Our West Coast Trip July/August 2016

The main purpose of this trip was to attend the Vietnam Veterans of America Leadership and Education Conference in Tucson, Arizona.

Missouri

We departed Batavia, Ohio on July 11, with visits planned before our arrival in Tucson. We visited and had dinner with Nancy Scott in Camdenton. We also visited with Nancy's parents, Ron and Derrie, as well. Ron is a great story teller.

Nancy, Ron and Derrie

The following day we had lunch with Pat Boyer at Lamberts in Ozark (Home of Throwed Rolls). Pat's husband, Dan couldn't make it. He is a fishing guide and was engaged.

New Mexico (It's a State, not a Foreign Country)

We then spent a weekend in Albuquerque to visit with Cecilia Hoffman and her family, with a side trip to Madrid (MAD-rid, not muh-DRID) which was the on-location site of the movie, Wild Hogs.

Maggie's Diner was built specifically for the movie, Wild Hogs.
It is now just a souvenir store.

Cecilia's husband, Joe, had passed away about a month before we got there. When I was stationed in Albuquerque in 1960, Joe was going to Nuke Weapons training there and we hung out together and spent many hours at Cecilia's house. Her mom, Clorinda, was like a second mother to me. Clorinda is now 97 and has invited Joyce and me to her 100th birthday.

Cecilia, her brother Paskey, Joyce, Michael, Clorinda

Madrid was an abandoned coal mining town and when I was stationed in Albuquerque I drove out there a couple of times to take pictures. I was told that hippies began moving in in the late 1960s (it was rent free in the abandoned houses there). It is now an artsy village with a population of a couple hundred.

Arizona

Spent five days in Tucson with the Vietnam Veterans of America. Attended several interesting seminars. Saw a pre-release Mel Gibson WW2 movie that is due out later this year, Hacksaw Ridge. 

Our room was on the ground floor, with sliding patio door in back. Watched lizards, jack rabbits, quail and woodpeckers in the back yard. Temperature peaked at 107 degrees. But it was a dry heat, as they say, similar to an oven, which is also a dry heat.

Our hotel, El Conquistador

Spent a day at the Grand Canyon National Park. Photographed people climbing over the barrier fence to go out on a ledge.

Idiots

California

The drive to Riverside from Flagstaff, Arizona was accompanied by temperatures between 104 and 116 degrees. Visited mom's gravesite at Riverside National Cemetery.

Polly at Riverside National Cemetery

Had lunch with Joyce Thomason (widow of my cousin, Dick) in Orange. Was able to get to know Joyce a little better, as most of my time in the past was spent with Dick (Dick was how I always knew him, but he was known later in life as Rich).

Spent two nights aboard the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach. The Queen Mary was in service between 1936 and 1967. Earlier in this trip we had viewed some original plans for the Queen Mary in an antique store in Amarillo, Texas. By my recollection the room we had would have been in 3rd Class. Yeah, sounds about right.

RMS Queen Mary

We spent a weekend visiting cousins Bridey and Dan Newman in San Francisco (had been about 50 years since I had last seen them). We figure Bridey was about 9 years old the last time we had seen each other. She is single and had adopted a girl who has recently gotten a degree in Psychology.

Bridey, adopted daughter Artemis, Dan, Joyce

Bridey shared many of her dad's photos which I was able to copy on my iphone. She also provided a transcript of a series of letters that her dad had sent to his parents during a bicycle trip from Los Angeles to New York in 1930, shortly after he graduated from high school (a great journal of his trip).

Bridey regaled us with stories of her years as a hippie in Hawaii and San Francisco (ask us about her broken arm) before finally settling down as a para-legal. 

Bridey's brother, Dan, grows orchids in Pacifica, just south of San Francisco. Dan is not so much a merchant of orchids, but is a collector. He has a greenhouse of about 3000 square feet filled with orchid plants from around the world. These are not the types you normally see; most are tiny.

The Newmans in Dan's greenhouse

During our San Francisco visit we had stayed at a motel across the bay in Oakland. Our first trip into San Francisco was on the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train. Joyce was a bit un-nerved as we sped through the tunnel (under the bay and in earthquake prone California). We survived that, but only narrowly survived our next trip by car and heavy traffic over the Bay Bridge.

Spent a day in Yosemite National Park. Our route into Yosemite was a long gradual uphill drive, unlike our exit route, which was on extremely narrow, curvy roads.

El Capitan in background

Nevada

Three years ago we had made a side trip to Virginia City and had made some purchases from a lady who grew peaches. We stopped by again while driving through Nevada to visit with the Peach Lady and purchase some peach preserves.

Utah (An Unplanned and Unexpected View)

We had spent the night in Elko, Nevada and were on our way to Ogden Utah. As we came out of the hills and crossed into Utah we weren't sure what we were seeing. A lot of bright area. Was it water? Sand? We pulled over at a rest stop to find that it was the Bonneville Salt Flats. We had no idea that we would be driving through it.

Bonneville Salt Flats

Wyoming

Our next stop was Yellowstone National Park where we stayed one night at the Old Faithful Inn. We had arrived in Yellowstone about noon, and since the room would not be available for a few hours, decided to drive around a bit to see the wildlife. At one of our first stops we ran across a guy who had a couple of macaws, which for a modest "donation," were posed with us as he took pictures with our camera.

Not exactly what you would call wildlife

We continued driving around until about 5:00 then went to the hotel. At one of our stops we had seen a sign noting that the area we were in is still an active volcanic area and that we were in the middle of it.

The inn was originally opened in 1904 and has only been modestly updated. It is all wood, inside and outside. Small room, minimally furnished, dimly lit, but did have a private bath. In a word - quaint. We found out during this trip that Joyce is not a fan of quaint. While lying in bed that night, all I could think about was the active volcano and the all-wood hotel.

Rear entrance of Old Faithful Inn

The next day we took the longer trip around the park, sight-seeing and watching for the animals. I had been to Yellowstone ten years earlier and had seen lots of wild life on, or right next to, the road. During the two days Joyce and I drove, we saw only one instance of wild life in the park - a chipmunk. This was a disappointment for us.

The next two nights were spent at an AirBnB near Jackson, during which time we visited Grand Teton National Park, and shopped in Jackson. Lodging in the Jackson Hole area is at a premium. I was forced to use AirBnB to find a place to stay at a reasonable price. We wound up with a room with private bath in a nice home in Wilson. Joyce was leery at first, but it wound up being OK.

We had mentioned to our hostess that we were disappointed in not seeing any wildlife. She suggested that we drive down a certain road off the main drag, which we did. We managed to see a lone pronghorn antelope from a reasonable distance.

Pronghorn Antelope - a real wildlife

We decided to drive to Jenny Lake in the Grand Teton National Park. While driving there we finally spotted the bison herd, not too far off the road. We stopped and took pictures before continuing to the lake. Temperature at 1:14 was 59 degrees, a 57 degree swing from a couple weeks earlier.

Bison in Great Teton National Park

We left Jackson early in the morning and spotted several pronghorn antelope alongside the road on three or four occasions.

By this point we had scrapped a planned additional week traveling to Mackinac Island and instead headed directly home.

Iowa

The drive from Omaha, Nebraska to Davenport, Iowa was not too long so we oped to drive a hundred or so miles out of our way to see the baseball field that was used for the movie, Field of Dreams for a photo op. Near Davenport we stopped for another photo op in Le Claire to see the stores of Antique Archeology, home site of American Pickers TV show. I offered to purchase a United Motors Service sign that they had on the front of their building, but it was not for sale.

Home of American Pickers

Ohio

Left Davenport at 7:00 and got home at 4:00. Had the car unloaded by 4:30, showered and fresh clothes by 5:30, then to a meeting of our local Vietnam Veterans chapter.

In 32 days we spent 20 days on the road, traveled over 7300 miles, visited friends and relatives, stopped in 4 National Parks, and saw a girl hanging out in Laramie, Wyoming (ask for details).

Fun With Passwords

The Background

A couple of years ago I bought an iphone and over time I set it up for my day to day email account. In addition to my day to day account, which is an MSN Hotmail account, I have two other email accounts, one a personal Gmail account and another Gmail account set up in conjunction with the my website that I use for my hobby. Eventually I set all three up on my iphone, and all was well.

My two personal email accounts have different (and somewhat complex) passwords, which I try to change periodically. Because the hobby account is used strictly for discussing the hobby, I have seen no need to strengthen or change that password.

The Problem

After a prolonged period of time on the old passwords, I decided last month to change the passwords on my two personal accounts. Let the fun begin.

Everything seemed to be ok. I was getting mail on the Hotmail account and because I don’t used the personal Gmail account much it didn’t occur to me that I wasn’t getting mail there.

I did begin getting an indicator that the “exchange” password was incorrect, and had tried a couple of times to fix it, but it never seemed to get fixed. I didn’t realize there was a significant problem until I tried to respond to an email on the Hotmail account and found that I could not send anything.

Simple enough, though, right? Just plug in the new passwords. Tried that – the Hotmail password did not work, the Gmail password did not work.

Hmmmm.

Began doing some research on the web and ran into a ton of other people with similar issues, and it seems that every proposed solution is different.

I have no idea what “exchange” is. Or where it came from. But email on my iphone was never really that important to me, so I made a few half-hearted efforts at trying to figure this thing out.

The Solution

Last night I finally said, enough. Fix it. I googled the Hotmail problem once again and found a potential cure which required me to make a change to my Gmail account. Huh? What sense does that make? Go to google's Gmail to fix MSN Hotmail on my Apple device?

Well, I followed the procedure and voila, my Hotmail became accessible on my iphone once more. Yeah, but the Gmail account still does not work. Back to google and I find that I need to install a specific application password for gmail on my iphone and that I can get it from my Gmail account (not my Gmail password, but something different).

Got it. Gmail began working again. Of course I never did have a problem with my hobby based Gmail account because I never changed the password.

So now I can access all three of my email accounts on my iphone once again.

Well, until the next day!

The New Problem

Got up this morning, turned on my iphone and found a demand for an “exchange” password. Could not get past that to access anything on the phone. It’s like the phone is completely locked and won’t work without that password.

The Final Solution (that just sounds wrong)

Back to google – back to Gmail – and I am allowed to download a new password for “exchange” to my iphone. But how will I access it if I cannot open any aps?

As it turns out, the new password just popped up on the iphone screen. Plugged it in to the “exchange” password request, and once again we are running on all 8 cylinders.

Hopefully this will last more than 24 hours this time. And I still don't know what "exchange" is.

Nashville 3

Downtown

Sunday was our day to visit the Ryman Auditorium, the home of Grand Old Opry for many years. We plugged the address into the GPS and Shirley took us downtown by a pretty efficient route. It was starting to rain lightly as we passed by the stadium, just as they were putting up the street barricades for an NFL football game with the New York Jets.

The town was buzzing with people in anticipation of the game. It is an interesting town and it didn't dawn on me at the time what it was that made it so different. I think it is the mix of buildings. The new buildings appear in the background. Old buildings still line the main drag. It's a neat concept.

Nashville's main drag. In the background is the AT&T Building.

The Ryman Auditorium was originally built as a church structure and was later used for many years as the venue for the Grand Old Opry. Eventually the Opry was moved to a new structure and the Ryman was left vacant for about 20 years. Fortunately, someone recognized the historic value of the building and its excellent acoustics and it was completely renovated. It is now used on an almost daily basis. Entertainers currently scheduled for the next three months include Ricky Skaggs, Alabama, Blondie, Lynard Skynyrd, ZZ Top, and Martina McBride. 

This is the photogenic side of the Ryman Auditorium. The main entrance is now on the opposite side.

Interior of the Ryman. 

After the Ryman tour we walked three blocks to the Country Music Hall of Fame. Lunch there was a hot dog and bag of chips at a table with white tablecloth. The Hall of Fame was large (and expanding) and was impressive enough, but after the tour of Ryman Auditorium it was almost anticlimactic.

Country Music Hall of Fame

A couple of unusual instruments in the Country Music Hall of Fame. The Whomper II is a homemade bass from the 1940s. The body is made of a bass drum. The triple-neck instrument features a six string guitar neck, an eight string mandola neck, and a ten string neck.

This visit concludes our sightseeing for our trip. Tomorrow we drive home.

Nashville 2

Antique Stores

Our second day in Nashville was spent antiquing in general. Our first stop was at the Nashville store of the American Pickers. We plugged the address into the GPS and Shirley headed us in the right direction. But as we were driving down next to the highway, it appeared to me that the road ended before we would get to our turn, so I turned early. We wound around a bit, but she finally got us there. The store was located in the old Marathon Automobile Factory.

I really wasn't sure of what to expect so my my overall impression was mixed. The store was tiny (and very crowded). They had some large ticket items which were for sale, and others which were not - mostly motorcycle related (which was understandable). Most of their sales appeared to come from souvenir shirts, hats, and other miscellaneous items.

AntiqueArchaeology, the American Picker's store in Nashville.

The three of us in front of the old Marathon Automobile Factory

Nashville 1

The Flea Market

The weekend that we are in Nashville is also the weekend for the monthly flea market at the state fairgrounds. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. So our (my) first priority is to go to that event on Friday.

It was a so so event - some old stuff, an awful lot of new things. Finally found a few keys, an old catalog, and then happened upon a booth where everything was advertised at $5.00. Looked over a couple of rings of keys and the lady noted that there were more in the other corner. Found one string of keys there, and put the others back. The lady mentions that there's some more individual keys in a display case near her. I glance at the display case and see one key that looks familiar - it's a Russwin key. Generally speaking Russwin keys are nothing spectacular for the automobile key collector. While Russwin was a large lock manufacturer, they were minor players in the automobile lock business. I have a few in my collection already and really didn't need another, especially at $5.00 a pop. But, like the searcher that I am, I ask if I can look at it. I pick it up and turn it over to find the flying goose logo of the Wills St Claire automobile. This is a pretty rare car key and I can't believe that I have just found it. I had been looking for one for the past 10 or 15 years. As I get ready to pay the lady, she says that if that's the only one out the case that I want, I can have it for $2.00. "No, I'll give you the five, because that's what the deal was." So I give her a ten for the one string of keys and the Wills St Claire key, and walk away elated.

This Wills St Claire key is from the collection of Maurice Onraet.  Don't have a pic of mine yet.

Was in a daze for the rest of the day.

New Orleans

I suppose that the New Orleans experience is going to be different depending on your age (and the age).

My first experience with New Orleans was in 1957 while traveling from Norman, Oklahoma to Pensacola, Florida for Photographer's Mate School. I had been traveling on the train with a group of miscellaneous military transferees and had to wait a few hours at the New Orleans train station to catch the "local" to Pensacola.

The first order of the day was breakfast at the train station. A group of us sat down at the counter only to be told that one of us was not welcome there. A female marine, who happened to be black. My introduction to racial discrimination in the south.

After breakfast we still had a few hours to kill so a group of us sailors decided to take a walk about the area. Now somewhere in the previous two or three months I had picked up a pair of cowboy boots and had decided in all my 18 years of worldly experience that I would wear them with my navy uniform. Oh, and with my dixie cup hat perched un-military-like on the back of my head.

It wasn't long before our group was stopped by the Shore Patrol. Shore Patrol? In New Orleans? Well, yeah. We soon discovered that New Orleans was Headquarters of the Eighth Naval District. And as the Shore Patrol chatted with us, I tried to maintain a low profile with my pointy-toed boots by facing away from them.

That was my first visit to New Orleans.

On this trip, almost 60 years later, it was purely as a tourist, and dependent on the AAA Tour Book for all of the high points. One of the first things that I wanted to do was have coffee and beignets at Cafe Du Monde. This notable place was mentioned in two different sections of the book. And Joyce's son, Tony, had mentioned the same place, so this was definitely a must for me.

We finally found the place and it was packed, both inside and outside. We found an empty table and got our order placed.

My coffee was served black and was made with chicory. I loved it, and the beignets were good and loaded with powdered sugar. Joyce brought me back down to earth when she noted that they were not much different than the sopapillas that we had in Albuquerque, but with powdered sugar instead of honey (or fry bread from the fair). After looking at the posted menu again and seeing that besides coffee and other drinks, the only food item was the beignets, she couldn't understand how this place could draw the crowd that was there. Maybe it was like Lindsay Lohan, just famous for being famous. At any rate the coffee was good enough that I went out of my way to buy a can of it.

Souvenir shopping and a drive down Bourbon Street completed our in town experience.

Driving down Bourbon Street

While looking at a map of the area, I had noticed a road that crossed Lake Pontchartrain, so I headed us in that direction for no other reason than to say that we had driven across a 25 mile bridge. Twenty-five miles later we had to find a way back without driving back across the lake (and paying the requisite toll, which we had escaped by driving across northward). We eventually managed to find our way back to the motorhome.

About halfway across the bridge over Lake Pontchartrain

Incident on Interstate 59

So Joyce is driving up Interstate 59 north of Hattiesburg, Mississippi following a semi in the right lane. We were coming up on a rest stop and the semi begins slowing, brake lights on, but no signal. Joyce figures he's going into the rest stop and eases off the gas. But she is really getting too close, so I tell her, "Slow, slow, slow."

Now I see a woman on the left side of the road near the median. She is motioning everyone to slow down - uh oh, must be an accident up ahead.

Now we see her car parked on the right shoulder of the road. By this time we are down to about 25 miles an hour and I see the woman pointing down in front of her - something in the road just inside the left lane. Did she lose something from her car?

Oh, for crying out loud! It's a turtle! The guy in the outside lane next to us is blowing his horn. What the hell are you trying to do, lady? Save the world from itself?

I understand helping poor critters, but not at the risk to your own life on an interstate highway. And surely not at the risk to other motorists barreling down the road at 70 miles an hour. Not only did she take a risk by walking across the highway to the median, but it was been entirely possible that someone could have kicked that turtle with the edge of their tire and sent it flying into her.

It was the talk of the CBers for the next few miles down the road.