jenny Lake, but the parking lots were packed, and people were parking on the highway, walking 1/2 mile to the lake Visitor Center. We continued on…
We were able to catch sight of some Pronghorn Antelope…
We continued south to the Moose-Wilson Rd. We drove south some more and were rewarded with our first sighting of a moose!
Just a bit further down the road we found his mate and their offspring, but they were moving quickly into the woods…
Our destination this morning is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Preserve…
The parking lot was again packed, and we waited 25 minutes for a space. Luckily, most cars belonged to hikers heading out to Phelps Lake…
We walked across the meadow towards the Visitors Center…
The Laurance S. Rockefeller (LSR) Preserve is a 1,106 acres refuge within Grand Teton National Park on the southern end of Phelps Lake. The site was originally known as the JY Ranch, a dude ranch. In 1927, when John D. Rockefeller, Jr. purchased much of the land in Jackson Hole for the creation of Jackson Hole National Monument and the expansion of Grand Teton National Park, he retained the 3,100-acre JY Ranch as a family retreat. The Rockefeller family used the J-Y Ranch for over 70 years; over the years the family gave most of the ranch land to the national park. Upon his death in 1960, JDR, Jr. left the J-Y Ranch to his son, Laurance. Finally, Laurance S. Rockefeller donated the final parcel to the Park Service in 2001, effective in 2008. The donation came with special preservation and maintenance restrictions, with the vision that the preserve remain a place where visitors can experience a spiritual and emotional connection to the beauty of the lake and the Teton Range.
When the family took over the J-Y Ranch there were 48 various dude ranch buildings on the property. The family had 28 buildings removed or demolished, and the remaining 20 buildings were remodeled and updated for use as a family retreat.
Over the years, the camp was modernized and updated, and a few new cabins were added. However, the rustic camp experience was always retained. Finally the family decided to donate the property to the Park Service, and to move their retreat to another location a few miles south, just outside the boundaries of the National Park, on the Moose-Wilson Rd. They wanted the land to be returned to its natural state.
Laurance Rockefeller hoped that his project would serve as a model for the National Parks. The overall plan for the preserve was developed by D. R. Horne & Company with advice regarding user experience from Kevin Coffee Museum Planning. Prerequisite to creating the LSR Preserve, the cabins, stables, utilities, roads, and other built environment that had been part of the Rockefeller family’s presence at the JY Ranch were removed; about half of the buildings were moved to the new Rockefeller Retreat, and the other half were donated to the Park Service to be relocated and re-purposed for their use.
The land was carefully bio-remediated with seeds or plantings collected from nearby locations within the site. A nine-mile system of hiking trails lead through sub-alpine and wetland habitat, with vistas along the southern edge of Phelps Lake. The visitor experience is prompted via the 7,573 square -foot visitor center situated at the lowest elevation of the Preserve.
The visitor center building was designed by Carney Architects of Jackson, Wyoming with the Rocky Mountain Institute consulting on energy and daylighting analysis. Hershberger Design prepared the landscape design plan for the visitor center site and trails. A team of designers, cinematographers, photographers, sound recordists, writers and others contributed to the displays inside the visitors center and those efforts are noted on a plaque in the center, which was dedicated on June 21, 2008. The visitor center was the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified property in Wyoming and only the fifty-second Platinum rating in the LEED program. Featuring composting toilets and a 10 kW photovoltaic system, the facility earned all 17 LEED energy points.
We entered the Visitor Center. (Lynda wasn’t really angry…)
Inside it was like a church. We were the only people there. There were marvelous displays: topographic maps, Photos, audio and video exhibits, and a meditation space. I loved it. I could have sat for hours enjoying the architecture and the displays of nature… But Lynda wasn’t that patient…
I threatened to take a nap in these really cool chairs, custom designed for the Rockefellers for their retreat…
We walked around, taking in the building. This massive fireplace is part of the staff lounge…!
The paths led to the creek flowing out of Phelps Lake…
After this contemplative experience we needed lunch. We drove to Dornan’s, a pretty mediocre restaurant…
We returned to the RV Park and walked along the lake…
I spent a little time in the “village” looking for internet. After dinner we walked to the swimming beach and enjoyed the sunset…
We returned to the Villa and an enjoyable time was had by all…
On Monday, 6/17, we drove the short 1.25 hours from Redlands to San Clemente. I have been camping here since 1956… It never disappoints…
We found our campsite – all RV sites are pull-through, about 75′ long, with full hook-ups. Some are better than others, but considering how hard it is to get reservations here, we’ll take whatever we can get…
We had a quiet afternoon, happy hours ensued, and we enjoyed a peaceful evening with friends. This will be the last peaceful evening we will have for awhile…
Tuesday morning (and every morning this week) we walk the 1 1/2 miles along the beach path to the pier…
We’ve been walking this path for about 20 years now…
We’ve been watching these cliffs erode for about 50 years…
A landmark along the way is the T-Street bridge…
Across from the pier is Bear Coast Coffee – the best coffee in So Cal. Today (and every day this week) Lynda has a latte, I have a decaf cappuccino, and we split the Feta-Egg sandwich…
After breakfast we walked back to the Villa and awaited the arrival of the Thundering Herd…
Our daughter, Erin, arrived with Roisin (6), Ian (5), Evelyn (1), and George X (3)…
Erin and Lynda put up their tent while I tried, unsuccessfully, to keep the kids out of trouble…
Despite the cool weather Tuesday (and every day this week) – it never broke 70 – beach time soon arrived…
I asked Lynda why she rarely takes pictures of anyone besides Evelyn; she replied that she is the only one who stays still long enough…
(PS: I don’t do the beach thing. I sunburn easily, there is no drink service, and I need my alone time in the Villa…)
By about 5:00 on Tuesday (and every day this week) Lynda and Erin and the Thundering Herd arrived back at the Villa; they’re hot, tired, sandy, hungry, and cranky…
We do our best to keep them from killing each other while the cleanup process takes place…
Usually we feed the kids, then put on Netflix in the Villa while the adults enjoy Happy Hours. Then we put the kids to bed and finally all the adults collapse… For some reason on Tuesday (and every night this week) Evelyn refused to fall asleep quietly and required adult attention for about an hour…
Wednesday morning the Thundering Herd accompanied us to the Pier and Bear Coast Coffee…
Everyone watched the train go by…
We were able to corral the kids for a picture on the Group W Bench:
Time on the swings ensued…
And the rest of the week proceeded in exactly the same way…
The only difference occurred late in the week. Erin and the kids went home Thursday evening, and they returned on Saturday morning… This allowed Lynda and me to make our marathon walk; we walked to the pier and Bear Coast for breakfast, then we walked to the north end of the beach path; from there we walked inland to Rainbow Sandals to buy new flips for me – walking as much as we do, I wear them out often. Then back down El Camino Real to Beach Town Books, a used book store Lynda likes, then to lunch at South of Nicks (which is actually NW of Nicks…)
From there we walked down Del Mar to the pier, and then back to the Villa. About eight miles…!
On Saturday morning Erin and the Thundering Herd returned…
Another special event occurred Saturday…
Happy Anniversary to us! It’s been 45 years !
To celebrate, we took pictures…
In the afternoon we did our separate things…
Saturday evening we were joined by friends (whose anniversary is Sunday) for dinner at Pierside…
We enjoyed the sunset…
Sunday afternoon we were joined by other friends… Beach time, happy hours, and dinner ensued…
And then everyone left. Silence! Golden silence!
Monday we walked one last time to Bear Coast for breakfast… We packed up and returned to Redlands…
Adventures in the Villa 