Autumn 2015: Virginia & Florida

Start: Thursday 24^th Sept 

Flying used to be such a big adventure; now it’s like catching the bus. We boarded the 11.00 am fight from Heathrow and landed in Washington DC at 2.15 pm local time. Good flight and on time.

Our first port of call is indeed a port: Portsmouth, to see Ralph and Kelly, and now also our lovely new granddaughter Virginia, all of 7 weeks old and really cute. Here she is, apparently balancing a chair on her head. You’ve got to start them young if you want a circus performer in the family.

 We all head over to Norfolk on the little stern–wheel ferry. Norfolk is the major US naval shipyard on the East Coast and has many warships being refurbished in the inlet that we cross. We are visiting a naval museum in Norfolk that sets out the naval heritage of the area from colonial times (that’s when we Brits lost the American War of Independence. They do mention that a lot!). But, typically of American museums, it’s very well presented. There were even uniforms to try on, as modeled by this jolly jack tar who looks kind of familiar.

Norfolk is full of all sorts of ships, and here’s an old sailing vessel being used for a marriage ceremony. Let’s hope the groom isn’t influenced later by the ship’s name.

Back to Portsmouth now, and its picturesque Old Town. It’s all much like the photo, with a few grander buildings here and there dating back to the late 18^th century.

Baby Ginny (Virginia) entertained us all the while. One forgets just how constantly active babies are. Quite unexpectedly she gave us a wonderful first smile at a meal out on our final evening. I was lucky enough to capture the moment on camera, not that a photo can do it justice. That was the cherry on the top of our time with Ralph and Kelly, so nice to see such a happy family.

It takes about three hours to drive the 200 miles to Claire’s, near Fredericksburg. Unfortunately the weather’s rather wet but we manage a trip into Fredericksburg Old Town. It’s very much like Portsmouth Old Town with wooden colonial-style houses and porches with swings. 

To make up for the poor weather and lack of photo opportunity, here are some nice family portraits of firstly, Scott, Steven and Mathew, and then Claire and Katy.

Santa Margarita Lake: April 28th to May 10th

We started off in a regular campsite but moved to the Santa Margarita Lake County Park campground when we realised how lovely the area was directly around the lake. There weren't any facilities like electricity or internet and  not even a phone signal, but it’s a huge natural park with plentiful wild life, and peace and quiet. In fact, we were the only residents in the motorhome area! We overlooked the lake from the bottom of our pitch, where our chairs are (between the two trees).

 Of course, we’d like to have seen some bears but didn’t, although all the bins had chained, bear-proof, lids and warned against leaving food out.

The only food we left out was in the hummingbird feeder and that was particularly successful.

There was a huge variety of birds, even big ones like the bald eagle, red tailed hawk and a golden eagle, and numerous turkey vultures. Here they are flying off the road, having just read the notice behind that says “No Parking At Any Time”.

There were small ground squirrels everywhere. Very cute.

The dead oak tree branch looks like it’s been riddled with machine gun bullets. In a way it has; these are oak woodpecker holes in which they store their acorns. 

Walks took us up high for a good view of the lake. It’s shrunk immensely over the last five years like all of California’s water resources due to the drought.

The drought is worth mentioning in more detail. Everyone is worried about it; the Governor, ex filmstar Arnold Schwarzenegger, has declared a 20% saving target for the whole state.

However, it’s hard to see what practical steps are being taken at street level. Lawns and grass verges are still being watered by automatic sprinklers that distribute as much on the pavements and roads as on the grass. People are still washing vehicles with generous amount of water. Swimming pools are all in operation.

But the State is serious about it. Many State-owned campsites now have the water completely turned off. The campsites are still open, but you have to bring in your own water. Motorhomes and caravans here all have big water storage tanks, so it’s just an inconvenience. But hang on, where will the campers fill up their tanks? They’ll use the previous campsite, or if local,  fill at home- so the water still comes from the State of California. So where’s the saving?  This could have been a Goon Show script!

Santa Margarita Lake was a really lovely, relaxing place. We now go to manic LA for two days to sort our the motorhome before returning it to the El Monte depot on the 13^th. We fly out  later that same day to Washington DC from where we’ll be visiting Claire and family, and also Ralph & Kelly. This is the family part of our trip that we are very much looking forward to. 

May 4th: Hearst Castle

William Randolph Hearst inherited his deceased father’s fortune and property when his mother died in 1919. He had before this already established himself as a wealthy newspaper baron. With the extra money

from his inheritance he embarked upon an ambitious project to build a mansion on a hilltop in what had been his father’s California cattle ranch estate.

He worked on developing this extensive (and expensive!) building with the same architect from 1919 to 1947, and named it ‘La Cuesta Encantada’ –‘The Enchanted Hill’, but it became known as Hearst Castle due to its scale and luxury. This is a long shot photo from the visitor centre several miles away.

The interior was adorned with priceless antiques that Hearst gathered from all over the world, but principally Europe. The lounge here is an example of how all the rooms are furnished. Bear in mind that the contents today amounts to but a small fraction of what was there in Hearst’s time: the rest is in California museums as gifted by Hearst not long before he died.

The castle was principally a place of entertainment where Hearst could impress celebrities of the day. He was frequent host to film stars like Charlie Chaplin and had himself formed a relationship with another top filmstar, Marion Davies. This is where they would have dined before possibly watching a film in his full-size cinema. You might think this was a man of all-round impeccable refinement, but the detail of the photo isn’t good enough pick out the ketchup bottles on the table! 

What he did was to buy antiques, art treasures and pieces of historic buildings through dealers and from catalogues. These were incorporated into the fabric of the building, like this medieval arch.

Outside are beautiful patios using authentic ancient tiles and statues. There are stunning views over the countryside, most of which he owned, and towards the sea 5 miles away.

Everywhere in the gardens and exterior walkways one stumbled across centuries old statues, urns and friezes.

The indoor pool was something else. Finished in blue glass tiles with gold glaze, the statues by the windows are genuine Roman.

The “castle” design itself was based on a church in the Spanish city of Ronda in Andalucia. Spanish architecture was a popular theme for wealthy people in Hearst’s time to adopt for their grand houses.

Hearst was the richest of the super-rich; he had estates near New York, elsewhere in California, a vaste ranch in Mexico and a real, medieval castle at St Donats in South Wales.

By coincidence, I have a connection there. I spent my childhood in the town of Cowbridge only 5 miles from St Donats, so I knew it well, but not under Hearst’s ownership which was from 1925 to 1941. Interestingly, in 1938 or ‘39, Mr Hearst came in my grandfather’s shoe shop in Cowbridge and was served by my dad, who was working for granddad. Mr Hearst inquired if they sold socks; they did, and dad persuaded him to buy a whole box!

Mr Hearst employed many people on the St Donats estate from Cowbridge, which gave rise to a variety of personal stories, passed down and no doubt embellished, of ‘goings on’ with his lavish entertainment of the rich and famous.

Hearst Castle was a real eye-opener as to how the mega-wealthy lived in the first half of the 20th century. The tour guide gave the impression that Hearst was a great benefactor by buying up and, by so doing, ‘rescuing’ ancient treasures. However, we felt that that was incidental to his acquisition of these objects; they were more symbols of his wealth and power, the evidence for which was that pieces from many different sources and eras were cobbled together in each room without much connection or historical link. He also had the largest private zoo in the USA here on the estate, and perhaps the Castle itself was his zoo for antiquities.

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April 26th: Henry Cowell Park Redwoods

The mountain redwoods are the most massive; the coastal redwoods are the tallest. We are near the coast so search out a coastal redwood park to visit. We thought we’d come to the wrong place when we arrived because next to the redwoods car park was a small reconstructed cowboy town with a railroad station.

Next up, the train arrives, an old wild west steam engine. I’m now half expecting a re-enacted Indian attack, but disappointingly the train puffs and hisses to a halt with its load of tourist coaches. It’s a great sight nonetheless.

A yes, nearly forgot, we came to see some redwoods. The grove starts on the other side of the car park. It’s a sunny day and the light shafts shining through the big trees makes a lovely picture.

You can’t really give the true impression of the height of these trees, some reaching 300 foot plus. 

It’s easier to convey the size at ground level with a person in the frame. The figure is a woman in white in the gap, dwarfed by the tree.

Some trees had apparently harmless carbuncle-type growths on the base. In this case it looks like a monster’s foot from a horror film.

A lot of trees had multiple trunks growing from one root system. Here’s Jane modelling as a forest gnome standing in front of one such example. 

Although we’ve seen quite a few huge redwoods in different places, they never fail to impress. 

We're now leaving for Santa Margarita Lake where there's no phone signal or wifi, so we'll be out of contact for a time- just like it was in the old days before mobile phones and the internet. You remember, when you used to send postcards.

April 21st to 28th Moss Landing and Monterey

We moved 100 miles south of San Francisco to a campsite near Monterey. The campsite itself was no great shakes and hemmed in by roads and an inaccessible hill at the back so we couldn’t safely walk outside the camp perimeter. We therefore took the camper out most days and firstly headed for the nearest bit of coast, the small harbour of Moss Landing. The lovely beach there was backed by sand dunes, and nearly deserted.

As pleasant as it was to walk along the sands and listen to the pounding Pacific surf, the real fascination was watching the wildlife. The most impressive part of that was the whales.

There’s an annual migration of grey whales from the Arctic to Mexico and back every winter and early spring, and we were lucky enough to be there at the peak time for their return journey. You would first see great spouts of misty water as they came up for air and then usually a huge tail flipped up as they dived again. Just occasionally one would breach, that is, come nearly right out of the water. We must have seen over 60 whales altogether; what an amazing experience. Unfortunately I have no photos; my camera’s digital display just couldn’t pick them up.

What the camera did catch ok were the sea otters. These were active in the estuary, just beyond the end of the beach, that let to a wildlife reserve.

There were plenty of pelicans and seal lions too. I’m sure you can work out which is which.

Another day out was to Monterey, a fairly up market town, next to Carmel which is a very upmarket town where Clint Eastwood lives and was once the mayor. The walkway along the coast and around the harbour was especially pretty.

Lots more sea lions as well on the breakwater, and an unusual starfish that you can see next to the kelp, that’s the green seaweed rising  from the bottom, that grows extensively off the coast and provides a rich habitat for the varied sea life here.

Monterey town is quite pleasant with some buildings from the 20’s and 30 like the Golden State Theatre here opened on 1926.

The main source of employment in the town was fish canning between the early years of the last century and the mid 1950’s, featuring in John Steinbeck’s famous book Cannery Row. Some of the old canneries are still there, turned into tourist shops and hotels. The photo shows part of Cannery Row that still has an original cannery name left.

Monterey had a Mediterranean feel and was a pleasant place for a day out. It had some nice parks, even a Dennis the Menace Park which we didn’t see, but then I was a Desperate Dan fan. 

Monday 21st April: Alcatraz

Alcatraz lies in San Francisco bay 1½ miles off-shore. Soon after California became part of the USA in 1848, Alcatraz was turned into a military fortress and then in 1867/8 became a military prison. In 1933 the US Dept. of Justice took it over as a federal penitentiary to house the country’s most difficult convicts. The first prisoners were installed in 1934, and the jail served in that capacity for the next 29 years. The island was totally self-sufficient, with a power generation plant, food processing, laundry etc. Water was shipped over in bulk.

The next photo is taken from the boat taking us to Alcatraz and shows the island’s rocky profile and isolation, making it an ideal prison location. The bay waters are cold throughout the year, so discouraging an escape attempt by swimming. The prison block is the building right on the top of the island.

 Official business only! This notice greeted all who approached too close.

This was a no-nonsense prison. Warders were called correction officers and tight discipline was enforced with armed guards patrolling from behind a barred gallery so they could not be overpowered and their weapons seized. They were guarding these three-tiered cell corridors, of which there were three main corridors and an isolation block. This is the central corridor known as Broadway.

Individual cells throughout looked like this. They housed major criminals like Al Capone, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, and “Machine Gun” Kelly. 

“D” Block, or the isolation section, was reserved for the most troublesome prisoners. The most famous of these was Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz”. He spent all of his 17 years here in isolation due to his extremely violent history, including killing a prison guard for which he narrowly missed the death penalty. This is the “D” Block

Yet Stroud was a very intelligent man who had become a world expert on canaries at his previous prison where he finally killed the guard and got transferred to Alcatraz. He was denied access to his bird studies as part of his punishment. This is what Stroud looked like.

There was a more severe regime available in “D” Block: the “Hole”. These were solitary confinement cells where a restricted diet and total darkness was sometimes applied. Those deemed to deserve such treatment were held there for several days, up to a maximum of 19.

There was a daily recreation period, to be taken in the exercise yard.  Bridge was especially popular and the men stayed outside for the full term of several hours even in the bitter cold. The yard looks a forbidding place, as you can see. Reminds me of my old school playground.

There were 14 separate escape attempts and the official line was that no convicts made it. The bloodiest attempt was in 1946 when three convicts and two guards died.

The attempt in 1962 was, and still is, the most intriguing. Three prisoners made dummy heads for their beds so that the guards saw them “asleep” when they made their regular inspections. Supposedly in bed, they headed up a ventilation shaft that led out onto the roof. They had with them 50 rubber raincoats from other inmates that made into a raft, and wooden paddles scrounged from other sources. They planned to climb down from the roof, reach the sea, and paddle away.

The official version is that they drowned, but no bodies were ever found, although bits of the raft and paddles were discovered on the shore of another island in the bay. However, there were reported sightings of the men for many years afterwards and the families claimed to have received postcards in the men‘s handwriting. The US Marshall’s file will remain open until they all reach the age of 100.  

The prison closed in 1963 and lay abandoned for 6 years until occupied by Native Americans demanding just treatment for the return and self-government of Indian territories. They were there for two years. This high water tower is still inscribed with slogans for their cause that sought to generate public sympathy. Their campaign was partly successful and a turning point in the government’s attitude to Indian administration within their own lands. The Prison Governor’s old residence was accidentally burnt down during their occupation. 

Another kind of protest was taking place on Alcatraz during our visit, this time with official approval. Art activist Ai Weiwei was exhibiting a set of dissidents’ faces from repressive political regime. They are all made from Lego and are divided into world sections. He himself can’t leave China for his political statements through his art. So he’s a kind of prisoner, exhibiting the faces of many who are in prison, in a prison. Very appropriate.

This final photo sums up, for me, the chilly, moody atmosphere of Alcatraz, looking from the island towards the misty Golden Gate Bridge over a grey, cold sea.