Julia's Mexico City

Saw this at Trader Joe's on Tuesday night.


I have a Macedonia country sticker on my car as well. I've never seen another until now.

Zdravo!

Labels: driving, macedonia

... Cool Cars, we saw this beauty while driving to down the 405 to Ikea this past Sunday.



What is that thing? Other than fabulous, I mean. It had historic plates on it too.


Very nice.

Click for bigger.

Labels: driving, freeway

We went to La Quinta this weekend to celebrate a friend's birthday. There were nine of us in two rented condos. We got caught up, laughed, made pizza, drank beer, played Wii tennis as well as real tennis. There was a lot of poolside lounging as well.

Here is the view from our condo:


I'm not a huge fan of the desert. There are lovely things about it, but not enough to make me want to live there, ever. Oh, and in the summer it is really hot. I don't like hot. Yes yes, it is a dry heat and that does make a difference. (In August 2005 I spent a couple of days on a location scout outside Richmond Virginia. We walked around Colonial Williamsburg and surrounding fields for hours in the sun. It was probably 90 or 95 and about 3000% humidity. That was just ridiculous and I don't know how people get used to that.)

I did like the look of the sharp rocky hills around the city of La Quinta with the palm trees in front and faded blue sky.




But not enough to live there.

I haven't been out to the Palm Springs area in at least eight or ten years so I had to take the obligatory photo of the windmills. They fascinate me. I could watch them spin all day.


Also on the way we saw this strange beast being towed. Our car expert friend on the trip said he didn't know what it was. Some created race car. Anyone know what this is?



No matter what the temperature, it is always nice to spend time with friends.

Labels: driving, freeway, travel

Without a garage to park in and living almost under two major freeways, one's car gets dirty. I splurged and went through the drive through.

Labels: driving, los angeles

While driving home from donating platelets on Monday, I saw this car ahead of me at the intersection:


My old car. Probably not my actual old car, but exactly like the one I had.
1991 Honda CRX HF.
I have been fortunate enough to have a car my whole driving life. I inherited my sister's car when I was in high school. It was my first car, my first love. A Honda Civic 1500dx. 1980? 1981? This is the closest I could come to finding a photo of it in the same color:

(thanks to this flickr page.)

5 speeds, no AC, crank windows, 2 doors, I hatchback, kick-ass cassette stereo (well, sorta.) and man I loved it.

I kissed it good-bye in college and since I was essentially living in LA at that point, I inherited my next car, a 60's-something VW Bug, from my stepbrother. I got a $100 paint job (no body work) at Earl Scheib and it was now shiny and red! (Thanks for the help with that, Randy.) Only 4 speeds this time (I sometimes surprised myself on the freeway, yanking her in to 3rd, thinking I was in my Honda with the 5 speeds -- wakes you up quick!), no AC, crank windows, 2 doors, trunk in the front, probably the same kick-ass cassette stereo and I soon loved that bug. Best part about a bug? (Aside from that ever-specific engine sound?) If it wouldn't start, you could jump-start it by sitting in the driver's seat with the door open, pushing the ground really hard with your left foot a few times, then popping the clutch, you were on your way. Oh and if you ever locked your keys in your car (gee, not that I ever did...) you could rattle the little triangle windows hard enough to open them.

{I'm off looking for a photo....}

There she is in all her LMU glory.


I drove that lovely bug until 1991 when my grandmother, who was very generous, loaned me the money to buy the CRX. I bought it, brand spanking new, for about $10,000 out the door. 5 speeds, no AC, crank windows, 2 doors, a hatchback, kick-ass cassette stereo then later three kick-ass CD players (two of which got stolen). The Honda CRX was/is the only car I have ever dreamed of owning, I WANTED that car all through high school. And the 1991 was the last model year of that car. I got the last one. It got stolen once around 1997, but found two days later, luckily with only the seats and stereo missing. I owned it for eight years and only sold it because I really wanted four doors and a trunk. And air conditioning.

So I thanked that wonderful car, said good-bye and bought a 1999 VW Passat in green. 5 speeds (yes, still manual, baby, I like to drive!), Air conditioning! Power Windows (and locks)! 4 doors, FOUR! A trunk! And a kick-ass six CD changer/stereo. Oh I felt grown up. I even had a real car payment this time. But, it only lasted about a year. I got laid off from work (well, I engineered the lay off, so I sort of quit in a way that worked better for me) and realized that I would rather have the freedom of the freelance lifestyle than a new car, so I sold the Passat to relieve myself of the payments.

I was really really really bummed for a day. I don't know if you are aware, but Los Angeles is a car-centric town and you are usually indentified with your car. I can tell you what all my friends drive. I can tell you what most of my colleagues drove when I worked at Sony. Kind of ridiculous, actually. But still being wrapped up in that place in life, I felt somehow "less-than" for a while without that shiny new car.

Then I Rented a Wreck while I found a "new" car to buy and suddenly felt free. It was a 92 Nissan something or other, not fancy in any way shape or form. Driving that car for a few weeks really made me realize that I am not my car, or by extension, my bank account. I'm me and I didn't want to be living that "what do you drive" lifestyle any more. A good friend sold me his 93 Acura Integra and I bought it happily.

5 speeds (manual!), air conditioning (thank you), power windows (manual locks), 2 doors, a hatchback and a kick-ass original cassette player that I replaced with a CD player, which has been stolen, so back to the original cassette player. The car has 173,650 miles on it and works very well. I know it will last a lot longer, though the paint is looking not as good as you's like in some spots. Where is that Earl Scheib $100 paint job now?

Do I have a dream car these days? Not really. A Mini would be fun and a Prius is good for the green life, but I don't want a car payment. I am soooo happy to drive my Acura into the ground until we have enough $$ made and saved to buy a new car. Because it's not about the car anymore, it's about the driver.

Labels: driving, los angeles, platelets

From the Badlands I drove to Deadwood where I stayed for one night. I ate in Kevin Costner's restaurant The Midnight Star (anyone know where he got the name? Answer below...) and won $60 from his blackjack tables. Thanks Kevin! Apparently, the Lakota are not too fond of Kevin these days.

These three pictures are from the Deadwood website. (Mine were not so good.) The entire town is a national historic landmark.




The town you may know from the TV series looked like this (photo from 1876):

And most of it burned to the ground around 1879.

The tv show was correct that Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane spent time there. They are also buried there.


I awoke early in the morning, left Deadwood and headed for the Crazy Horse Memorial. Not sure why people decided the Black Hills were great for carving giant statues, but it seems to be the place. I have always wanted to see Mount Rushmore but knew I couldn't go there witout seeing Crazy Horse . Click on the link for more and better photos and info.

Here I am -- click to make it bigger.


Great view as I was leaving:


Have you been to Mount Rushmore? It's seems so small when you've been to see Crazy Horse first. My photos doen't help show the scale.


Okay, the reality is Mt. Rushmore is 500' high and 400' wide. When Crazy Horse is complete, it will be 563' high and 615' wide. Not much bigger, but you get fooled because there is one person/face at CH and four at Mt. Rushmore. Here is a photo of Crazy Horse's face:

and a great site that shows the face in progress is here.

The whole country out there in the land of the Lakota is amazing and beautiful. I can't wait to go back and see it all again and more.

(The answer to the Midnight Star name is from the movie Silverado (one of my favorites) that Kevin had a role in. Kevin Kline's character worked in the bar in Silverado -- The Midnight Star.)

Labels: driving, prairie, south dakota, travel

You have all been so patient, I know you were just on the verge of writing to me about when would I finish my posts about Laura. If you want to refresh, here are the previous posts: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

So I spent the morning in De Smet, driving around town, taking a tour of the Surveyor's House, even went to the cemetary. But I couldn't put off going to the homestead any longer. I knew there would be no house there (it was long gone) but just being on that spot I had read about over and over made me nervous and excited.

I drove the mile out to the site and again, I was all alone.

The trees were planted by the Ingalls in the 1880s. And the road to town is the road that Laura watched on Sundays when waiting for Almanzo to come pick her up for a buggy ride.

I think what makes/made the trip so exciting is that these books were so a part of my imagination. What were your favorite books growing up? Nancy Drew? Black Stallion? Lord of the Rings? Imagine loving and reading those books over and over then someday being able to go to the places that are locked into your memory and imagination. That's how magical this trip was for me. She was a real person. It was all real and I could go and see where it happened.

Here she is with Almanzo not long after they got married:

(They were married August 25, 1885, Laura was 18, Almanzo was 28.)


This photo was taken right after the Long Winter. Laura is standing on the right, she is about 14. Mary is seated and about 15 and Carrie is standing on the left. Carrie is about 10 and never fully recovered her health after practically starving to death during the winter.


I can't wait to go back.

(more to come on the rest of my trip -- out to Deadwood and Crazy Horse...)

Labels: driving, laura ingalls wilder, minnesota, prairie, south dakota, travel

Driving west on the 10 yesterday afternoon, I noticed somewhere between Vermont and La Brea that someone had lost their Thomas Guide on the freeway and it had exploded. The pages were being flipped and spun down the median in all their multi-color glory. How did this happen?

Traffic was moving along well so I couldn't picture someone stuck in traffic, fuming, looking for a way out of the mess, not being able to find one then flinging their Thomas Guide out the window in a rush hour rage.

I remember when I got my first Thomas Guide. It was a few years after college and I could finally afford to get one. Oh I felt rich and I also felt like a true Angelino (though I would move away in a huff a few years later, hating LA -- but as with most things, it was all in my mind...). At the now defunct California Map and Travel Center on PIco (RIP) they were selling laminated and bound Thomas Guides. Of course it weighed a ton and would be harder to manipulate while driving and searching (not that anyone would ever do that) but oh, to have a Thomas Guide who's most used pages wouldn't crumble in your hands. You know, on those days when you are trying to get to the Arclight from the westside on a Sunday but you've neglected to remember that it is the LA Triathalon and there is NO WAY you are going north on any street.

Don't know why that Thomas Guide was sacrificed to the freeway gods yesterday, but let's hope it was for a good reason.

Labels: driving, freeway, thomas guides

Okay, where was I? Oh yes, driving on to De Smet, South Dakota.

When I got to DeSmet, I went first to the middle of town, Main Street (Click all photos for bigger versions):


On the left as you drive in is Loftus' Store and it is the original building:


Across the street and up a few doors is the site where Pa's store building used to be. There is a plaque on the corner of this building identifying it as such.


Here is a map of town that I got from the Hoover Library-Museum.

So this was my first (and so far only) trip to the great plains/midwest (where does midwest stop and plains begin? Anyone?) and what struck me in all these small towns I was driving through were the widths of the Main Streets (or Front Streets). Why were they made so wide way back when?

My first big stop was to visit the Surveyor's House. This house was an important place in "By The Shores Of Silver Lake." I talked about it on my bookshelf blog a while back. I'll quote myself from Christmas Eve, 2005. Let's start with a description of their first Shanty in South Dakota. This is from the book written by Laura (shortened by me):

The new shanty stood alone by the lake shore. It shone yellow in the sunshine; a little house almost lost in the grasses and its little roof sloped all one way as if it were only half a roof ... Everything must be unpacked and the shanty made ready before noon ... From the company store, Ma bought yards of bright figured calico for curtains. They made a curtain and they hung it across the shanty, shutting the bunks behind it. Then she made another curtain and hung it between the bunks so there were two bedrooms, one for her and Pa, the other for the girls. The shanty was so small the curtains touched the bunks ...Then in front of the curtain was the room to live in. It was very small with the cookstove at the end by the door. Ma and Laura placed the drop leaf table against the side wall, before the open front door. Mary's rocking chair and Ma's they put on the other side of the room. The floor was bare ground, with humps of obstinate grass roots in it, but they swept it clean. "This is another kind of little house only with half a roof and no window," said Ma. "But it's a tight roof, and we don't need a window, so much air and light come in through the door."

They lived in the shanty for the summer and thought they would have to go back east for winter as there was no town yet, just the beginnings of a railroad. But Pa struck a deal to housesit for the surveyors all winter, protect their tools, watch over their house. Laura describes it as "that house, that real house:"

It was a big house, a real house with two stories, and glass windows. The door had a china knob....This house had board floors. Laura looked at the large front room ...The surveyors had left their stove! It has six lids on top and two oven doors... Spaced on the wall behind it were three doors. All of them were shut. Laura tiptoed across the wide floor and softly opened one door. There was a small room with a bedstead in it. This room had a window too. Softly Laura opened the middle door...Steeply up in front of her went a stair...She went up a few steps and a big attic opened out on both sides of the stairs. It was twice as big as the big room downstairs. A window in each gable end lighted the whole empty place under the roof.

That was three rooms already...She opened the third door. There before her eyes was a little store. All up the walls of that small room were shelves, and on the shelves were dishes, and pans and pots, and boxes and cans. All around under the shelves stood barrels and boxes. (The pantry was packed with food: flour and cornmeal and salt pork and beans and soda crackers and canned fruits and vegetables, coffee and tea.)

So in all my years reading these books and in my imagination, I agreed with Laura, it was a big house! And then I went there, to the actual house and took a tour. Here is the outside (with me):


Visitors were not allowed to take photos inside. But by the magic of the interwebs, I have borrowed some photos from the above linked website:



It was small, smaller than my house and I live in 950 square feet. I walked in and felt overwhelmed with how freaking hard it was for those settlers, living in tiny shacks with dirt floors, lucky to get a window and to not freeze to death in the winter. I am not sure what I was feeling, I kept thinking, "Oh my god Laura, this place is tiny, but now seeing all of this in real life, I understand why this house was like a palace to you." It was moving, I can't explain it.

More to come.

Labels: driving, laura ingalls wilder, minnesota, prairie, south dakota

After the sod house tour, I arrived at Walnut Grove. I went first to the Ingalls Dugout Site. It was, of course, On the Banks of Plum Creek. I was very happy to be there all by myself as this was my first actual Little House site. I was nervous and excited.

This sign greets you:

(I borowed this from the Walnut Grove site linked above.)

There is a small hollow where the "house" was in the creek bank. I can't imagine living in a tiny little hand-made cave.

I climbed up past the sign and was standing in a wheat field.


This is the first time I had ever seen a wheat field in person, in real life. I was surprised that is is not tall. I thought it was like corn and grew over your head. Nope! Don't know why I thought that, maybe because sugar cane is also very very tall? (See what happens when you grow up on an island? Then again many tourists think pineapples grow on trees...so there you go.) The wheat was beautiful. Driving through the plains in July really made the words "amber waves of grain" come to life.

I spent a while quietly walking around the dugout site and creek, just soaking it up. Then I returned to the car and went back to town where I walked through the Wilder Museum where they have historical objects from the 1800s and also a quilt that Laura made with her daughter Rose. It's a small town with not a whole lot to see in a day. As I mentioned, I met up with the family from Maryland and we sat togehter on a picnic table and chatted.

Then I moved on to Tracy. I had booked a room in a B&B there for the night. Laura wrote about her very first train ride in By the Shores of Silver Lake. She (and Ma and Mary and Carrie and Grace) went from Walnut Grove to Tracy. She said it took an hour (it was a fictional account.) It took me about 15 minutes--it's 8 miles.

The night at the Valentine B&B was very exciting. I was the only guest in this HUGE old Victorian house that the owners were in the process of fixing up (the inside was done and lovely, the outside was still being worked on.) Their link is not working, otherwise I would have linked immediately...oh well. It was an exciting evening because a storm blew in and I had my very first tornado warning. The owners knocked on my door about an hour after I went to sleep and we sat in the kitchen listening to the radio, ready to run down into the basement at a moment's notice. The wind was whipping and the thunder and lightening were fabulous. We talked about tornadoes vs. earthquakes and we all agreed that it's nice to have some warning. The storm soon passed and we got an all clear and I went to bed.

The next morning, after a lovely breakfast, I was saying goodbye to the woman there (I have to dig out my journals to get some names.) and she mentioned that as I was driving, if I saw a tornado, I should drive to the closest farm and knock on the door, find shelter. (Highway 14 is a two lane road.) And of course she was dead serious. Freaky for a Hawaii/California girl! Luckily, I didn't have to do that and it seemed that once I crossed into South Dakota, there were mostly beautiful blue skies all the way. It looked like this most of the time:

(This is on the way to Mount Rushmore, further east--I mean WEST!!-- in S. Dakota.) (Another symptom of growing up on an island--not know east/west/north/south.)

I was very excited to get into South Dakota because soon I would be in DeSmet. Goose bumps.

Labels: driving, dwp, laura ingalls wilder, minnesota, south dakota

Recently my friend Paddy mentioned that he had read "The Long Winter". He has three kids so I thought perhaps they might have something to do with it. Not at all. In fact, he found the book in the coolest way: He was reading the book "Fifty Degrees Below" by Kim Stanley Robinson
and one of the main characters refers to The Long Winter as they are stuck in some serious winter. So Paddy picked up TLW book and enjoyed it. (Which in turn makes me want to buy 50 Degrees Below book and read it. Books are cool.)

I mentioned to Paddy that I am a huge fan of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her books and that I had even gone on a road trip through Minnesota and South Dakota in 1998 along Highway 14:

(You know I love a good road trip and have been DWP for a many years.)

I threatened him with a blog post about it and so here we are.

We interrupt this blog for a very important announcement.

Let's get one thing clear before I begin this post (or series of posts).

You know how there are "Trekkies" and "Trekkers"? Maybe that's a bad example. Okay, with Laura Ingalls Wilder, there is her series of books based on her life and then there is the tv show. One has almost nothing to do with the other. You might already know that I'm a stickler for the difference and that when I talk about "Little House" I am NEVER talking about the tv show.
(I know--so cranky!)

Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post.

I started just south of Minneapolis, visiting a friend in Northfield. I took the I-35 south to Highway 14 and headed west. I drove through Mankato, stopping for breakfast, and then Sleepy Eye, stopping for a diet coke. Between Sleepy Eye and Walnut Grove there was a farm advertising their homestead and sod house re-creations and restored acre of prairie with native prairie grasses. (True prairies are a rare thing these days.) I stopped in and am so glad I did.

The people on the farm had built three buildings representing houses built on the prairies in the latter half of the 1800s. One was a traditional sod house seen here:

The great plains and prairies were grasslands -- no trees. There was very little wood to build with and you had to be rich to buy and haul boards to build a house. So sod it was. And sod was not bad as it kept you cooler in summer and warmer in winter. But a sod house also means a sod floor (click to make bigger):

And have I mentioned yet how small this house is? It's about the size of a bedroom in your house. And generally sheltered large families.

The other houses on the site were a much larger sod house (about 2 times the size as this one) with a wood roof and glass windows -- a very rich person's house. And a tiny shanty. TINY. Like the size of your bathroom.

While there I met a family from Maryland, mom and dad and two girls. Mom was a teacher and they took pictures of me for me at the sod houses. We chatted a little bit then ended up sitting and talking together more at Walnut Grove an hour or so later. My historicial geek factor shines at times like these since I was a woman traveling alone to visit Laura Ingalls Wilder historical sites. "Do you have kids? Are you a teacher?" Ah, no. Just love this stuff.

To be continued...

Labels: books, driving, laura ingalls wilder, minnesota, prairie, south dakota

We drove to Tulare and Visalia and Kingsburg and Selma this week to do some research.

We spent time on state route 99. Click here for a history of route 99. Click here for information about all of Californias roadways their histories, names, routes, etc. (I like roadtrips and I like to drive. Growing up on an island probably had something to do with that.)

99 is different than 5, even though both are a divided highway with 2 lanes (or more depending on where you are) in each direction. 99 is all agriculture all the time. I didn't get a chance to take pictures of the many different billboards up there. How often do you see billboards advertising bovine meds or almond fungicides? You know you aren't in LA anymore...












Click them all to make them bigger.

It's pretty exciting to take photos at 80mph. (Speed limit is 70, fyi)

Labels: california, driving, highways