From the Traveling Harrington’s.
Saturday May 10, we ventured to Emerald Bay and spent hours looking at the beautiful views. In 1928 a very rich eccentric lady bought the land around Emerald Bay and built a Viking castle, furnished it with copies of museum pieces that she was not able to buy, so she had them copied. She also built a tea house on top of the largest bay island, so she could take her guests to tea. From our viewpoints we could see Eagle Falls and the steamboat Belle. The Belle carries 400 people.
Safeway has a very nice store just 2 blocks from our campground and we enjoyed shopping there. We realized how much we miss the Safeway stores in Texas. The afternoon was spent washing hair and cleaning house.
Sunday, May 11, Mother’s Day. Happy Mother’s Day all you mothers! We drove to Carson City and took their driving tour of the old houses and buildings including the First United Methodist Church. It was built in 1865.
We arrived a few minutes early for services and nosed around to see the old chur
ch and met a few members. Their pastor and assistant pastor are husband and wife and have traveled all over the world. They shared the service. Since this was Pentecost the service focused on that glorious day. Leaving the sanctuary The Reverend Dixie was so wowed by my Methodist sweatshirt that she had someone take a picture so the craft ladies could make some for their big craft sale. We enjoyed comparing activities of the 2 churches.We toured the old Carson City Mint Museum. It covered everything from mining the gold and silver to processing it into coins. They even had the basement set up as a replicated mine.
Back to the driving tour the city has a CD called “talking houses”. We played it as we drove around town. It is very cleverly done and HWI should copy the idea. There was a $5 deposit, but we told the lady we would keep it to take home with us.
From Carson City we drove to Virginia City and it doesn’t look a thing like the “Bonanza” TV series country. Absolutely no Ponderosas anywhere close. We did see old mines from Gold Hill to Virginia City. It looked like every piece of land had been moved. Virginia City reminded us of Jerome with lots of tourist traps. We saw a Roswell skull (thought of Bobby’s belief in extra terrestrials), saloons with suicide table and gambling places.
One even had a silver lady. Her dress and accessories totaled 3125 silver dollars. It’s a good thing she is behind glass. They had even utilized a small alley for an Alley Mall. (Another good idea for Waxahachie) There were about a dozen local characters dressed to please the tourists today. One was manning the panning for gold display. We were also enamored by 2 churches on the side of the hill below the main street. The one on the left is Episcopal, the other Catholic.
We went over a pass from Silver City to Reno, then from Reno to North Lake Tahoe via yet another pass. We started the day by going over a pass from South Lake Tahoe to Carson City. Whew, 3 passes in one day. When we came back to Lake Tahoe we drove the eastern side and the rocky shores were being splashed by the white caps and the mountain shown behind it. Beautiful!
Mother’s Day supper was at Chevy’s California Mexican. It was very good, but not as good as home.
Monday was moving day. We anticipated a long day, so we were up early. We actually drove over 200 miles. That’s a lot of miles for us. At Yuba City we stopped at a fruit stand and discovered a new berry. They had turnovers, tarts and pies made with them. They are olallieberries. We bought a turnover. It was quite good. Not as many seeds as dewberries. We arrived at Lake Solana Recreation Park and found a very nice shady spot. They have visiting pets from the farm next door and the Peacocks had to check us out. This is their mating season and they cried all day. They sound like a big cat mewing.
Tuesday, May 13, we ventured off to Napa visiting Copia, their big wine center and picked up maps and directions. Then we hit the scenic road to see wineries. We visited 3 and tasted at 2. We were disappointed in the whole area. Crowded and expensive. There are over 50 wineries in the small valley and lots of traffic, even though it is May and not a big tourist month. One winery host bragged Napa Valley is second only to Disneyland as a California tourist attraction with small roads and heavy traffic. Glad we weren’t here in the summer.
Wednesday May 14 was an exciting trip into San Francisco. It took more than 2 hours from the campground to the parking lot in SF. We walked back to Pier 33 from our parking lot near fisherman’s wharf and took the ferry to Alcatraz.
This is now a National Park and they are encouraging all the flora (butterfly bush) and fauna (gulls) to come back. Many of the guard families lived in Apartments on the island. We could clearly see SF and the Golden Gate Bridge from the employee entrance. It surprised us how close the island is to mainland. The tour includes a recorded voice system to play as you walk through the cell block. It has all the background noises common to the prison. We saw the intake room, cells and even the cells for the birdman (who actually had no birds at Alcatraz, was a sociopath and we have since hear originally from Waxahachie!) and the actual cell where Clint Eastwood escaped and the shaft he took to the roof. We walked into a cell for a photo op of us. As we left through the bookstore, an ex-prisoner was signing his book about life in Alcatraz.
Arriving back at the wharf, we walked to Scoma’s restaurant and had a wonderful dinner. Fred had broiled Alaskan Halibut (very, very good) and Olivia enjoyed a crab tower. The base was avocado, then crabmeat, then salsa, served with sourdough toast. The best part was their Roumalaud sauce. It was the best ever. We would go back there in a heart beat, if we didn’t have to drive in the traffic! We highly recommend this restaurant.
As we walked down the street, we encountered several sidewalk attractions, mimes, musicians and the “bush man”. Fred really enjoyed watching people being surprised by the bush man. Others gathered at distances, even across the street to watch. We also watched a street vendor cracking crabs. Olivia wanted to ride the cable car, but time was running out. At Angie’s request we bought some Boudin sourdough bread and for her we managed to find Lombard Street and took it down the crooked hill. Sightseers took our picture. Too bad we didn’t get one with our camera. Fred couldn’t believe people would actually find that interesting.
Getting out of SF was more difficult and time consuming than getting in. We followed the signs to the bay bridge and they led us all over downtown SF. Going in we were able to exit right at Embarcadero, which ran along the wharf area. This part of California is having a heat wave and we did not sleep well. The wind was blowing, but not into the trailer. We decided to take the next day off.
Thursday May 15. We turned on the AC. This a first time for us to use the trailer AC. It is suppose to be 104 today! This is to be a day of rest and get ready to move tomorrow. Uh-oh, the camp host drove by and told us the Suburban had a flat! We walked down to see and sure enough it was VERY FLAT. A wonderful ranger came along and offered to change if for us. It took all of us to figure out how to disconnect the spare and work this jack. It was so nice to have help. We drove into town and had the tire fixed. A screw had worked its way all the way through the tire. We visited a fruit stand and bought walnuts, tomatoes, strawberries and cherries. We have enjoyed the California strawberries VERY much. These Winter’s strawberries are the best strawberries yet. “Yum yum” says Fred!!!!!!
Mariani has a huge nut processing plant here. We visited the office to ask questions. We had wanted to visit Blue Diamond, but bypassed Sacramento where it is located. Mariani is the largest independent nut processor in California. Tiny Winters (population about 3,000) is their headquarters. They process 60 thousand tons of walnuts and 30 thousand tons of almonds annually. We started to buy some almonds, but decided to order on-line (marianinut.com) and have them shipped.
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