Welcome to WaterWorld

To bring you up to date,  we left the Enterprise in California and flew back to the East Coast,  just in time for Hurricane Sandy -- perfect timing!  Our power was out for four days, but the good news was that after innumerable power outages over the past four years in our present house, we installed a natural gas-powered generator last year and it came through with flying colors.  We had heat, some light, and a functioning refrigerator.

And I'm still traveling with Cherie,  but now we're in Europe for two weeks.  First stop was Venice, pictured above.  Venice took me completely by surprise.  Sure, I had heard all about the canals, but lots of cities have canals.  Such as Birmingham, England for example, where I was stranded for the better part of a week by 9/11.  So what's the big deal with Venice?  The big deal is that Venice has only canals.  No roads.  Ergo no cars, no trucks, no buses, no motorcycles, no streetcars, no subways.  You either take a boat or walk.  But what about the ubiquitous Italian motorscooters?  They don't work either, because every 50 yards or so you have to cross one of the 177 canals.  And all of the 409 bridges were built centuries ago, and they all have steps.  Okay, I'm exaggerating slightly.  There is a causeway from the mainland to one of the 118 small islands on which the city is built.  But from there, it's all waterway.

Here is another amazing thing.  The foundations of all the buildings rest on wooden pilings made from millions (literally) of small trees which were driven through the mud and into the underlying clay.  Some of these buildings are pretty big -- we're talking about a lot of weight here.  So how is this possible?  Why haven't the pilings rotted out over the centuries?  Well, it seems that the bacteria that actually do the rotting are aerobic, and the pilings are not exposed to the air.  So instead of rotting, they have actually petrified.  As our walking tour guide put it, Venice rests on the world's largest petrified forest.  As you might imagine, building in this environment presents some issues, so maybe this is why in addition to being saved from vehicles,  the city has also been spared a lot of new construction.  Most of the buildings are old, and some are quite old.  All of this results in a unique, amazingly quaint, and very beautiful place.  Here are some additional photos.

But why go to all the trouble of building a city in the middle of a lagoon?  For the same reason that people went to all the trouble of building towns with high walls on top of very steep hills.  All those large stones were hauled up those steep hills without the aid of any modern machinery -- essentially by hand.  That's a mind-boggling amount of extra work compared with building that hill town down in the valley, or building Venice on dry land.   And they didn't do all that extra work just for the bragging rights.  They did it to defend themselves.  Which leads us to our next commercial break.

So, what were they defending against?  Wild boar?  Bull elephants?  No, unfortunately it was just other people.  People who wanted to rob and kill them.  We humans are unique among the inhabitants of the Earth in many ways, and one of the more prominent of those ways is our predilection for killing each other.  This is the ultimate manifestation of a human characteristic which, as far as I can see, seems to be universal.  I call it the "us vs. them" syndrome, or UVT for short.  The essence of UVT was captured some years ago by Tom Lehrer in his famous song,  National Brotherhood Week.

I touched on UVT in a previous post, but perhaps a small elaboration is in order here.  Because of its universality across cultures as Tom so brilliantly points out,  the suspicion arises that UVT is genetic, just like its cousin, PTB.  But if it is, it should confer some evolutionary advantage.  So what could possibly be advantageous about disliking other people, often to the point of wanting to kill them?  Well, in the first place, UVT promotes war, and war has provided the stimulus for a vast amount of scientific and technological innovation, from gunpowder to atomic energy to the internet (created by DARPA -- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).

But that's really just the tip of the iceberg.  Evolution is all about the survival of the fittest.  Here's a typical scenario:  One of our distant ancestors happens to be born with a genetic mutation which makes him a bit bigger and stronger than normal.  After some generations have passed, his descendants who have inherited this gene manage to survive some natural disaster which has killed most of the nearby tribe who don't have it.  Fine, but notice that the human race had to wait around for the appropriate natural events to occur in order for this gene to become widespread.   However with UVT, there's no need to wait.  The bigger and stronger guys can proceed immediately to kill their weaker neighbors.  So the real value of UVT is that it accelerates the process of natural selection.  

There are other advantages as well.  Such as population control.  No need to wait for a plague, flood, or drought.  But there's a problem here.  As is the case with many good things, too much is no longer good and may sometimes be catastrophically bad.  If UVT succeeds in starting World War III, the population problem could be permanently solved.  Forever.

Cascade Lakes

Back in the early to mid '90s, my extended family (sisters and cousins and aunts -- literally) held several family vacations at Black Butte Ranch,  an upscale resort near the town of Sisters, Oregon.  So Cherie and I knew how beautiful the central Oregon Cascades are and wanted to include the area on our trip.  In particular, there is a road called the Cascade Lakes Scenic Byway which I had heard about at Black Butte and have wanted to drive ever since.

This was our opportunity.  We took I5 south from Portland and turned off near Salem onto US 20 which follows the South Santiam River up into the Cascades, across the Santiam Pass, and down into the town of Sisters.  Although there was plenty of beautiful scenery along this route, we didn't stop because we hadn't left Portland until mid-afternoon, and we wanted to get to our campground at the Bend Sisters RV Resort before dark.

We arrived shortly after 6:00 PM  to find an almost totally empty park.  Although this was a new and highly unusual experience for us, it wasn't completely unexpected.  That's because a major forest fire,  the Pole Creek Fire, had been burning near Sisters for the past two weeks.  We first got wind of this (sorry, bad pun) as we had headed north from Portland.  At that time, there was a preliminary evacuation order in effect for Sisters, and very poor air quality due to smoke.  Fortunately, however, the fire was 80% contained by the time we left Portland heading south, and indeed when we reached the campground we couldn't even smell any smoke.  There were only a handful of RVs in the park that holds about fifty that night.  And I must say, although the scenery didn't compare with The Living Forest or Sol Duc Hot Springs, the facilities were the best we've seen.  Every site was flat level, had a paved pull-through driveway, a groomed lawn, and a fire ring in the midde of a small paver-stone patio.  And of course full hookups.  The bathrooms featured curtains, travertine floors, and easy chairs.

The park is located immediately adjacent to the Sisters Rodeo grounds, and we immediately noticed that the rodeo grounds were full of tents, porta-potties,  portable showers and mess kitchens, and other paraphernalia associated with large-group camping.  At first we guessed it was Cycle Oregon, a week-long bike tour that takes place every fall.  But we quickly discovered that it was the main Pole Creek firefighters camp.  Ever wondered where hundreds of out-of-state firefighters sleep and eat for weeks on end while they go out to do battle on the fire lines every day, and sometimes all night as well?  Well, now you know.

The next morning we hit the road bright and early for our big day in the Oregon Cascades.  The first 10 miles or so of the byway consists of the road to the Mt. Bachelor ski area:

After the turn-off to the ski area, the road circles around Mt. Bachelor and passes close to the South Sister.  There are three peaks close to each other west of Bend which are called the (south, middle, and north) Sisters.  They are volcanic in orgin, as are all the major peaks of the Cascade Range.  Not too far past Mt. Bachelor, we turned off, more or less at random, at Sparks Lake and had lunch in the Enterprise:

There was a beautiful creek running through the meadow:

After lunch, we followed an awful dirt road with lots of washboard and potholes for a few miles, because I had a hunch that Sparks Lake would be worth seeing.  I was right, as you can see from the first photo in this post.  This was the "money shot" for the trip.  And it really did look like the picture.  Although we passed nearly a dozen more lakes on the byway, none were anywhere near as spectacular.

As sunset approached, we arrived at Crater Lake National Park, our last scenic stop of the trip.  We had incredibly lucky weather on this trip -- not a drop of rain -- and the sunshine held nicely during our stay at Crater Lake.  Spending three and a half weeks in the Pacific Northwest without a drop of rain is a serious accomplishment.  The fact that we bought expensive rain gear before we left was probably responsible.  It's an elaboration on the old idea that if you bring your umbrella it won't rain.  But having sunshine at Crater Lake is critical because it's the only way you can see the amazingly deep blue:

And I was even more fortunate on this shot to have a total absence of wind on the lake, which accounts for the mirror-like surface.  Wizard Island, which you see sitting near the west shore of the lake, is the top of a volcano which collapsed into its empty magma chamber after a gigantic eruption 7700 years ago, forming the crater which filled up with snow melt over the next several hundred years.   Before the eruption the mountain was 12,000 ft. high.  Now the rim elevation varies between 7000 and 8000 ft.  This is actually quite a lot of elevation if you're hiking uphill -- there's significantly less oxygen than you get at sea level.  It's also high enough to get a lot of winter snow -- they average 44 feet of snow per year.

Driving around the rim of the crater, one finds many interesting photo ops.  I'll leave you with my favorite:

The Third Best City in the World

The Economist Liveability Ranking of world cities for August 2012 ranks Vancouver third in the world out of a total of 140.  It was edged out by Melbourne, Australia and Vienna, Austria.  (No. 140 was Dhaka, Bangladesh.)  There were no US cities in the top ten.  We only spent one and a half days there, but that was enough time to understand the ranking.  It's beautiful, clean, and has good public transportation.  There are several other liveability rankings based on various criteria, but notably none of them rank any US city in the top ten. So instead of continually repeating the mantra that "we're the greatest country in the world", it might be worthwhile to actually look at the rest of the world and see what we might learn.

We crossed the Strait of Georgia from Nanaimo aboard the MV Queen of Oak Bay, operated by BC Ferries.  This ferry was a big step up from the Coho which brought us to Victoria.  Bigger, much better cafe, nice gift shop, and free internet.  It was sad to have to leave the Living Forest Campground (previous post) but we once again found ourselves pressed for time.  On future camping trips, we have resolved to allow at least twice as much time as we think we might possibly need.

Our first stop on the British Columbia mainland was Grouse Mountain, because it's on the way in to the city from the ferry terminal in Horseshoe Bay.

 I visited Grouse Mountain one night back in the 70's on our way to Whistler and remembered very clearly the highly unusual experience of seeing the lights of Vancouver as we skied.  You can get to the base of the tram on a city bus.  Back in the 70's, there was just a restaurant at the top.  But when we got off the tram on this trip, we found a few more attractions,  such as this:

and this:

There are two grizzly bears living on top of Grouse Mountain, in a 5-acre enclosure surrounded by an electric fence.  They were both brought there as orphaned cubs.  Grizzly cubs usually stay with their mother for several years, and have almost no chance of surviving on their own.  So it was decided to try an experiment where instead of being destroyed (the usual procedure)  the cubs would be placed in the enclosure and food would secretly be scattered in various places.  That way, it was thought, they would learn to forage for food and not to depend on humans.  Then when they grew up they could be released back into the wild with no danger that they would seek out humans for food.  But it was eventually decided that releasing them would be too dangerous because of all the contact they had had with humans, and so they remain.

The next day, being short of time, we decided to take the GrayLine tour, and saw some highpoints of the city:

At the beginning of this trip, we thought we would have time to explore more of British Columbia, but this was not to be.  We headed south out of Vancouver,  back across the border at Blaine WA, stopping for lunch with a high school friend of Cherie's in Seattle, and then pushing on to Portland and a second visit to the Jantzen Beach RV park.

The Daily Colonist

Many newspapers have completely predictable and hackneyed names: Post, Times, Journal, and of course that most original of all: News.  The most striking thing that I remember about my previous visit as a child to Victoria, BC was how impressed I was with the name of their newspaper:  "The Daily Colonist".  Not only is it almost certainly unique, it also says much of what you need to know about the cultural heritage of British Columbia, or at least it did back in the nineteen fifties when I was last there.  They are, or were, more British than the British.  This may have been due in part to the fact that British Columbia was originally a separate British colony independent from the rest of Canada.

Sadly, the name has by now been bowdlerized to "The Times Colonist".  And over the past several days I got the distinct impression that BC is now more PC, as it were.  Victoria doesn't seem anywhere near as quaint as it did, although Afternoon Tea at the Empress Hotel still seemed very traditional.  We had sandwiches, scones with jam, and of course endless refills of excellent tea by an overly attentive waiter.

We've been to Canada at least four times that I can remember in recent years:  cycling in Nova Scotia, skiing in Quebec, attending a conference in Banff, and now in the Enterprise.  I've invariably found the Canadians to be friendly, helpful, and welcoming.  But more than that, I feel a noticeable difference between the Canadian Way of Life and the American Way of Life.  In Canada it's more of "we're all in this together" as opposed to the American "it's every man for himself".  Possibly just my imagination, but I don't think so.  As just one example, the Canadians actually have a decent universal health care system.

We arrived in Victoria from Port Angeles aboard the MV Coho and were greeted as we left the pier by a friendly but inquisitive Canadian immigration official.  She was most interested in how many guns we had and where we kept them.  After being assured that we had no guns, mace, or tasers, she went on to fruits and vegetables, and sadly proceeded to relieve us of the last of our excellent Oregon apples.  We drove around the harbor past the Parliament building, pictured above at sunset, to the Empress where we took another camping break for the two days in Victoria.

Our first full day took us to the spectacular Butchart Gardens:

If you are ever lucky enough to visit Victoria, the gardens are an absolute must-see.  Mr. Butchart amassed a fortune in the cement business which involved quarrying limestone, among other things.  The photo above is from the portion of the gardens called "the sunken garden" which was the abandoned limestone quarry, until Mrs. Butchart had the idea that it needed to be spruced up a bit.  An interesting sidelight:  the gardens are still owned by the descendants of the Butcharts. Every privately owned tourist attraction I've ever seen, except for this one, has been somewhat garish and tasteless.  Perhaps we have here another example of contrast between the two countries?  Or maybe I just haven't yet come across any of the elegant privately owned tourist attractions in the U.S.

The next morning we visited the BC Museum before driving up the island to Nanaimo. They had a somewhat ordinary display of dinosaurs on the second floor, but on the third floor, devoted to the human history of British Columbia, we found an impressive display featuring, among other things, replicas of Captain Vancouver's ship, a coal mine, an early fish canning plant, and an entire street full of shops circa 1900 that you could actually go into.  Oh yes, and a well-preserved Model T ford that our guide assured us was still operational.

Arriving in Nanaimo, we checked in to the "Living Forest Oceanside RV resort", and from our campsite, this is what we saw:

Oh, yes.  Swimming right below us were two seals and there was a kingfisher perched on a piling.  I can safely say that the "Living Forest" is by far the most impressive RV park we've seen to date.  After setting up camp, we took a walk along one of the walking trails in the park, and found this:

and this:

What more can I say?

The Linger Longer Lodge

When I was 11 years old, my Dad and Stepmother spent the summer in Seattle and I stayed with them for six weeks.  I arrived shortly after my sister Ann was born, so they decided that it would be a good idea for Dad and I to take a week together and do a road trip.  This was the only time the two of us ever spent any time alone together.  The ostensible purpose was so that I wouldn't feel so jealous of my new sister, but in retrospect I think Dad was happy to have an excuse to get away and get a good night's sleep for a week.  In any event, we wound up on the Olympic Peninsula, and driving through the town of Quilcene we discovered the Linger Longer Lodge.  Although we only intended to spend the night before continuing on into Olympic National Park, the lodge turned out to be true to its name and we lingered there for the entire week.  We used it as a base from which to visit various attractions in the park.  So on this trip,  I thought it would be interesting to go back down memory lane and revisit the LLL.   More on this later.

After visiting with most of my Portland relatives (sister Ellen, cousins Neil and Steve) for a few days, Cherie and I got a late start out of the Jantzen Beach RV resort and headed north to Olympic National Park, our next destination.  When I was a kid, Jantzen Beach was THE big amusement park in Portland, so as we approached I was expecting to see the ferris wheel, roller coasters, and so forth.  Alas, all we found were Target, Bed Breakfast and Beyond, and the usual coterie of box stores.  It seems that shopping centers make more money than amusement parks.  As usual, economics trumps all.

But on with the narrative.  Due to our late start, we drove into the park,  passed beautiful Lake Crescent pictured above without stopping, and barely made it to Sol Duc Hot Springs to set up camp before nightfall.  But as it happened, we got a relatively secluded spot next to the river.  The next day we hiked up to the falls:

and then "took the waters" when we returned.  Sol Duc Lodge was built in 1912 at the height of the "hot springs fad" for lack of a better word, at a cost of over a half million dollars.  That sum corresponds to nearly $50 million in today's dollars.   It was huge, with 165 guest rooms, a three-story sanitorium with 100 beds, laboratory facilities, and various other outbuildings.  A sawmill was built at the site to supply lumber for all this construction.  The guests were driven 9 miles to the lodge from Lake Crescent aboard a fleet of Stanley Steamers, which if you've never hear of them, were famous steam-powered automobiles of the day.   The prevailing view at that time was that soaking in, and yes, drinking the hot sulfurous water would cure whatever ailed you.  Today there are big signs warning the guests NOT to drink the water.  But it's still OK to soak, and soak we did.

This is the perfect spot for a brief commercial break on the folly of health fads.  The problem here is not that people think health fads work, but rather that one person's fad is another persons's magical cure.  How to separate the fads from the magical cures?   The answer is simple:  there are no magical cures, people! The human body is a very complex organism which has evolved over millions of years to its present state, and is only recently beginning to be understood in any detail.  Yes, many conditions can now be cured.   Not by magic,  but by a long, difficult, painstaking process of discovery called science.  End of commercial.

In 1916, only four years after it opened, the Sol Duc Lodge burned to the ground.  Due to a defective chimney flue, the wooden roof caught fire.   As the story goes, the fire short-circuited the electric organ, which then proceeded to play Beethoven's Funeral March until silenced by the flames.  Today there's only a small gift shop and restaurant on the site, together with some housekeeping cabins and a campground.

The second day we drove back to Lake Crescent Lodge.  I had incorrectly remembered that the Linger Longer was located on Lake Crescent, and I thought that maybe only the name had changed.  Unfortunately, this proved not to be the case.   Stifling our disappointment, we hiked up to yet another falls:

The theme of lodge plus hiking trail to falls seems to be a recurrent one in Olympic National Park.  But in reality, the park is huge -- around 1,460 sq. mi. -- and consists mostly of wilderness accesible only by backpacking trails.  We barely scratched the surface on this trip.  It would have taken the better part of a week just to see what is accesible by road.

But what of the Linger Longer Lodge?  After we got back on the grid, I did some internet research.  It hadn't been on Lake Crescent after all, but in the town of Quilcene on Puget Sound.  And sadly, it had followed in the footsteps of the Sol Duc Lodge, burning to the ground on Halloween night in 1959.   Apparently the firefighters showed up in their Halloween costumes.  One can only imagine quite a sight.

The Oregon Coast

After white-knuckling the Enterprise out of Petrolia, we spent two nights in Eureka and had dinner with Mara and Chris before heading up the coast of Oregon.  Mara is a friend of Cherie's from middle school.  Memorable moment:  We were talking about our visit to Petrolia and I asked Chris if he'd ever been there.  He replied that he'd ridden his bike over the route we had just driven many times!  That was amazing enough, but then he added that there is a 95-mile bike race every year around the loop from Ferndale to Weott to Petrolia and back to Ferndale in which he had competed often.  Wow.  There's no way I could ever cycle that course in under 24 hours, because I'd be walking quite a ways.

Anyway, we took three days driving the nearly 400 miles of the Oregon Coast.  The scenery was spectacular, as advertised.  In this blog thus far, I haven't been posting lots of photos, but given that a picture is worth a thousand words, I think I will save some space by changing style here and letting you see something of what we saw.

The first night we camped at Sunset Bay State Park, just south of Coos Bay:

I have to say that the State of Oregon does a great job with their parks.  The RV campground at Sunset Bay had full hookups, which is unusual in state parks and unheard of in national parks.  For the uninitiated, "full hookups" in RVspeak means that you can connect to water, electricity, and sewer.  The alternative is called "dry camping" which means that your water comes from your own fresh water tank and your power comes from either your batteries or your generator.  The Enterprise has pretty small tanks, so we can only dry camp for a day or two without dumping our waste water and refilling our fresh water.  

Sunset Bay had some pretty interesting geology:

I think what has happened here is that the Pacific Plate has pushed underneath the North American Plate.  But that's just a guess.  I will have to defer to the geologists.

Immediately adjacent to Sunset Bay, we visited Shore Acres State Park, which features a beautiful flower garden:

with some spectacular dahlias:

The next day we drove up the coast to Salishan, a rather elegant golf resort.  We took a break from the Enterprise, had a good dinner at the restaurant, and spent the night.  On our third and final day, we happened to notice a turnoff for the "Three Capes Scenic Byway" which we fortunately decided to take.  The most spectacular of the three was Cape Mears:

which sported an interesting decommissioned lighthouse:

The light ran on kerosene until the 1930's.  There were 5 wicks which put out enough light to be seen 18 miles offshore! This was possible because of a clever Fresnel lens which focused the beam:

I'll spare you the interesting optical details, which I only partly understood myself.   Suffice it to say that these lighthouses were miracles of engineering in their day.

Our last campground on the coast was at Fort Stevens State Park at the mouth of the Columbia river:

As you can see, the Columbia gets pretty wide by the time it reaches the Pacific.  The campground is truly huge -- over 500 campsites.  And once again we had water and electric connections.

Fort Stevens was built during the Civil War, for some reason.  Perhaps they feared that the Confederates might send a fleet around Cape Horn and invade the Pacific Northwest.  Who knows.  There's really no telling what strange things people are motivated to do when they feel threatened.  Just consider, for example, all of the wacky things we have done since 9/11,  such as invading Iraq.  This disaster will almost certainly go into the books as the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of the United States.  So I suppose it's only fitting that it was committed by the worst president in the history of the United States.  Iraq alone would definitely earn him the title, but to cement his standing,  after inheriting a $230 billion surplus from President Clinton he managed to leave office with an astronomical deficit and the economy in total shambles.  Way to go, W!

The Lost Coast

Well, we're finally back on the road, heading north towards British Columbia.  In the photo above, Cherie is standing at Cape Mendocino, the westernmost point of land in the continental 48 states.  It is located along the "lost coast", which is a stretch of the Northern California coast that extends south from the Humboldt Bay for roughly 80 miles to Shelter Cove.  I haven't checked carefully, but I'm pretty sure the lost coast is THE most inaccessible stretch of coastline in the lower 48. The southern section can only be reached by sea or on foot.  The remainder is accessed via the Mattole road, one of the steepest and most sinous country roads it has ever been my lot to drive, especially in a 25-foot camper.  So on this segment of our current road trip, the RoadTrek finally got a real honest-to-goodness trek.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

We left the Bay Area last week and drove north on 101 to the town of Willits, where we took another country road about 15 miles east to a place called Emandal, which is a farm on the Eel river.  The family that owns it runs a small retreat/camp where you can stay in rustic cabins, swin au naturel in the river, and be fed organic delights in a communal dining room.  Emandal is the site of the "Wild Women's Weekend", an event that Cherie has been attending for the past several years.  Most of the attendees, including Cherie, are present or former obstetrical nurses and midwives at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley.

I dropped her off and beat a hasty retreat back to Willits and then drove over the coast range through a nice stand of second-growth redwood to the coastal town of Fort Bragg.  I camped at the Pomo RV park there for two nights in peace and quiet while the Wild Women were cavorting.  If you ever happen to be looking for a nice RV park in Fort Bragg, look no further than Pomo.

Fort Bragg is the northernmost significant town on Highway 1.  From there the road follows the coast north for another 50 miles or so before turning inland.  If you want to explore the coast northward from that point, you do so on foot.  I had a late but excellent seafood lunch by the water before repairing to Pomo for the evening.  The next day I explored Fort Bragg.  There's a quaint little railroad that runs across the coast range to Willits called the "Skunk Train".  It was originally built to service the logging camps up in the hills and it has been in continuous operation since 1885.  However, in recent years it has been mostly a tourist attraction.  If you're lucky like I was, you get the steam locomotive, No. 45, pulling your antiquated passenger car uphill along the Noyo river to a point they call "Northspur" about halfway between Fort Bragg and Willits.  In addition to a great view of the beautiful redwood forest,  we were treated to a rousing rendition of "The Wabash Cannonball", "She'll be Coming Around the Mountain" and other railroad-themed classics by our conductor, who turned out to be quite an accomplished performer on the guitar and harmonica.  At Northspur we all got out to have some lunch and wander about in the redwoods for a bit before reboarding the Skunk for the return trip.

After a leisurely breakfast in the Enterprise on Sunday, I bid farewell to Fort Bragg and wound my way back over the mountains to the Willits Safeway where I rejoined Cherie.  She had gotten a ride into town with a fellow Wild Woman, which was fortunate because although the road to Emandal was nowhere near as steep and winding as that which we were shortly to encounter, the last ten miles were unpaved washboard.  Not recommended for RV travel.  At any rate, after reprovisioning the Enterprise at the Safeway, we headed north into the redwoods.

We turned off 101 north of Garberville onto the "Avenue of the Giants" which took us into Humboldt Redwoods State Park.  The coast redwoods are sometimes confused with their southern cousins, the sequoias (see previous post), but there are significant differences.  The sequoias grow above 6,000 feet and thrive on the harsh winters, while the redwoods like the fog and mild temperatures near the ocean.  The redwoods are taller and skinnier than the sequoias.  But in terms of overall volume, the sequoias win hands down.  We turned off onto the Mattole road at Weott and drove through the impressive Rockefeller Grove before emerging from the Park and beginning our ascent through the King Range.

Halfway down the lost coast, there is a beautiful little valley where the Mattole river runs to the sea.  Near the mouth of the Mattole is the "town" of Petrolia where our friends John and Kathy have recently retired.  Petrolia consists of some farms, ranches, and houses scattered along the Mattole, together with a school, fire station, and post office/general store.  The adjective "remote" would be an understatement, because the Mattole valley is completely ringed by the steep mountains of the King Range.  There are three roads in, from Garberville to the south, Weott to the east, and Ferndale to the north.  They are all long, narrow, steep, and winding with lots of switchbacks and potholes.  We averaged about 15 MPH coming in from Weott and going out to Ferndale.

John and Kathy have been coming to Petrolia since the 70's, when they and a small group of friends bought some acreage up in the hills above the valley and built a small cabin.  More recently they bought nine acres in the valley and built a nice house which has all the modern conveniences:  electricity,  hot and cold running water, and flush toilets.  We visited and explored the valley with them for a few days before heading north to Eureka.  Both Cherie and I were impressed with the natural beauty of the area, but even more impressed that people would want to live that far from civilization.  It got us thinking about how differently people value things.  Different strokes for different folks.

General Sherman

Finally!  The Enterprise has left its repair diaspora, with a rebuilt generator and some additional insulation on the fresh water tank which we decided to add before setting out for the Pacific Northwest and the Canadian Rockies.  Meanwhile, we took a three-day shakedown cruise to Sequoia National Park just to see if everything was working.  I'm probably jinxing it by saying this, but yes!  Everything worked.

The world's largest living thing (by volume), which you see above, is a Giant Sequoia known as the "General Sherman Tree"  because it was discovered and named in the late 19th century by a civil war veteran who had served with the General.   To get a true idea of its size, try to enlarge the photo (or use a magnifying glass) so that you can see the people standing at the base, which is about 36 ft. in diameter.  The bark is estimated to be over 2 ft. thick.  The adjective "giant" is not applied lightly to these behemoths.

As you might imagine, it took quite a while for the General Sherman to attain its present size -- more than 2,200 years by the best estimate.  So it's older than Jesus.  Anything this old which is still living if natural, or still functioning if man-made, has a special fascination for me.  In the man-made department, for example,  we have the Pantheon in Rome.  This building was originally constructed in 27 BCE by Marcus Agrippa.  It was subsequently destroyed by fire and rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian around 126 AD.  The building has been continuously occupied since then, and still bears the original Latin inscription above the front portico which translates as

         "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, made this building when consul for the third time."

It has, to this day, the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world, according to Wikipedia.  This is a truly amazing fact.  The Roman engineers designed, without computers (or even a decent system of computation!) and built, without any heavy machinery whatever,  a building which has lasted 2,000 years and remains  the largest structure of its kind in the world!  Of course by the time it was built, the General Sherman Tree had been happily growing away in the Sierras for two or three hundred years.  So the tree is perhaps more nearly a contemporary of Alexander the Great.  

Whenever I'm feeling old, I find it useful to think about the General Sherman and the Pantheon.  In fact,  I think it would be helpful to the world if everyone did this now and then.  Perhaps it would remind us that the past several hundred years, during which we have completely transformed the face of the Earth, is a small fraction of historic time, and of course less than a blink of the eye in geologic time.  

A Night to Remember

[In response to popular demand (no less than two (2) of my readers have urged me to continue posting, even though we're not traveling at the moment) here are a few random thoughts.]

It seems that on a recent day in San Diego, Mr. Dag-Are Trydal, a Norwegian exchange student at UCSD, was walking through the parking lot to his car wearing the San Diego standard issue footwear (flip-flops), when he stepped on and was bitten by a small rattlesnake.  A passer-by pointed out that Scripps hospital was right across the street, so Mr. Trydal stopped by.   Anti-venom was administered, he was kept overnight for observation, and discharged the next day.  Being bitten by a rattlesnake was no doubt a shock, but nothing to compare with the shock he received upon seeing his bill.  Now, just as an exercise, make a guess here as to the amount.  I'll reveal it later in the post.  But here's a hint:  this story made headlines in the Norwegian press.

Of course, Europeans are by now almost accustomed to seeing or hearing about such stories, and they are all repeatedly warned to purchase short-term medical insurance before setting foot in the USA.  And why is that, you may ask?  After all, as viewers of Faux News can attest, don't we have the best medical system in the world?  Surely our magnificent system could extend a complimentary hand to visiting Europeans who happen to be injured or to fall ill while here, if for no other reason than to reciprocate for the free medical care that traveling Americans routinely receive in virtually all European countries?  

Well, actually not. It's a nice little fantasy, but the reality, as illustrated by the above story, is that our healthcare "system" is first in the world in exactly one category: cost.  And we are way out in front in that category.  Spending five minutes on Google reveals that our per capita healthcare cost is more than double the median of all other industrialized countries. Norway, which is by coincidence no. 2, would have to increase its per capita spending by more than 50% to catch us.  And what do we get for all that money?  Mediocre performance in almost every category, by comparison with other industrialized countries.  In fact, in many categories such as life expectancy and infant mortality we are dead last (no pun intended).  You can find a recent study by the Commonwealth Fund here.  Of course there is one category in which we are in a league of our own: inequality.  We are the only industrialized country in the world that does not provide universal coverage.  More than 44 million americans have no coverage at all, and many millions more have extremely limited coverage.

The reason for this pathetic state of affairs is obvious.  We are the only country with a for-profit healthcare industry.  Now, leaving the morality of profiting from human misery entirely aside, it's not hard to see that for-profit healthcare is economically inefficient.  In fact, the entire system is mis-incentivized.  For providers, the profits are in the treatment, not the cure.  Doctors get most of their revenue from the tests and procedures they perform, which is why there are so many expensive and medically unnecessary tests and procedures. Insurance companies are strongly incentivized to insure only healthy people.  They spend lots of money trying to figure out who not to insure.  Finally, there's the expensive administrative inefficiency of the "billing triangle" consisting of you, your provider, and your insurance company.  Your provider often sends you a bill while simultaneously billing your insurance company.  Maybe they think you'll be stupid enough to pay it before waiting for your insurance company to "negotiate" it down to something reasonable?  Who knows.  But there's usually a lot of back-and-forth among the three parties trying to figure out who owes what to whom.  Which brings us back to the unfortunate Mr. Trydal, who received a bill for $143,989.  Welcome to America!

Is there any there there?

Gertrude Stein didn't think so, but that was in 1937.  She had returned to Oakland on a lecture tour, and couldn't find her childhood home.  But I think any town that produced both Gertrude and Jack London must have had a little something there.  Anyway, we're there now and we've been there for the better part of a week.  In fact, even if there wasn't anything there when we moved east in 1989, the intervening 23 years have been good to our old neighborhood.  Lots of trendy restaurants and shops.  No less than four (4) espresso houses in the four blocks between our place and BART.  The old Safeway is still there, but of course they now want to tear it down and build a megamarket complete with parking deck.

I'm of two minds about development in general, and with respect to this project, I can't figure out to which mind I should listen.  [Cynthia, wherever you are, please note the absence of the dangling preposition.]  On the one hand, College Avenue is pretty consistently jammed with traffic, especially between Alcatraz and Claremont where the Safeway is, and parking overflows into the neighborhood.  And the overcrowded old store is really pretty small by modern standards.  On the other hand, they would probably put in a specialty bakery, butcher counter, and a lot more fruit and vegetable racks, all of which would compete even more heavily with La Farine, Ver Brugge, and Yasai respectively.  It would indeed be terrible to see these great little shops driven out of business by the Colossus.

But there's another point to keep in mind here as well.  Yes, big chains and box stores eliminate individuality, kill off small businesses, and are politically incorrect.  But if you're scraping to get by and put food on the table every week, that cheap price which is lower than the competing small business could possibly match can be a godsend.   It's great to be able to afford locally grown, organic, pesticide-free, growth-hormone- free, non-genetically modified food, but before we get too snooty about Safeway and its cousins, let's take a moment to remember that many people can't afford Whole Foods, much less Yasai, La Farine, and Ver Brugge.

Meanwhile, in the blowing your own horn department, I noticed a recent Princeton commencement address by Michael Lewis, author of "Liars Poker", "Moneyball", and "The Big Short", among others.  Here's an excerpt:

My case illustrates how success is always rationalized. People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck — especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don’t want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives. There is a reason for this: the world does not want to acknowledge it either......Life’s outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck — and with  luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky.

Now, refresh your memory by reviewing my first post on this blog (which, just to reassure you, was posted one month to the day before his speech).   Seems as if the celebration of randomness is definitely in the air these days.  But I'm still waiting for that commencement address extolling the virtues of atheism.  Actually,  I was shocked to discover that there really is an avowed atheist currently serving in the U.S. House of Representatives!  None other than good old Pete Stark, whose district is immediately to the south of Oakland.  It almost makes me want to move to Hayward.


And what of our travels?  Well, the road trip is on hold for a while.  For one thing, the Enterprise is once again in the shop, sadly.  This time it's the generator, which will be our third warranty repair so far.  We've been wondering if this should be three strikes and you're out, but maybe we should give it one more chance.  Haven't decided yet.  Even if it weren't in the shop, it would be in Carmel for the summer because I have a consulting gig in San Diego and Cherie is signed up for a stained glass workshop in Berkeley.  So the blog may undergo a brief hibernation while all this is going on.  But you might want to check in occasionally just to see if I've had any brilliant inspirations worth sharing.

West of Eden

My family moved to the Carmel Highlands in 1954, and we lived in the two small cabins on the property they bought for the better part of a year, before we moved into Carmel proper.  Those two cabins are still there today, and if, by "Eden", Steinbeck was referring to Corral de Tierra, aka "The Pastures of Heaven", a small picturesque valley nestled between the Los Laureles Grade and the Monterey Salinas Highway, then our place is indeed to the west and a bit south.  Just south of Point Lobos State Reserve, for those of you who have been there.  Cherie and I are presently trying to replace one of the cabins with a proper house, but that is a subject for another post, or perhaps for an entire blog of its own.  Suffice it to say here that the process has been ongoing for four years and we just had our first hearing. The good news is that we were unanimously approved.  The bad news is that there are more hearings ahead -- at least one and possibly as many as three more.

We pulled the Enterprise into our driveway in the late afternoon after a long but leisurely drive up the coast from San Simeon.  Now, some people think that US 101 is the coast highway, but these are the non-cognoscenti from Los Angeles and environs.   The people of the central California coast know that the coast highway is State Route 1, which begins in earnest a few miles north of San Simeon and continues to cling to the sheer cliffs of the Santa Lucia for the almost 90 miles to Carmel.   I had forgotten just how serpentine the road is, especially the section south of Lucia, which I have only driven a half-dozen times or so.   And in an RV, even one as easy to drive as the Enterprise, the perception is enhanced to say the least.  To make it even more exciting, there is continual construction on that road, mainly because of constant slides.  Mother Nature clearly doesn't want a road there, and it's not nice to fool around with Mother Nature, to paraphrase an old margarine commercial.

Indeed, the coast highway is a poster-child for 20th century technological hubris.  Begun in 1919, it was eventually finished as a WPA project in 1937 with the help of a number of San Quentin inmates who, according to Wikipedia, were paid 35 cents per day and had their sentences reduced in some unspecified manner.   I don't know what the numbers are, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that the State of California has spent ten, possibly a hundred times as much money over the years, inflation adjusted, to maintain that road than it did to build it in the first place.  After it was finished, it became practical for people to live along the road and so they did just that.  Now they depend on the road being open, so it has become a perpetual struggle against the elements, and of course  an endless public works project.  Even the Highlands, a mere 4 miles south of Carmel, has had a serious run-in with Mother Nature.  In the winter of 1998 there was a series of huge Pacific storms due to El Nino.  As a result, the Carmel River had one of its largest floods ever.  It washed out the Highway 1 bridge, effectively cutting off the Highlands and everything to the south.  Until a temporary bridge was put in, everyone had to be ferried across the river by helicopter.    

But back to our drive.  We passed Esalen, Nepenthe, and Post Ranch, and turned in at Ventana for a great lunch on the patio.  I had voted for Nepenthe for old times sake, because in the old, pre-new-age days it was the only game of its kind down there.  It was the 70's that brought us Esalen (formerly Slate's Hot Springs), Post Ranch, and Ventana. But Cherie wanted to check out the Ventana gallery to see if there were any fabulous Missy Loftons to lust after.  Missy's father Dick Lofton was a Carmel artist of some local renown when we arrived in '54, and it's safe to say that Missy is a chip off the old block.  Fortunately, the Ventana burger proved to be of uniformly high quality, and I didn't even have to mark it down because of the bun or the fries.  A lightly toasted sesame seed bun and crisp, skinny fries.   Definitely got an A.

I knew the Loftons quite well as a kid, mainly because Dick and Nancy were best friends with Cynthia and Russell Williams, our next-door neighbors in the Highlands.  Dick had been an artillery officer in WW II.   Every New Year's Eve he got dressed up in an old uniform complete with sword, and as the seconds ticked down to midnight he would bark out authentic sounding orders for the loading of the Williams' toy cannon with a 10-gauge blank.  On the stroke of midnight the sword flashed smartly downward, a very loud retort echoed through the Highlands, and the party shifted into high gear.   The children were never sent to bed, but generally fell asleep on the couch or the hearth reading comic books.

Cynthia loved children, having had five of her own, and attracted a large coterie of neighborhood kids, including me, by various devices such as stocking a large bin behind her living room couch with comic books and keeping it filled with the latest issues.  For some reason, the Archie comics were particularly popular.  The antics of Archie, Betty, Veronica, Reggie, and Jughead seemed to be of constant interest. I think Cynthia rather enjoyed them herself.  She maintained, and I believe rightly so, that comic books were a great way to induce children to teach themselves how to read.  She was also a strict grammarian, and would constantly correct improper usage such as "like" for "as", "good" for "fine", and of course "me" for "I" or vice versa.  A copy of Webster's Unabridged was prominently displayed on a countertop, and whenever anyone (usually a child but not always) asked about the meaning of a word, they were directed to look it up in Webster's.  I doubt that this would work today, because of the rate at which technology is creating new words.   I suppose we would go online instead.  But not Cynthia.  She refused to use any technology that had not already been invented by 1925, when she was 10.  This included TV, answering machines, microwave ovens, cellphones, and of course computers.  However, in her later years she relented a bit on TV because she liked to watch Giants baseball.  They won the World Series for the first time ever since they moved to San Francisco on her 95th birthday.  It was a great birthday present for what sadly proved to  be her last birthday.

Xanadu

The architect Mies van der Rohe famously said "Less is more", but 20th century America clearly wasn't listening.   On the contrary, "More is more" was the order of the day, and it still is.  2,000 sq. ft. used to be the size of a modest house.  Now it's the size of a master bedroom suite.  A large burger used to be 1/2 lb.  Now it's more like 1lb.   It is true that cars have gotten smaller,  leaving aside that automotive abomination, the SUV.   But somewhat paradoxically, their occupants have gotten larger.  It's a mystery to me why the comparatively svelte Americans of the 50's and 60's needed gigantic cars while their obese 21st century counterparts squeeze themselves into Priuses and mini-coopers.  Maybe it's because the price of gas has gone from $.29/gal. to $4.50/gal?

In any case, standing proudly at mid-century we find that supreme monument to excess known as the Hearst Castle.  We left Atwater Village and drove up 101, or as Angelinos would say, "the" 101, to San Simeon, stopping for pie and coffee at another monument to excess, the Madonna Inn.   This establishment is fabled, not for its food which is somewhat mediocre, but for its kitsch which is world-class.  Be sure to check out the men's room if you visit.

I have a theory about well, almost everything, but in particular how "the" got attached to the number of every freeway in Southern California.  Originally, the LA freeways had names like "The Pasadena Freeway", "The Harbor Freeway", "The Santa Monica Freeway",  "The San Diego Freeway", "The Hollywood Freeway", and so on. But as the freeways proliferated, they ran out of reasonable names, and just reverted to the numbers assigned by CalTrans.  But then, to be consistent, they started using the numbers on the already named freeways as well.  So "The Pasadena Freeway" became "The 110 Freeway", "The San Diego Freeway" became "The 405 Freeway" and so on, and finally they dropped the redundant "Freeway".   Probably BS, but it sounds good.

Bidding a fond farewell to the Madonna Inn, we eventually found our campsite at San Simeon State Park, and prepared for the next day's tour.  We had already taken the main tour on a previous visit, so we signed up for the upper floors tour instead.  This featured the private suites of Hearst and his mistress ("companion" was the way our guide delicately put it)  Marion Davies, as well as a few of the many guest bedrooms.  The castle is an incredible mish-mash:  lots of ceilings, wall panels, and floors lifted intact from many different European castles, palaces, and manor houses along with paintings, statues, and other art objects. It's really impossible to describe in words -- you really have to see it.  But we can say a few words about Citizen Hearst.

William Randolph Hearst was the Rupert Murdoch of his day.  In place of Fox News, or should I say Faux News, he owned the San Francisco Examiner, the New York Journal-American, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and a slew of other newspapers around the country, not to mention various national magazines and other media outlets of the period.  "The Chief", as he was affectionately called by his employees, was best known for virtually single-handedly starting the Spanish American War.  This was accomplished through the invention of "Yellow Journalism", a technique that had nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with selling newspapers.   Hearst discovered that sensational stories are the key to increased circulation.  It really doesn't matter if the story is true, although having some "truthiness", as Colbert would say, probably doesn't hurt.  But the main point is the subject matter.  My news anchor friend John once told me, "Focus on nuts, guts, and sluts, and you can't go wrong. "

Of course, Hearst also put a heavy political slant on his news stories, just like Fox does today.  They've basically become little more than a propaganda outlet for the Republican party.  But they have lots of viewers, who apparently lap up all the rubbish they dish out.  Not only that, those viewers and millions of other 99%ers then march off to the polls and vote for candidates who want to give even more money to the 1% in the form of additional juicy tax cuts, and who want to pay for it by cutting or eliminating the government services and programs that benefit those very same voters.  If nothing else, this is a complete indictment of the U.S. educational system.  But it's much more than that.   Let's face it, the far right in America has executed an amazing political tour-de-force over the last half-century.  In 1964, the GOP ran Barry Goldwater, a  far-right extremist candidate, for president.  He was defeated by the biggest landslide in over a century,  losing the popular vote by a margin of more than 3 to 2.  Today he would be considered a moderate.

Lala Land

I consider Scientology to be exhibit #1 on the power of PTB ( "Propensity to Believe" -- see May 13 post: "It's a long way to Tucumcari").  L. Ron was no dummy, and like so many before him, realized that PTB can be harnessed to provide the three essentials:  Money, Sex, and Power.  Of course his spiritual father was Joseph Smith, but that's another story.  Maybe this fall we'll stop in Salt Lake City and discuss Joseph and his followers in more detail.  In any case, if you're a science fiction author with a good imagination, why settle for chump change writing scifi novels when you can hit the big time by turning your stuff into a religion?

Close behind L. Ron we have exhibit #2:  Uri Geller.  Uri was an Israeli stage magician whose act included the usual spoon-bending and mental magic tricks, but he too realized that PTB could be employed to enhance his take.   Moving from magic, where the audience knows it's not real, to ESP where the PTB-enhanced audience thinks it is real, was a definite step up.  Now we're talking books and lots of publicity like appearances on Merv Griffin and Johnny Carson (which was a big mistake actually, because Johnny was a good amateur magician and knew how it was done).  But unfortunately for Uri, there is a long line of magicians who don't approve of this particular perversion of the profession including Harry Houdini himself, who spent a lot of time and effort debunking "spiritual mediums", the ESPers of their day.  In this respect, religion has it all over ESP, because there's no organized professional opposition.

At this point, the commercial break closes with a pitch for CSICOP, one of my favorite organizations.

And now, back to our trip.  We spent Memorial Day weekend parked in Laura and Ian's driveway in Atwater Village, which is one of those LA neighborhoods that was developed in the 1920s and 30s.  Very residential, with lots of small spanish-style bungalows.   The neighborhood apparently went downhill at some point, but it's clear that gentrification is now well underway.  For example,  nearby Glendale boulevard offers an interesting socio-economic contrast:  storefronts with signs like "checks cashed" equipped with those ugly metal grilles that slide across the entire front of the store at night right next door to espresso houses with names like "Proof" selling exotic croissants and vegan muffins.

Friday night Laura and Ian took us to see Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall.  Yes, I know the word "Disney" evokes tacky commercialism, but it's not like that at all --  really quite a fabulous venue.  Dudamel is the Venezuelan boy wonder who has had a rather meteoric career in the world of classical music.  He is a product of "El Sistema" -- a remarkable program of music education for children and teenagers in Venezuela.

We had seen Dudamel and the LAPhil at the Hollywood Bowl last summer, also with Laura and Ian, playing an all-Mozart program under the stars.  The Hollywood Bowl is a uniquely Los Angeles experience.  Our seats came equipped with a folding picnic table, for example, which we used for the dinner we had brought with us.  But the best part was the Jumbotrons.  If you've never been to a big time football game or rock concert, these are giant video screens which show the performers "up close and personal" in real time.   In this instance, the violin soloist was Gil Shaham, who was of course fabulous, but the amazing part was when the Jumbotron zoomed in on the fingerboard of the violin and you could watch his left hand as he played.  This is something you can't normally see, even if you're seated in the first row.

Our other cultural outing was a visit to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, if you don't speak Lala) to see the mid-century modern design exhibit, where you could see what a classy 1950s home interior looked like.  But for me it was a deja-vu type of experience, since I remember quite well what they actually looked like.  So I'm looking at those strange women's dresses from the 50's and then I think "Oh wait, my mother used to wear something just like that."  Click.  Suddenly "strange" turns to "normal".   And I think we had some interior furnishings in our house that looked exactly like the ones on display.  Very odd.

We arrived at LACMA well before it opened, so we had something to eat at the ubiquitous lunch trucks across the street, and then wandered into the Petersen Automotive Museum which was just down the block.  As was evident from the Johnny Rocket burger shop just off the lobby, this museum caters to a somewhat different cultural milieu.  No wine and cheese available here.  But there were a few totally restored great sedans from the 20s and 30s, some muscle cars, sports cars, motorcycles, and scooters, as well as a few old electrics.  Concours d'Elegance it's not, but if you're a car buff like me, this place is well worth a visit.

LaJolla Shores

The birthday weekend was fabulous.  We went to Petco Park on Sunday and watched the Padres squeak out a 3-2 win against the Angels in 13 innings.  The game was pretty boring through the first nine innings, as both teams stranded many runners and neither could put a string of hits together.  Things got interesting in the bottom of the eleventh, when the Padres got a double with no one out, and the runner was advanced to third on a sacrifice bunt.  At this point the Angels manager pulled his left fielder in favor of an extra second baseman to play the hole between first and second, because any ball hit out of the infield would very likely score the winning run.  With one out and a runner at third it seemed like the perfect opportunity for a squeeze bunt, one of the few highly exciting plays in baseball, but it didn't happen for some reason, and instead the next two batters struck out.  Then in the bottom of the twelfth with a man on first, the Angels shortstop rather obviously dropped a line drive and immediately picked it up for an easy double play, but the umpire correctly called the infield fly rule, over the objections of the Angels manager.  Finally, in the bottom of the thirteenth, with two out, the Padres manager sent in the next night's starting pitcher as a pinch hitter, which was pretty odd, but then he got a single, which was even odder.  On a full count, the next batter hit a long single to left field, and of course the runner at first was running with the pitch.  Now the bizarre eleventh inning substitutions proved fatal for the Angels, because the second baseman playing left field bobbled the ball, and the base runner scored from first.  Truly a game to remember.

On Monday we went to the San Diego Safari Park (aka Wild Animal Park) in Escondido, and did the photo safari.  This involves climbing aboard a truck, which nowadays is fortunately outfitted with a canvas canopy, and driving out to feed the giraffes and the rhinos (see photo above).  I've done this several times before, but it's always a thrill to see those big beautiful eyes and long lashes up close and personal.   Not to mention that 10" prehensile tongue, which extends to gently extract whatever food you're holding in your hand.  Quite amazing, really.  As an extra bonus, we saw a baby rhino (4 months old) wallowing in the mud and then trying to climb up on its mother's back (with some success, I might add).  Our tour guide Lee had an interesting caution as the giraffe approached:

"Remember, she doesn't really like you.  She doesn't dislike you either, she basically just likes the food.  But she doesn't like being petted, and may knock you away with her head if you try it.  Since her head weighs several hundred pounds by itself, this might not be a very pleasant experience."

The prudent person follows advice such as this.  In any case, if you've never done the photo safari, I can heartily recommend it -- well worth the price.

In thinking about Lee's advice later, I wondered to what extent that statement also applies to so-called domesticated animals, like our dog Jake for example.  He wags his tail and gets excited when we walk in the door at home, but does this mean he's happy to see us, or perhaps only that he hopes to get something, such as food, or his ears scratched? Let's face it, animals are basically inscrutable, and even though it's easy to convince oneself that they have the same sort of feelings we do, I think there's a lot of anthropomorphism involved here.  

That night, we had a fabulous birthday dinner, featuring a musical review/roast by my three daughters and some great hot-club guitar.  Many thanks to Cherie for organizing a great birthday celebration!

Our final organized event was a tour of the Salk Institute, a famous architectural tour-de-force designed by Louis Kahn.  My main problem with this building, as well as many other mid-century buildings, is that I really detest raw concrete as an exterior building "finish".  I think it's intrinsically ugly.  Perhaps this comes from spending twenty years or so in the world's ugliest building, Evans Hall, which looks like it was built in East Germany in 1955 and then transported to the UC Berkeley campus.  Or maybe Evans is only the second ugliest, exceeded only by  -- you guessed it -- the Art and Architecture building on the same campus.  Raw concrete is an appropriate exterior finish for bunkers, blockhouses, and prisons.  It should be outlawed for use on any non-penal institution intended for human habitation.

However, leaving aside the aesthetics of raw concrete, the design is quite interesting.  The "blockiness" is broken up in many ways, for example by the use of so-called "negative space", which I think means something like enclosed but visibly empty space.  The central courtyard, which is (fortunately) laid in travertine and not raw concrete, is quite splendid.  But the most appealing aspect for me was the obvious attention paid by Kahn to the needs of the building users.  There is a full height "pipe floor" between each floor of lab space which holds heavy equipment such as low-temperature refrigeration and supply lines for various chemicals and gases for the labs below as well as the usual mechanical gear which is often located above a false ceiling in a standard office building.  The lab space itself is just a set of long rectangular bays which look like they can be easily partitioned into individual labs or offices and just as easily reconfigured.   I think some architects tend to lose sight of the "form follows function" dictum.  This doesn't simply mean that a research institue should look like it houses scientists.  It means that the primary purpose of a building is to provide for the needs of its occupants rather than to enhance the greater glory of its designer.   It looked to me as though the Salk Institute meets this standard.