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).