Washington Oregon California and Nevada. April 2013

Washington Oregon California and Nevada.  April 2013

 We were limited to a short spring trip by my planned return to Kurdistan

on the 20th of April, but we had a lot of fun none the less.

Click on a picture to embiggen

The house as we left on the 11th of April.
Snowing.  Again.

John on Main Street of Kennewick, Wa.
A man in Kennewick, but not the Kennewick Man
This 2013 vintage Chateau D'uvas d'Umatilla is a saucy little wine,
but unfortunately suffers from a clanging metallic aftertaste.

A view down the Columbia River from 'Stonhenge' at Maryhill, Wa.
Mount Hood in the background

John, the Druid in jeans and cool shades at the replica of Stonehenge in Maryhill, Wa.

The Rogue River, flowing from the slopes of Crater Lake Mountain is already wild,
But at Union Creek, it gets squeezed through a collapsed lava tube.

A 180° view of the intense blue deep unfrozen Crater Lake, OR.
The second deepest lake in N.America. Here is the deepest.
Wizard Island in the lake at left, and a dummy being "rescued" at right.

In 2013, the snow was only two ruths high at Crater Lake, but in
1932-33, it was three and a quarter ruths high.  Wow.

Mount Shasta, Ca, with the cone of Shastina to the right (west).
One of the southernmost of the Cascade volcanos

If you're in Redding California for the mid-April Kool April Nites,
you just might see a '23 Ford T-bucket in the parking lot at Lowes.

The Santiago Calatrava designed 'Sundial Bridge' in Redding, Ca at night.
We've been to and crossed this bridge several times, but the one in Calgary. . . .
. . . .ummmm
. . .not yet.

The never-ending quest to get John a decent cup of coffee can lead to other finds.
Here, a replica of a '30s gas station in Orland, Ca.

A part of the reason for going to California was to have the back door to our camper replaced.
(Don't ask why.)
The camper factory is in Woodland, Ca, right next to Sacramento, the capital of California,
so we rented a car while the camper was at the factory, and drove to the California capitol.

In the California Assembly and Senate, it was a day of remembrance
for the 1915 Armenian Genocide.
A boy scout color party, with the Armenian flag at left, is practicing its entrance.

The House is RED.
The Senate is GREEN

A study in contrast:
At the side of the Capitol, a politician is promoting one of three bills to ban 'single use' shopping bags.
No people, only media, are watching.
Around the corner. . . .

. . . .at the front of the Capitol-
a Tea Party rally.  Hundreds of people- no media.
Except for these guys.

Sacramento has a well preserved 'Old Sacramento'.
A reminder of the days when the city was a jumping off point for the '49ers.

Ruth at the SunMaid plant's visitor's center. (read: Gift Shop)
Too much sweetness for a 10MB picture to contain.

The beginning and the finished product.

The start of the Kern River Canyon, east of Bakersfield, Ca.

We didn't realize it when we were there, but we were witness
to a once in decades phenomenon, the simultaneous blooming
of nearly all of the Joshua Trees across all their range.

Here, a bloom is held in a hand that has never seen an honest days work. Ever.

The growing, business end of a Joshua tree

John on the Main Street of Inyokern, Ca.
He's dejected that 'Inyo Dreams' is closed

Available at 'Inyo Dreams' are these ingenious bird houses.

The endorheic Searles Lake, for decades mined for lots of weird evaporite minerals.

The Panamint Valley.
Death Valley is over the Panamint Mountains to the right.
Here is a huge picture of the Panamints.

Ballarat, California.

It's said (by people who say such things),
and believed (by people who believe such things)
that this '42 Dodge Power Wagon was owned and used by 'Tex' Watson of the Manson 'family'
to get to the 'family's' Barker Ranch hideout up Goler Wash.

A relic in Ballarat from Deborah Wall, a local author.
We tried the east side of Mengel Pass in 2011, but we were
smart, wise, foresighted, perspicacious, and prudent enough
to get only one flat.

A 360° view of the Ballarat Road.
Town center is just beyond our truck.

One of the better kept buildings in Ballarat. . . .

. . . . .it gets a fair bit of use, after all.

The Mesquite Sand Dunes at the north end of Death Valley, Ca,
with the Grapevine Mountains in the distance.
(Grapevine Mtns. link is a honkin' big .pdf)

Even in Death Valley, there's no guarantee of high temperatures.
In the short video below, you can see (and hear) the dune moving.
Soon (months?) the small mesquite at left will be buried,
and in a few decades(?) they will be uncovered again.

The once opulent Cook Bank in the well-known ghost town of Rhyolite Nevada.

The vaguely creepy "Last Supper" by Albert Szukalski,
Part of an outdoor gallery just south of Rhyolite.

Daedala.
'Artistic Vision' trumps 3000yrs of history and mythology.

Basin and Range in Nevada, looking across Railroad valley basin
from the Pancake Range to the Grant Range and Troy Peak in the distance.
I'm standing on a ~2 million year old basalt lava flow which flowed from the range behind
and out to the basin in the late Pliocene.

There's Ruth (NV)

The _New_ Ruth Club must be pretty good. It has a 'like' on Facebook.
I'm pretty sure the Old Ruth Club had slots and beer, too.

Jackpot NV, just across the border from Idaho.
This was the destination of the Chretiens from Penticton when
they got lost in the mountains to the east.