Shopping in Chinatown, San Francisco

The first picture is looking down Bush Street from Stockton. We stayed at the WorldMark which is very nicely located for a lot of fine dining, entertainment, shopping, and sightseeing. One had better do a little tuning up of the old muscles before visiting SF. We definitely had many chances to exercise little used muscles being that we live in the flatlands of the Snake River Plain in Idaho. I have found that it is a misconception that some people have that rural people are in good physical shape and city dwellers are potbellied slugs. Haha. Cities have fine public transportation, but the buses, trolley cars, or subways don't service every block. Sometimes it is just faster to walk instead of wait for the bus, and, of course, a lot cheaper to walk. So we do a lot of walking when we visit cities. In our rural setting we do a lot of driving and not much walking. When we visited NY with our family in 1989, we walked 84 blocks the first day. And that was after arriving after lunch. Our son was nine years old and daughter was 13. Geez, we walked the legs off those kids.

SF has its own special challenges with those hills. I have to laugh when I think of Idaho's famed Sawtooth Wilderness Area that gets over a million visitor days per year. The U.S.F.S. have reconstructed all the trails to have no greater than 7% grades. Really nice for walking, but if SF ever was taken over by the National Park Service, there would have to be some serious re-engineering of the streets and sidewalks. Don't think it is going to happen.

We rode the cable cars. Always a joy. And, yes, sometimes the passengers do have to get off and push the cable car for a few feet, I guess so that the cable can catch the car. Pretty cool to see a bunch of passengers jump off and start pushing the car in the middle of the street.

We were located one block from the Bush and Grant St. entrance to Chinatown. Our first visit netted a take home dinner from one of the bakeries and a big discovery. Well, a big discovery for J. After asking a few shopkeepers if there was a fabric store in Chinatown and being told "NO", J found one. What glee. Her reaction upon entering a fabric store reminds me of my buddy, Perry's reaction to entering a flyfishing store. A pure look of competence and anticipation. Makes me think of an alcoholic looking at that first drink of the evening. It was such a big find, that plans were made to return a few days later after thinking of what she could make with all that beautiful silk fabric and have time to really go through each bolt of fabric. And go through every bolt of fabric she did do. Yiyiyi, my aching back! Really. The salesgirl found me a stool to sit on while the two of them went through fabric. You can see the silk fondlers in the pictures. This was one smart saleslady knowing that keeping the husband contented was the secret to making a big sale. And a big sale she did make! I got to talking to her and found that she had lived in Boise, ID for a year, but it was too cold and she did not like it when her car made a 360 on the street one winter night. We Idahoans are always hoping for a real hard winter in hopes that it will drive the Californians back to California. They like Idaho until the winter sets in. Come on hard winter!!

A day later, J, caught a cab (I went to a bookstore and sat in Union Square reading the book, well, not really. I watched the homeless people. They are really interesting.) and went to the
Garment District of SF. There is an outlet there for some big merchandiser that I don't know the name of and they had bolts of fabric, too. J was seeing these numbers on the ends of the bolts and she thought it was the price. Like 35 etc. Well, it came to be that each bolt sold for the same price, something like $3.50 a bolt and the number at the end was the yardage. Well, that put the old fabricholic over the edge. She returned with three big black garbage bags full of fabric that must have totaled a hundred pounds. It took her several days to wash, dry and fold the fabric when we got home. Hey, a hundred pounds (a guess, but probably not much of an exeggeration) is a lot to handle when you are a retired lady.

She has plans for sewing outfits for the grandkids and, of course, sewing outfits to sell on the Etsy site under the name HattieJane's Creations. You can go to HattieJane.com to catch a link to her online store.

Just thinking of walking those SF streets and lugging around that fabric has tired me out all over again.

To all those Coyotes out there, Yiyiyi.

Papa Coyote loves you all

A Walk to Serene

The fishing was so satisfying. I mostly used a light color emerger pattern that really does not have a name. I just tied a pattern that I thought might work on the Owyhee River and it worked well last Friday. I caught six fish before a front begin to move in and the barometer fell. The first two fish were about 14-15 inches and the rest were about 10 inches. I tried to lift the second fish with my 7X tippet and the fish was too heavy for that. Nice fish. Cutthroat won't jump, but they do fight hard and, they are easier to fool and catch than rainbow. I kind of like fish that are easily fooled unlike those blankety, blank brown trout on the Owyhee River. Oh, well. Oh, yes. I use barbless hooks and properly release the fish safely back to the waters.

Ahh, the lake. Serene Lake is well named. I feel serene around this lake. Well the truth is I find serenity around all mountain lakes. Sometimes I just have to hike into a mountain lake and fish. It seems like something draws me there. Can't fight it. Problem is that I can't talk friends of my age group to go with me. Since my balance is not as great as it used to be and my legs are not as strong as they once were, these trips are getting more problematic, but I move along carefully and smartly. After all I have a lot of experience doing this. I have requested that my ashes be scattered along the Monumental Creek lakes out of Cougar Basin out of Big Creek Guard Station. It is in my will.

I don't know where these pictures will show up on this blog, but there is a picture looking back from near the lake to the ridge that must be crossed to get back to the trail head. There is about a 300 foot elevation gain in a rather short distance--translated as a steep climb, but there is a trail. I found two stout sticks and used them as walking sticks. That really helped with the climb---kind of like putting it in four wheel drive. Does cause some sore shoulders to go along with the sore legs the next day, though. I was surprised that I did not get leg cramps in bed that night, then remembered that I have been eating four or five tomatoes a day out of the garden along with an uncountable number of cherry tomatoes (I pop them like candy), so I think the potassium load is preventing cramps.

The trail sign for Serene Lake points the wrong way. That is because the tree that it was once attached fell down as a result of the tree. The sign was placed in a convenient spot. Because of the way it points, I never did find the trail last year when the ground was thoroughly trampled by the sheep.

These pictures show that a fire raged through the area some years past. Some years as in 17 years past. About 250,000 acres burned in 1992. McCall, Idaho's air quality was so bad that one could hardly stay in the town. See the trail marker on the tree? Ha, not much left. The tree did not fare much better than the trail marker. When I first started backpacking 43 years ago, all trails had blazed trees along the trail so the hunters could follow the trails when snow covered the ground. I wish the Forest Service continued to blaze trails in this matter because some trails are no longer well maintained (I guess we spent that money in Iraq) so the trails are sometimes only faint traces.

Sometimes a walk to a mountain lake means walking through a band of sheep and a sheep herders camp. The herders are friendly and usually one or more speaks passable English. If a fisherman catches fish in a mountain lake, the herders welcome having a few left in their camp. This time I was fishing a trophy classified lake which means the only fish that can be kept are those 20" are longer. I did not see any that big let alone catch such a big fish. The sheep are moved all summer along a designated stock driveway estblished by the U.S. Forest Service. So if one goes back to an area where one hiked the year, or years, previous; one will see the sheep again at the same time of the year. I did not get to see the herd dogs work on this trip, but that is a real treat. Those four or five little dogs work so hard moving a thousand or even two thousand sheep along according to the commands of their Peruvian herders. The commands are shouted in their native tongue and one can heard for a mile or more depending on the wind and lay of the land. Then there are the big Great Pyrennes for herd protection and, of course, four or five head of horses. The horses are hobbled and one wears a bell (the bell mare). The herders keep the horses about a quarter mile from their camp, I suppose so the bell doesn't keep them up all night long. Some years the owner of these particular bands reports losses of a hundred or more sheep due to wolf predation. There is now a hunting season on wolves in Idaho. The hunt is to last until 22o wolves have been killed. There is an estimated 800-1000 wolves in Idaho. The tags sold for $11 and over 11,000 tags have been sold. I would suspect that the owner of these sheep would welcome hunters who hold a wolf permit to hunt along the edges of his band of sheep. The Great Pyrennes are not especially welcoming to alien beings though, so beware.

Time to move on. Perry and I have been working for three days now building three seven feet tall by 30 inches wide five shelf book cases. These are for the Little Theater. We will propose that the bookshelves be sold at a silent auction during the seven night run of the play. This way the theater can recoup the expense of making the bookcases and possibly make some profit. We don't have the space to store props, so it would be better that some person made use of these evne if the theater does not recoup the cost because otherwise we would end up destroying the cases. Seems like a waste and they really are sturdy and well constructed.

Time to catch some ZZZZZ's because we are going to spend another day working on the bookcases.

Night, night.

Papa Coyote loves you all.

Getting to the Wine Country Tour of Sonoma County, CA

Just after crossing the border from Oregon into Nevada, one comes upon the first casino located in McDermitt. If the Say When is a memorable casino, then it would probably be memorable for all the wrong reasons. The Indian casinos in Idaho and Oregon are much nicer.







The price of gas was usually around $3.06 in CA ,but there were some places where we could have paid $3.23. We respectfully passed those stations up. The picture shows gas prices in McDermitt, Nevada. The price of regular unleaded in my fair village is $2.70 a gallon. What does it cost in your neck of the woods?

To get to the Sonoma Wine country and San Francisco from Idaho, one has to travel Nevada highways. This picture does not do justice to the fact that one can see forever down the road and the road does not take a curve for as far as the eye can see. Incredible. Also, we had times where we never saw another car for as much as ten minutes at a time and that while whizzing along at 75 mph. When I was in college and for awhile after, there was no speed limit in Montana and Nevada. Even after the speed limit was put into effect, it was common knowledge that drivers could drive the Nevada state highways at any speed because speed limits were apparently not enforced on state highways. The state highways are in excellent condition and are just as straight as U.S. #95 as pictured here. J and I drove back from San Francisco in 11 and 1/2 hours. If not for construction north of Winnemuca and on Donner Pass, we probably could have made the trip in eleven hours. It cost us $180 dollars for gas for the round trip. It cost us $128 to park for four days in SF. We spent about $20 for snacks and drinks on the round trip (we pack our own lunch). Airfare to SF and back ranges from $600-690 for the two of us. Then we have to catch a shuttle to our SF hotel. I think the shuttle would cost us about $80 for the two of us round trip. Then we would have to rent a car to go to the wine country. The cheapest I can find online for four days is $167. Trips range from four hours on up. We have to be at the airport 2 hours before departute (so they say) and it takes us two hours to get from home to inside the airport. Then there is the hour at the end of the trip getting the baggage (10% chance of losing it or having it arrive a day late). Then there would be parking. For nine days at $8.25 equals $74.25. So the whole trip by air would have cost us $922. And the time would be nine hours. Now lets review. Nine hours to fly, eleven to eleven and one-half hours to drive. $922 to fly and $328 to drive. Hmmm, any wonder why we drive?? I think the boredom of driving is about equal to the hassle of flying.

Visiting Sonoma County, CA

The cast iron pot shown is said to be one of only two left in tact in the U.S. Interesting that they put sand on the ship's deck, placed the pots (notice the shape) on the sand, then lit fires under the pots to "try" the blubber. The work those men did on the 18th and 19th Century whalers is absolutely mind boggling. May I suggest Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea-The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. This is an awesome story so very well written.

We saw as many as 13 surfers in the water at any one time. They, of course, are wearing wet suits. I talked to one of the surfers who appeared to be about 50. Says he surfs two to three times a week. In 18 months he will have his house paid off and plans to work only a few days a week, so will be able to surf more. I surfed Laguna Beach when I was 18. I remember having a really abrupt introduction to the bottom of the ocean when I missed a wave. Ouch.

Sonoma County is known for its wines, but the county's western border is the Pacific Ocean. J and I spent one day at Bodega Bay and tasted its reportedly great clam chowder. Now I am a clam chowder afficianado. While I can say the clam chowder at the restaurant where the movie Birds was filmed is good chowder, it is not as good as Mo's clam chowder at Newport, Oregon or other Mo's along the coast and the best chowder can be found in my sister-in-law Judy's kitchen or at Al Scoma's restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco. Now that is more like clam stew----lots and lots of clams. Yum, Yum, Yummmmy!

I will work on the wine country part in the next blog. We did tour the Charles M. Schulz Museum which was great. Could not take pictures in the museum and for some reason the pictures I took outside the museum did not record on the disc. This is a mystery. As some of you well know, Schulz was a Minnesotan and brought some of Minnesota with him to Santa Rosa by building an ice skating rink in Santa Rosa and playing ice hockey regularly. Way to go Charles. We did not have organized hockey where I grew up in Valparaiso, but we did play a sandlot variety when the city would plow out a rink each winter on Spectacle Lake. I loved playing hockey. Makes NFL look like wimps.

Note: Double click pictures for more detail.

Later, got to go rest this old body. Got lots of work to do tomorrow.

Yeeeeoooowww, Papa Coyote loves you all.

The Lewiston Hill and the Camas Prairie, Idaho

Hopefully, the pictures that appear above this information will be of the Clearwater and Snake Rivers taken from atop Lewiston Hill. When driving from southern Idaho to northern Idaho on U.S. 95, one must drive up Whitebird Hill (named after the Nez Perce head man at the time of white contact whose band lived on the Salmon River). The old road is said to have had 33 switchbacks (one can still drive this road if they want) as it gained 200o or so feet in elevation. You can imagine traveling this route in the winter. The new road is a pretty straight road. It just keeps going up and up and up. The famous Battle of Whitebird Hill was fought alongside the road. The Nez Perce put the big hurt onto the U.S. Army in this battle. It was the battle that started Chief Joseph's famous flight toward Canada. The old Lewiston Hill road was much like the old White Bird Hill road. It also gained about 2000 feet. The cars that were built in the seventies and before often overheated on the way up. We saw lots of cars pulled to the side with radiators steaming. Travelers regularly carried five gallons of water when making this trip. The first picture should show the Clearwater River flowing west toward Lewiston (ID) and Clarkston (WA) and its confluence with the Snake River. (Note the winding road pictured) The Clearwater is the first river that Lewis and Clark were able to put canoes on after crossing the mountains. They stayed with the Nez Perce at Canoe Camp and while making their dugout canoes and much enjoyed their time with the Nez Perce people. When I was a little kid I was scared to cross the Snake river because I thought it was full of snakes. Actually, it was named after the Indians who lived along the river upstream from Weiser to the Wyoming border. The sign language for these people among other tribes was to show a hand moving in a weaving manner or as a snake would move. Actually, it had nothing to do with the reptiles, but with how well these Shoshone people could weave and were known throughout the West as master weavers. White men got it all wrong and the Shoshone Indians in southern Idaho became known as Snakes. Well, so did the Paiutes. They were also called Diggers. Not especially complimentary, but these people were masters at digging roots for food.

These three panels are located at Tolo Lake on Camas Prairie. The prairie was one of the favorite places for the Nez Perce people to gather in June to harvest the camas root. They would harvest, roast and store literally tons of these bulbs. Tolo Lake was a place where several different bands of Nez Perce would meet. After the long winter, the people were enthusiastic about seeing members and relatives of the different bands. Of course, the young people, if of age, were looking over the members of the opposite sex with much interest. There was much gambling by the men, horse racing, and foot racing. Are you knowledgeable about Indian culture? Test: Did the Indians tell stories around the fire at night on the prairie at this time? See answer at bottom of the blog. I will not restate what is written on the panels. If you will double click the pictures, the picture will be enlarged and you may read what is written on the historial panes. Incidentally, Idaho does a very good job with their historical roadside markers. I have driven in all but two of the states and I think Idaho does the best job.

Oh, yes, the answer. Indians told stories only during the evening hours of the winter. Stories were very entertainingly told. Most tribes considered it to be bad luck to tell stories once winter camp was broken. I think it was because the work of gathering, fishing, and hunting food for winter storage was such hard work that they just collapsed into their beds at dark and said to heck with telling stories. I have prepared and tanned a hide. I can tell you that it is very hard work. My son and I also dug sego lily bulbs for about 20 minutes. We dug seventeen bulbs. If we had had to exist on our gathering skills, I would be a very fit and thin person.

Time for bed,

You all take care and enjoy the day. You know the old saying......

Yeeeeoooowww, Papa Coyote loves you all.

This panel about the mammoth is of particular interest. When the first carbon dating results were returned, the tests showed the mammoth remains to be only about 4,500 years old. The mammoth are thought to have gone extinct with the rest of the megafauna about 7,500 years B.
C. or thereabouts. I have a good Mormon friend, Jim, with whom I taught, who was ecstatic about those test results. Somehow the idea that mammoths lived 6,000 years longer than what had been commonly accepted by scientists played into his theology or the theology of the LDS Church, I am uncertain which. The remains were re-tested because the first results did not fit into the scientific model that had been created. I don't know if the second testing brought results more consistent with the commonly held hypothesis developed by paleotolongists or not. But it sure had Jim excited. More importantly, a man who was leaving just as I drove up to the small lake, had caught two sixteen inch bass and released them. He had pictures on his cell phone. These cell phones are going to ruin a lot of creative story telling.

Stockton Family Reunion in the Park

I went to Spokane this past weekend and stayed with my sister and BiL in their motorhome parked at the Spokane Gun Club. I am always a fan of free room. We attended the family reunion on Saturday. I think 25 people showed up. I took a picture of everybody, so I can get an exact count. The oldest was Uncle Bob. The youngest was Carley. You can see her armwrestling her brother Rudy. It was a pretty special time getting to visit with the first cousins, uncles and aunts the children of them. Of course, by far most did not show up. I would have liked to have seen many more. The family in Missouri is planning the 2010 Reunion. It will be either in Missouri or possibly Boise.

While visiting I contacted a seller on Craigslist and met her Saturday morning in the parking lot of WalMart and bought three gallons of N. Idaho huckleberries for $30 a pound. They were very big berries, very well cleaned, and the gallon bag was absolutely crammed. Couldn't have asked for a better transaction. Since berries are regularly selling for $45 a pound, I felt very fortunate.

We got a phone call from my sister telling us that brother-in-law had driven himself to the hospital at eleven that evening with a kidney stone. He was in the hospital for a few hours then released. My sister is unable to take care of herself, so I was hoping that BiL could make a fast recovery.

I have been working on the sprinkler system getting it ready so that the place will be automatically watered while we are visiting in Windsor, CA and San Francisco. I have hired the neighbor to take care of the fish pond and her mother is going to collect our garden produce and make use of it. I did not want it to go to waste and there will be a bushel or more of tomatoes and about four gallons of green beans and many yellow summer squash and Japanese cukes.

Well, I am tired from working on the sprinkler system and am going to bed. Yawn. Later, Gators!!