We were in Santa Cruz for the Pride parade on June 2.
Santa Cruz Pride
Up, Up, and Away On a Tangent
We took an early morning balloon ride over Napa Valley.
Naturally, the song “Up, Up and Away” by the Fifth Dimension came to mind. (You’re welcome for the earworm.) Now, I’m not going to make fun of the Fifth Dimension—I love both “Wedding Bell Blues” and their version of “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In”—but when I Google’d the song, I saw that it won both Record of the Year and Song of the Year at the 1968 Grammys.* Let’s look at just a few other songs that were released in 1967, and thus also were eligible for a Grammy in 1968:
- “A Whiter Shade of Pale” – Procul Harem
- “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” – Marvin Gaye
- “All You Need is Love” – the Beatles
- “Brown Eyed Girl” – Van Morrison
- “Daydream Believer” – the Monkees
- “Gimme Some Lovin'” – the Spencer Davis Group
- “Higher and Higher” – Jackie Wilson
- “Light My Fire” – the Doors
- “Never My Love” – the Association
- “Ruby Tuesday” – the Rolling Stones
- “Soul Man” – Sam and Dave
- “The Letter” – the Box Tops
- “Waterloo Sunset” – the Kinks
Obviously, some of these aren’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, and the Grammys are middle-brow, but I was amazed that “Up, Up and Away” won Song and Record of the Year, until I saw the other nominees:
Song of the Year nominees
- Up, Up and Away
- Ode to Billy Joe
- By the Time I Get to Phoenix
- Gentle on My Mind
- My Cup Runneth Over
Record of the Year nominees
- Up, Up and Away
- Ode to Billy Joe
- My Cup Runneth Over
- By the Time I Get to Phoenix
- Somethin’ Stupid
With the exception of “Ode to Billy Joe,” there wasn’t much competition. But those nominee lists … compared to what was available, the Grammys were really middle-brow. Ridiculous.
*”Record of the Year” typically goes to the performer on the record, while “Song of the Year” typically goes to the composer.Sensorio
Sensorio is an art installation in Paso Robles, CA—an evening illumination of over 100,000 solar-powered lights. They call it “the intersection of art, technology and nature” (without the Oxford comma). The main exhibit is a field of lights, called—unsurprisingly—the Field of Light.
The Dimensions exhibit included a series of metal structures lit from within, including a pavilion whose angular ceiling appeared to present projecting cubes when lit.
Next: back to nature.
Montaña de Oro State Park
More nature photos.
Next: the opposite of nature.
An 8,403-Foot Plunge (part 2)
After conquering Mount Whitney from a safe distance, we drove to Death Valley. The road to Death Valley is covered, in places, with wildflowers and Joshua trees.
We then got our first look at Death Valley. Except that this wasn’t Death Valley; better to say it was the valley before Death Valley.
Past the park entrance, we came upon the Eureka Dunes.
This salt flat, called Badwater, is the lowest point in North America—232 feet below sea level. (In the last photograph, a very small white rectangular sign in the middle of the cliff indicates sea level.)
Nearby is the Devil’s Golf Course—so called because the rock salt is so eroded that “only the devil could play golf on such rough links,” said the National Park Service in a 1934 guidebook.
Then we have the Artist Drive and Artist Palette. The rocks have been colored by oxidized metals and elements. When people say “pictures don’t do it justice,” this is what they mean.
Finally, sunset at Zabriskie Point.
Next: It depends on what we see next—I’m caught up.
An 8,403-Foot Plunge (part 1)
Granted, this was over 133 miles, but still, in one day, we went from nearly the highest point in the U.S. to the lowest. But first, a picture of Lake Tahoe.
From Lake Tahoe to Mono Lake: Mono Lake is noted for its tufas, limestone growths that were created by calcium-rich freshwater coming into the carbonate-rich lake water. (Mono Lake water has a distinct baking soda flavor.)
The tufas rise so far above the water because, starting in 1941, Los Angeles began diverting water from Mono Lake, 334 miles away. Combined with the effects of the drought, the lake—originally 6,417 feet deep—currently is 6,384 feet deep, just below the state-mandated target of 6,391 feet. (Diagram courtesy of the Mono Lake Committee.)
From Mono Lake (elev. 6,768 feet), we set out for Mount Whitney (elev. 14,494 feet). The terrain on the way up is rocky.
The road leads into the Alabama Hills National Scenic Area, a range of rock formations that have served as settings for many films over the years, such as Gunga Din, Iron Man, How the West Was Won, and Django Unchained. Many Western television show episodes also were shot there.
Beyond Alabama Hills, of course, is Mount Whitney. We stopped at about 8,117 feet.
Next: Part 2.
Bodie
I’ll circle back to our stop at Lake Tahoe later … Bodie, CA was a gold mining town. Founded in 1877, the town peaked in 1881 and began a decline that lasted until 1942, when the mine shut down.
At its height, the town had somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 residents along with 65 saloons, 18 hotels, three breweries, a number of markets, two banks, a newpaper, and a schoolhouse. It even had its own red light district—shocking, I know. The mines produced more than $38 million of gold and silver over their lifetime. When the town finally was abandoned, residents apparently left a lot of their possessions behind.
I don’t know if there were any ghosts—I didn’t see any paranormal orbs in my photos—but I met a couple with a German Shepherd that seemed very nervous. The couple told me that on their last visit to Bodie, there were two buildings where the dog simply lay down and refused to go in.
Next: Lots of natural beauty.
Alcatraz
Welcome to the cell block. After serving as a military base and military prison from 1850 to 1932, Alcatraz became a federal prison, specifically to hold prisoners who were too troublesome to be held elsewhere. “Break the rules and you go to prison, break the prison rules and you go to Alcatraz.>”
Each new prisoner received a cell with a mattress, pillow, blanket, and the rules and regulations book. (The toilet is behind the bed, next to the sink.) Some of the more notable regulations were:
Regulation 5: You are entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention. Anything else you get is a privilege.
Regulation 19: Trading, gambling, selling, giving, or loaning your personal property or your government issue items or services, or contraband of any kind, is a serious offense.
Regulation 21: You are required to work at whatever you are told to do.
Regulation 25: You are not allowed to have money of any kind in your possession while in this institution. Use of cigarettes or other items as “jail money” is forbidden.
Regulation 30: Loud talking, shouting, whistling, singing or other unnecessary noises are not permitted.
And so on. With a little time, the prisoner could make his cell nice and cozy, with the allowable items as shown in the diagram:
On the audio tour, we heard about some of the more notable residents (I did not know, for example, that Al Capone went crazy from syphilis, nor did I know that the Birdman of Alcatraz did not actually have any birds at Alcatraz; he also was something of a sociopath). One of the better stories was that of three men who escaped. Frank Morris and brothers John and Clarence Anglin engineered an escape in 1962, fashioning crude tools to dig out the cement around their air vents, climbing into the corridor that ran between the cell blocks and up to the roof, and using a modified musical instrument to inflate a raft they’d constructed from stolen raincoats. They even built fake heads to lay on their pillows so their absences wouldn’t be immediately noticed. The story is here.
The three were never found; the likeliest outcome was that they drowned trying to swim the frigid water and strong current of the bay. According to a fourth member of the gang who was unable to get his air vent grill loose in time, the plan was to steal clothes and a car upon reaching land; however, no thefts of that nature were reported in the days following the escape. Moreover, some of the prisoners’ personal effects and pieces of raft washed up in the bay.
For our part, we took the ferry back.
Next: Ghost town.
Pebble Beach
Pebble Beach lies along the 17-Mile Drive, a scenic drive in Monterey that takes in more than the five (!) golf courses on the Pebble Beach peninsula.
Next stop: We go to jail.