Road trip to Calexico Part 2 : Schulman Grove

We took the designated "scenic route" from the Salton Sea to get to 395 for our return trip up the eastern side of the Sierras. We have traveled 395 many times and 395 is scenic, but the connecting road was not.  The only interesting part was getting lost and finding ourselves on Route 66, but by that point in the drive Calvin was not really in the mood for picture taking.  We spent the night in Ridgecrest, which is a decent place to spend the night and then headed home the next morning. In keeping with our road trip theme we made a detour to the White Mountains to visit the Schulman Grove of Bristlecone pines.  These pines are some of the oldest living organisms on earth.  Some pines in the Schulman Grove have been dated 4,000 to 5,000 years old. They live in a specialized niche at 10,000 feet above sea level.  So we went from 200 feet below sea level at the Salton Sea to 10, 000 feet above in the White Mountains. These trees grow very slowly, a pine cone takes two years to mature, and the wood is very dense so that when a tree dies it does not decompose but rather erodes like rock. We arrived at the Schulman Grove about the same time the thunderstorms did, but that translated into snow in the hills across the way.

And hail where we were. (That is hail in my hair)

The tree has both male and female pine cones. The little purple cones are the immature female cones, the large brown cone is a mature female and the small brown fuzz close to the branch is the male pine cone.

Everything about this tree is slow.  The pine needles last 30-40 years. It makes you feel young standing in front of these ancient organisms.

The trees grow at high elevations in white dolomitic soil that is hostile to most other organisms.

  It seems to be a good survival strategy.  Even this tree that looks mostly dead has a small living branch which is probably older than we are.

On the way out we stopped at a view point to gaze at the Sierras across the valley.  Just below the cloud layer you can see the glaciers of the southern Sierra.

or you can just see us having an adventure

Our side trip into the White Mountains took a little longer than we had planned so we were getting pretty tired of the road by the time we were stopped for road construction near Mono Lake. But we looked out the window and Calvin took a picture of another great vista.  There is beauty everywhere if you take time to look.

Road trip to Calexico Part 1: the Salton Sea

A while ago I decided that we should apply for global entry cards mainly because I fail the passport scan every time I came into the country.  The process is pretty simple and in addition to passing easily through passport control it provides TSA pre-check.  We filled out our forms online, paid our money and then waited to be approved for a personal interview. The interview itself is short and simple, but it isn't given at our local airport, so that meant we would have some inconvenience traveling to a larger airport, but there are several airport that we would be driving near in our travels this fall, so I thought it wouldn't be a problem.  Unfortunately all the airports that we would be near had a waiting list of about six months for an interview.  The exception being the Calexico, CA point of entry where interviews were immediately available.  I managed to convince Calvin that we needed to take a little detour on our drive home from the bike trip to Calexico.  So we finished the bike ride in Santa Barbara Sunday afternoon and then drove to Desert Palms to spend the night.  I liked the look of Desert Palms.  It was 102 degrees at 8:00 in the evening, but the mountains around reminded me of Tucson and it felt familiar.  The next morning we drove to Calexico for our interviews, passed with flying colors, and headed home.  On the way we stopped at the Salton Sea. 

The Salton Sea looks pretty good from a distance, but up close it is a little less desirable.  The water is pretty brackish and there are dead fish all along the shoreline.  The fact that the temperature was well above 100 degrees did not add to its desirability. It is, however, a nice backdrop for photographs.

We went on to main visitor center where I discovered petroglyphs.  There is more to see in this desert part of California than I thought. You can see by looking at the parking lot that this isn't high season at the Salton Sea.

 There is a small visitor center but it was only open on the weekend. We had the beach pretty much to ourselves too. A good year long flood might help rejuvenate the tourist industry here.

Biking the central coast

A few weeks ago we took a bike trip along the central coast of California. Or I should clarify: Calvin, his brother Jim and wife Diana, Rosie and Jay took a bike trip and I went shopping and played with the grandkids.  Calvin and I started Thursday night at Morrow Bay. We had a nice dinner and strolled around the town. 

We met up with the rest of the gang at a Paso Robles McDonalds and Calvin Jim and Jay got on their bikes for a ride to Cambria.

Brothers on bikes

And the engine that pulled them along

The rest of us drove to Cambria for a little quality shopping time and then after lunch all of the riders headed to Morrow Bay. There was lots of time for pictures while the riders all assembled.

Everyone survived the ride and we had dinner and another nice walk around Morrow Bay, which was a little livelier on Friday night.

Saturday morning Calvin, Jim and Jay started out the day with a ride to Pismo Beach.  The rest of us stood around and took pictures and then immediately headed to Pismo Beach for a little outlet shopping.

Alice needed to take a little break from shopping to ride the M&M mobile.

We met the bikers at the outlets and Rosie rode with them into Santa Maria. But mercifully I didn't take any more bike pictures.  Everyone arrived at the hotel safely where more pictures were taken.  Rosie and Jimmy have the benefit of a finger print soft focus.

The boys rode Sunday morning and we packed up and had a final lunch together. While we were waiting for a table we tried taking a Wright family picture but Alice was just not in the mood.

Great way to spend the weekend.

40 years later

On August 19 we celebrated our 40th anniversary. It is a cliche to say that it doesn't seem that long ago we were sitting by a tree getting our engagement pictures taken by Calvin's dad.

We still like sitting by trees getting our picture taken.

 I could never have imagined 40 years ago what a wonderful adventure our life would be... and it just keeps getting better.

We celebrated by going to San Francisco to see the play "Beautiful."  We arrived in time to do a little sight-seeing so we wandered into the city hall.  The San Francisco city hall is a really beautiful building and quite a few couples were getting married there and taking pictures as we were walking around. 

We saw "Beautiful" in the Orpheum theater, which is not in the best part of town, but it was a great people watching location.

The play was excellent.  We have given up our local Broadway season tickets because we missed most of the shows anyway, so this was a really fun evening.

The next day we drove to the Russian River for an afternoon of paddling.  There were possibly more pictures but I had a download malfunction so this was our fun afternoon paddling with about 500 of our closest friends.

We are so blessed in the life we live.  I hope the adventure continues for a good long time.