Odds and Ends

Hi everyone... we arrived back home this past Friday night. I just thought I would post a final blog with some thoughts and odds and ends sort of things. We really enjoyed our trip to California. It was over all too soon. I was telling my wife on the way home if not for missing my kids, my dogs, and all the wonderful staff and students at Hopkinton Middle High School, I probably would not have come back. The mountains, oceans and forests which we saw were very beautiful.

I had the opportunity to visit two Middle Schools in California during my visit. I spent a day in the Cambria Middle School, which is about the same size as our school. Very interestingly they did not have any interior hallways and the lockers are outside... no snow there! The kids had a lot of questions about our school and rules, they cannot wear hats in school at all, nor chew gum. They thought snow days were so cool until I told them we have to make them up at the end of the year...bummer dude.

I think the thing my wife and I will remember the most is that on several occasions we were able to feed wild animals.There was a little jar of peanuts in the house we were renting and the owners had left a note saying the blue jays and squirrels will come around if you put the peanuts on the deck, sure enough every day they came for breakfast.

On an other day while sitting on a log at one of the beaches in Cambria, there was a sea gull standing right by us for quite a while. I went back to the car to get some almond slivers... and he not only eat the ones we threw to him but even very gently eat right out of my wife's hand!



One of the last days we were in California we went back up to the elephant seal beach in San Simeon, not only to see the seals but to say goodbye to the very friendly ground squirrels. We stepped out of car and they came running around us begging for food, we gladly fed them...

Here is a You Tube video that someone took:



One even let me pet him while he was eating. We still miss our little feathered and furry friends......

See you all back at school this week. I hope you had a chance the visit my blog and enjoyed reading about what I was up to in California.

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Battle Cruise

Last Sunday we went over again to the little coastal village of Morro Bay, which I had written about in an earlier blog. This time we were going over because the Grey's Harbor Historical Seaport, based in Washington state each winter sends their two tall ships to California for folks to sail on daylong cruises.

Hawaiian Chieftain firing Cannons

This year they were featuring battle cruises, where each of the two tall ships sail out into open sea and begin to duel with each other firing cannons.... pretty cool. Grey's Harbor owns two tall ships and we had the choice of boarding either for the cruise.

On deck of Lady Washington

The first ship, Lady Washington is a full-scale reproduction of the original Lady Washington. Built in the British Colony of Massachusetts in the 1750s, the original vessel carried freight between colonial ports until the American Revolutionary War, when she became an American privateer. Here is a You Tube video about Lady Washington:

The second ship is a topsail ketch called Hawaiian Chieftain. She is a replica of a typical European merchant trader of the turn of the nineteenth century. Her hull shape and rigging are similar to those of Spanish explorer's ships used in the expeditions of the late 18th century along the Washington, Oregon, and California coasts. She was originally designed for cargo trade among the Hawaiian Islands, and her design was influenced by the early colonial passenger and coastal packets that carried on coastal trade along the Atlantic coastal cities and towns.

We chose to sail on the Lady Washington, not so much as her ties to the revolutionary war vessel, but because she also has another name.... the HMS Interceptor. She was the fastest ship in the Caribbean which Captain Jack Sparrow stole to chase after the Black Pearl.

Lady Washington AKA HMS Interceptor

IT was literally, a blast... when we got back to harbor we asked our captain which ship won the battle cruise, he told us the Lady Washington did, and added, she always wins! Avast me hearties yo ho...

Hearst Castle

This past Wednesday we travelled to Hearst Castle, which is located in San Simeon. Hearst Castle is the home which William Randolph Hearst had built for himself. Construction for his estate began in 1919, and continued until his death in 1951. It was an ongoing project which was never really finished. 

The estate sits on the top of a 1700 foot tall hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the town of San Simeon. The main house is actually called Casa Grande. It is a 165 room building, styled after Spanish buildings which Hearst had seen  during a trip to Europe which he took with his mother when he was 10 years old.  Casa Grande in the centerpiece of a 127 acre spot at the top of the hill. It also features gardens, terraces, pools and walkways. The house itself is furnished with many Spanish and Italian antiques and works of art.

While living at Casa Grande William Hearst, loved to show off his estate and entertain his guests.  He had a zoo, tennis courts and pools ( one outdoor and one indoor ) built for his guests. His guests did not actually stay in the main house, which they visited for meals, movies and plays. Rather his guest stayed in one of the three guest houses which were also clustered on the top of the hillside. The guest houses are smaller the the main house with each one having only about 18 rooms. Among the famous guests who stayed at the Hearst Estate in the 1920's and 1930's were: Charlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Mary Pickford, James Stewart, Bob Hope, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

To really capture the size of this estate here are some interesting facts from the Hearst Castle Website:

1. The whole estate consists of 220,000 acres.

2. The main house - Casa Grande is over 60,000 square feet. With 38 bedrooms and 41 baths.

3. The Guest Houses:

a. Casa del Mar - 5,875 square feet. 

b. Casa del Monte - 2,290 square feet

c. Casa del Sol - 2,600 square feet.

Check out the website for some great information if you get a chance. If you visit Hearst Castle in Google Earth, (35º 41' 06.76" N  121º 10' 05.99" W), make sure you turn on 3d buildings,  there are some nice views. See you all soon.

Harbor Seals

This past wednesday we spent some time visiting the coast around the town of Cambria which we have been using as our home base for our stay in California. We have been to the beaches several time but we wanted to check out some tide pools and visit a cove where there are a whole bunch of harbor seals.

There is a several mile long beach in Cambria called Moonstone Beach and a the northern end of the beach there is a small cove which attracts harbor seals.We learned while visiting this cove that unlike the Elephant Seals, which migrate to and from Alsaka, harbor seals tend to spend their entire lives along the same ares of beach, which is why there are signs warning people to watch but not disturb the seals, if they no longer feel comfortable with a particular area of beach it can be devastating to the entire colony.

In an earlier blog I mentioned how large the elephant seals are, the harbor seals are much smaller. Harbor seals are about 5 to 6 feet long when fully grown and weigh up to 300 pounds. They can dive to depths of 1400 and stay under water for up to 40 minutes.The pups are born May through June and weigh about 30 pounds. I thought it was really cool that the pups make sounds like sheep.



While we were visiting the harbor seal cove we also saw several pelicans. The cove along Moonstone beach where the harbor seals is located at 35º 34' 38.79" N 121º 06' 58.83" W.

Tehachapi Pass and Mojave Desert

This past week we left the Central Coast region of California to spend a couple of days in southern California. The chief reason for our going down south is because we wanted to visit my wife's mother who lives in Redlands California. 

We did not take the more direct route, which was down the coastal highway but we traveled inland before heading south. There were two places that I wanted to see on the way down to southern California. I wanted to visit the Tehachapi Pass and see what the Mojave desert looks like.

I went to the Tehachapi pass not only to see the beautiful Sierra Nevada Mountains  around Tehachapi, but also because the Tehachapi Pass is one of the windiest areas in the world.  I was reading on the Internet that the winds through the pass average 14 to 20 miles per hour. It is the home of  one of the largest wind farms in our country. The entire state of California has 16,000 wind  turbines, with 5,000 of them being in Tehachapi. The turbines went up in the early 1980's and literally cover some hillsides.  If you go into Google Earth, you can see just how many wind turbines are in this area (35º 05' 17.55" N  118º 16' 52.78" W).

We drove down from the Sierra Nevada mountains after leaving Tehachapi  and found ourselves driving through the Mojave desert. I have never been to a desert before and in my mind I was expecting it to look something like pictures I had seen of the Sahara, just miles and miles of sand. But it does not look like that at all. It is a large relatively  flat basin. The website for the Mojave desert says that it is 25,000 square miles. It  was not just miles of sand dunes, it does seem rather dry, but there is vegetation, at least in the areas that we traveled through. We saw various brush growth and Joshua Trees all along the route.

Two other places in the Mojave desert that were passed were Edwards Air Force Base and Boron.  Edwards Air Force is important as it is one of the designated landing sites in the country for the space shuttle, as a matter of fact the Columbia, the first shuttle to be launched landed at Edwards Air Force base in 1981.

Now you may ask,what about Boron California, well in 1925  a large deposit of boron was found in the hills around Boron. This is the primary cleaning agent used in Borax, the well known 20 Mule Team Borax powdered hand soap.

Monterey

After we left Felton we traveled south about 45 minutes to visit Monterey. We wanted to go here to see the scenic 17 mile drive and visit the Monterey Aquarium. While driving down we passed some farms which had this crop growing:

Look close at the picture and see if you can guess what it is. These vegetables do not grow in New England, but we can buy them in the market. If you can not figure if out click here.

When we got to Monterey we drove over to the 17 mile drive. This is a coastal toll road that is owned by the Pebble Beach Golf Course.  It is really nice, it winds along the coast offering some great views of turbulent waves crashing the coast.  

There is one point on the drive called  Fanshell Overlook, where there is a stretch of white sand beach which attracts harbor seals. We saw a whole bunch sunning themselves on the rocks and swimming around in the ocean. The road soon begins to wind upwards along the coast an through cypress groves... we saw the Lone Cypress... the landmark image of Pebble Beach. 

After we left the 17 Mile drive we drove across to to visit the Monterey Aquarium.  It was about four in the afternoon , and the aquarium closes at six , so we only had about two hours in the Aquarium but it was really well worth the time. The central tank features not only many varieties of fish but it also has a giant kelp forest.  They  have an Otter exhibit, they are very cute!  There are  several touch tanks... one of which features Bat Rays, I have never touched  a Bat ray before... it was cool. 

So  in the evening we visited Cannery Row and Fisherman's Wharf, nice little gifts shops and great fresh seafood.

Felton Redwoods

This past Monday we drove up to Felton California from Cambria, about 110 miles. We were going here because this area of California is the home the the famous California Redwood forests. There are several forests and state parks in this area of California, but we picked the Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park as it is the most easily accessible. If you want to locate it you can find it at: 37º 01' 23.99" N 122º 03' 13.27" W in Google Earth.

The Henry Cowell Redwoods state Park is fairly small only about 4,000 acres but is the home to some of the largest and most spectacular redwoods in this part of the state. One of the trees in this park is about 270 feet tall and almost 17 feet wide.

Some of the things I learned on this trip is that redwood trees are specially adapted to the rather temperate, foggy and moist conditions found in this region. They never are found any more than 20 to 40 miles from the ocean.

Have you ever wondered why redwood trees are red? Well I found out that the Redwood bark and wood are full of tannic acid, which gives them this color.

One of the most unusual things about Redwood trees is that even though they are conifers, these trees actually reproduce by sprouting out new trees from their roots.

The pictures in the blog really do not give credit to the size and spectacular nature of these trees, if you ever visit California you really should check out the Redwood forests, they are AWESOME!