Last Hurrah

We stayed four nights in Sacramento.  One of the day we went wine tasting.  We drove for over an hour and ran into traffic.  Roads were being worked on.  Highway 12 is still two lanes most of the way.  The next day we went to old town and the railroad museum.  This is the first exhibit.  The train is still owned by the Stanford Family.

The museum looks a lot like I remember from 20 or 30 years ago.  The best part is there are several volunteers that used to work on the railroads.  They are a wealth of knowledge.

This train has been restored to look as fancy as it did when it was new.  1850's

This is the huge kitchen of a dining car.  Maybe Daddy and Mother ate from a kitchen like this.

There is at least three different table settings from Santa Fe.  This was my favorite.

Looks like baggage got better treatment than at an airport I think.

This is a chandelier from a waiting room.

A clock from Santa Fe.

 

 

We are in Visalia today.  We spent the day in Sequoia and King's Canyon National Park.  I've never seen so many people.  We heard French, German, and Spanish. The weather was delightful.  It was in the 70's.  We got back down to the valley and it was in the 90's.

The trees are huge.

We walked around a meadow to see the giants.

See how small your dad looks.

The meadow is too wet so the trees grow around the edges. 

The roots are taller than your dad.  It fell several years ago.

The big tree shelters the baby trees

It's hard to kill one of these.  The bark is about two feet deep.

New trees grow on fallen trees.

The "footprint" of a sequoia.

Then we walked down to General Sherman.  We went down 212 ft. for about a half a mile.

There it is.  It is the largest tree in the world.

We had to walk back up the trail at 7000 ft.

Up all those steps and ramps.  Luckily there was several benches to sit on to catch my breath.  I got my heart rate up very well.

 

We start home in the morning.  200 miles tomorrow  and then on home Thursday.  See you all soon.  Love, Mom and Dad

Nevada

When we were in Elko we stopped by the visitor's center to see what there was to see and do.  This is it.  The grounds are full of really old buildings from a 100 years ago.  It was pretty neat.

We found out about another westward trail center just outside of town.  It was very well done. 

The California Trail was a long one.  The thing was that all of the adversity made you see the "elephant." This is the trail the Donner party took.  The big mistake was they followed the Hasting cutoff and went almost 150 miles out of their way and got stuck up in the Sierra's in the middle of winter.

Inside the museum were several dioramas depicting life on the trail.

The pioneers traded with the Indians.

And of course gold fever was a big part of the trail.

This statue outside the building shows how women carried their babies.

The museum itself.

I remember seeing markers like this as a kid along side of roads.  This one is for the California Trail.

We went on in to Reno.  Not much to do unless you like casinos.  But your dad found the Harrah's Auto Museum.  Nice place, we spent almost four hours in there.

This electric car was owned by Andy Griffin.

There is a cute car that one can have their picture made sitting in it.  Your dad won.

This is one of the first RV's.  You were supposedly to be able  to put it on you Model T.  It could sleep four.

This one was called a depot wagon.  It went from the depot to a hotel.  After depot's names were changed to stations it became a station wagon.  I learned something new.  Doesn't that look like a precursor to the "Woody?"

A Rolls Royce all in copper.  Wow!!!

A concept car.  I can't figure out why it never made it to market.  LOL

I think this Mercury is like the car we came to California in.  It's a 39.  Maybe ours was a 49??? I don't think there was much difference.

An Austin.  I wanted an Austin Healy.  But not this old.

A silver Merceties Benz.  Baad spelling yet again.

This car drove from New York to Paris in 1909.  It went 22,000 miles by road and boat.

Right outside the museum is a river walk.  The Truckee runs through Reno.

 

We are in Sacramento right now.  We'll go wine tasting tomorrow and then the next day we'll go into Old Town.  We'll be busy for a while. 

 

That's all for tonight.  See you all soon.  Love, Mom and Dad

 

Vernal, Utah

  We went to Dinosaur National Monument in Vernal.  Their visitor center has a shuttle up to the Quarry House.  We took it up the hill and went inside to view the fossil wall.  It is amazing how many bones can be seen in it .  The wall seems about 20 or 30 feet high.

More bones

I'm not kidding, the wall is enormous.

This bone is almost as tall as your dad.  It is just one bone from a dinosaur's leg.

A complete Alosauris.  Of course I spelled it way wrong.

After we went through the quarry we took the mile walk back to the visitor's center.  This is what we walked through.

The trail head.  You can see the way we walked.  The only problem is it was very hot about 100.  Good thing we had plenty of water with us.

On one spur of the trail, we went up the side trail and saw rocks with tons of small sea shells in the rocks.  All those bumps on that slab is sea shells.

On another spur we climbed up the side of a hill and saw dinosaur bones on the cliffside.

Your dad went all the way up the "steps" to get a closer look.  I on the other hand decided that my legs were like rubber so I just took his picture. 

We could see the Green River from up there.

We also saw some Indian rock art from about a 1000 years ago.  Nobody knows what any of the pictographs mean.

An alien???

Or just some medicine men?

When we were finished with our hike we went on a auto tour to Josie's house.  She was a rancher up there. 

This is a campground  and marina along the Green River.

There is a working ranch along the river.  It's been there for 110 years right in the middle of the monument.

This part of the river was once a gold sluicing area.  It wasn't worth the time and the money so it was abandoned. 

The rocks up here have strange shapes.  This one is called Turtle Rock.  Ya think?

More rock art.

And more

Here's Josie's ranch.  She lived up here alone for 40 or 50 years.  She fell on the ice in 1964 and broke her hip. 

She had no phone to call for help.  Friends found her and she lived only about four months longer.  She was 84.

The next day we stayed in town and went to  The Field House of Natural History.  That dinosaur is a replica.

The museum has loads of plant fossils from the area.

The floor in the main lobby shows the 80 mile radius that the fossils can be found here in Utah and Colorado. 

Another leaf from about 65 million years ago.

These flower boxes are all over town.  It really is pretty.

Outside the museum is a dinosaur garden.  I took a picture of your dad by one of them to show you how big they are.

I'm back inside and under the big skeleton in the lobby.  It was a good day.

 

We are in Nevada tonight.  We'll be here  in Nevada for the next six nights.  Then back into California.  We'll be home in just two weeks from today.  See you all soon.   Love, Mom and Dad