Back in January we made it back from Germany
and stayed in Loomis, CA for another month. Our friends Bert and Cathy were more than generous with
allowing us to stay parked by their garage, plugged into their electricity, and
using their shower and laundry room.
During that month we lazed around a bit, Heinz worked on regular
maintenance for the rig, the car, and the motorcycle. In the meantime I worked on some embroidery and did some
cooking for the gang. Hanging out
with Bert and Cathy is always a blast and involves lots of heated discussions
and even more laughter. This time
they introduced Heinz to a new experience…his first pedicure.
Now what is she doing to your feet that she’s
not doing to mine?
We also made a new lifelong friend,
Bentley. This is Cathy &
Bert’s yard cat that they kept trying to move into our rig. We had to do a daily sweeps of our area
for signs of cat food, litter box, and cat crate!
Bentley, the King of his yard...
…and apparently of our steps as well. Bentley developed a liking for our
front entry step and saw NO reason to move for mere humans trying to get in or
out.
See, I TOLD you that you could get out
without me moving. It’s not MY
fault you almost sprained your ankle trying to step over me.
Beginning of February, we said goodbye to
Bert and Cathy, and headed south for Seal Beach CA. It was time see Pete and Jess, and get in some serious Opa
and Oma time with Nora. Nora is
developing into quite a little personality, friendly, bright, curious, and
quite the gourmand. No baby rice
for this princess - it was straight to steamed broccoli, cucumber, carrots and
the like. In addition, she’s
turning up her nose to those traditional jars of baby food.
Ok, one more time Opa, here’s how you do a
selfie…
Ok everybody, let’s ROCK!!
Watch Oma, I’m almost ready to crawl…time to
start putting things on the top shelves.
Opa teaching Nora yet another important life skill
- the fine art of blowing a raspberry.
Sad to say, she picked it up quickly.
Beverly has discovered the best place to be
during mealtime.
The day Nora discovered refried beans. Bring it on Mom! Dad, get that bathwater running!
HEY - really dude, do you gotta do that…
Pete, Nora, and Jess at the WurstKüche in Los
Angeles. Nora was really digging
on the fries, not to mention the sautéed peppers off the sausages.
After a month in the Los Angeles area it was
time to start drifting north towards Alaska, our summertime destination. We’ve wanted to get there for several
years now and kept putting it off for “minor” reasons…Tash’s wedding, Nora’s
birth…you know, those pesky little life events that you feel duty bound to
attend. But this is our year. Nothing is stopping us, not even the
fact that Jess and Pete are moving to Vermont and Suzi and Carl, along with
Tash and Ryan, are all moving to Colorado. Pack and unpack yourselves - we’ll be communing with the
salmon and bears.
Soon...very, very soon...
Leaving L.A. we decided to head up the east
side of the Sierras. We stopped
for a night in the Alabama Hills just below Mount Whitney, close to the town of
Lone Pine. The Alabama Hills are a
range of rock formations in the Owens Valley. The area was named for the CSS Alabama. When news
of the Confederate warship’s exploits reached prospectors in California
sympathetic to the Confederate cause, they named many of their mining claims
after the ship. Eventually the
name came to be applied to the entire range. When the USS Kearsarge
finally sunk the Alabama in 1864, Northern sympathizers named a mining
district, a mountain pass, a mountain peak, and a town after the
Kearsarge. The area has been a
popular filming location for movies and television since the early 1920’s.
The Element in its element - the Alabama
Hills. (sorry, just couldn’t resist)
The Alabama Hills at the base of the Eastern
Sierras Range.
Sunset over the Sierras.
The wildflowers were blooming in abundance, so
of course I took advantage and started snapping photos. Bless Heinz’s heart, he patiently sat
in the car while I wandered down the road with my head down, eyes alert to a
new flower, and shooting my digital bouquets.
Wallace's Woolly Daisies
Sandy field of Woolly Daisies.
Fremont Phacelia
Scalloped Phacelia
Mountain Jewel Flower
After leaving the Alabama Hills we moved
further north to Gardnerville, NV, just south of Reno. About a half hour above Lone Pine we
stopped at the Manzanar National Historic Site. In the early months of 1942,
following the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese and America’s entry into
World War II, and despite the lack of ANY concrete evidence, Japanese Americans
were suspected of remaining loyal to their ancestral land. Therefore President Roosevelt signed
Executive Order 9066, authorizing the U.S. Army to remove nearly 120,000 people
of Japanese ancestry (2/3’s of them citizens of the U.S., either naturalized or
born in America) from their homes and communities on the west coast. Manzanar was one of 10 camps located in
remote areas of California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and
Arkansas. Internees were given
only days to decide what to do with their houses, farms, businesses, and other
possessions. Most sold their belongings
at a significant loss. They were
not told where they were going or for how long. Each family was assigned an identification number and loaded
into cars, buses, trucks, and trains, taking only what they could carry. By November 1942, the relocation was
complete.
Enclosed by barbed wire, eight guard towers
with searchlights, and patrolled by military police, the mile-square living
area at Manzanar contained barracks, mess halls, and other buildings, where up
to 11,070 Japanese Americans lived between March 1942 and November 1945. By September 1942 more than 10,000
Japanese Americans were crowded into 504 barracks organized into 36
blocks. Each block held 14
barracks housing 200-400 people, with shared toilets, showers, laundry rooms,
and mess halls. Each barrack was
divided into 4 rooms and any combination of 8 individuals was allotted a 20 x
25 foot room. An oil stove, a
single hanging light bulb, cots, blankets, and mattresses filled with straw
were the only furnishings provided.
Reconstructed barracks building.
Summer temperatures at Manzanar reached 110, while
winter temperatures were often below freezing. Throughout the year strong winds swept through the valley,
often blanketing the camp with dust, sand or snow. Internees attempted to make the best of the situation,
establishing schools, churches, temples, boys and girls clubs, sports teams,
musical groups, and dance programs.
In addition they planted both ornamental and kitchen gardens and started
a camp newspaper, the Manzanar Free Press
(ah, the irony). Most adult internees worked in the
camp, digging irrigation canals, tending the gardens, making clothes and
furniture, working in a camp based factory, producing camouflage netting for
the military, preparing meals as mess hall workers, and providing medical care
at the camp hospital.
During the war, 150 residents of Manzanar
died. Most were cremated, but the
remains of 15 residents (most infants and older men without families) were
buried just outside of the barbed wire.
Six burials remain today - relatives removed the other nine after the
war.
Memorial to the dead of Manzanar. The monument’s Japanese characters
read, “Soul Consoling Tower” on the front and “Erected by the Manzanar
Japanese, August 1943” on the back.
In 1945 and after the defeat of Japan, the
internees were allowed to leave.
Despite the paranoia of the country, not one Japanese American was ever
arrested or tried for espionage during the war.
US flag flying over the restored camp
auditorium/gymnasium, now the Interpretive Center.
Once we got to Gardnerville we settled in to
check out the area for a week followed by a couple of weeks in Reno. We’ve had the region on our list of
possible retirement places for a while now. Gardnerville is a small town (population around 5,600) about
50 miles south of Reno and at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Reno, of course, is much bigger
(population around 225,000) and known as “The Biggest Little City in the World”
and famous for its casinos and numerous summer events like the Air Races, Hor
August Nights, etc.. Both cities are
located in what is known as high-desert.
As early as the 1840’s a few pioneers settled
in the Truckee Meadows, a fertile valley bisected by the Truckee River. Gold was discovered in the vicinity in
1850 leading to the settling of a small mining community, but the discovery of
silver in 1859 at the Comstock Lode led to a mining rush. By 1863, the Central Pacific Railroad
had begun laying tracks east from Sacramento, CA heading for Promontory, UT - the
railroad passed through Reno. As
mining waned in the early 1900’s Reno took a leap when the state of Nevada
legalized open gambling in 1931, along with the passage of extremely liberal
divorce laws. Reno quickly became
the location for quick divorces for couples all over the U.S.
The area has a lot to offer, entertainment in
the casinos, continuing education at the University of Nevada, fantastic
motorcycling through the Sierra Nevada, Lake Tahoe with the largest
concentration of ski resorts in the U.S. (including Squaw Valley, site of the
1960 Winter Olympics), areas for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing, fly
fishing along the many rivers in the Sierras - the list goes on and on. After three weeks in the area it has
earned a continuing position on our potential retirement list!
Lake Tahoe
The forest above Lake Tahoe on the day after a fresh snowfall.
Passing through Donner Pass.
You’ve made it into April, arrived in Oregon,
and more importantly, you’re all caught up on our travels! I’ll cover Oregon in the next
installment of the blog. Until
then, here is our friend of the day (actually… months):
Bentley, stalking who knows what - a passing mouse, a blowing leaf, Heinz?
