I Wonder as I Wander…

Off to California again—this time for three weeks. We were hoping for a nice warm break from the cold, but ended up with rain—lots of it. It absolutely poured for the first three days we were here. We didn’t dare complain, because they need rain so badly.

I had a regional convention at a Holiday Inn in San Jose over the weekend, but we arrived on Monday—so we checked into the Holiday Inn and stayed there for eight nights (sure beats moving every couple days). The only issue is that San Jose is a ways away from some of the colleges that I was visiting, so we were driving every day. The other thing is the hotel had a restaurant, so they don’t provide a free breakfast. We bought a $2 Styrofoam cooler, juice, oatmeal packets, and fruit—so we could eat breakfast and snacks in our room.

One day, we visited a college and when we came out—it was pouring. So we stood under an awning for quite a while and then made a dash for the car. We got soaked. Then we had to drive for quite a while—down to Salinas, which is a couple hours south of San Jose, and not too far from Monterey. Salinas is also called the salad bowl of the world because of all the lettuce and other vegetables grown there. Salinas also happens to be the hometown of John Steinbeck, so his home is on display and there is a National Steinbeck center. We visited the center for a while to pass some time.

Several of our trips involved us driving up the peninsula toward San Francisco. It was amazing, we would be totally surrounded by an urban area with houses and businesses and then a few miles down the road, there would be cows grazing on the fields. Later I heard they bring the cows in to keep the grass from getting too high on those hills after the winter rains, because when summer and fall comes and it dries off—they are really dangerous areas for wildfires.

Several of the colleges are located at the top of hills with fantastic views. Lucky for us the rain stopped after three days, and it has been clear every since. Skyline College, which is just south of San Francisco, has a visitor parking lot that would be designated a ‘scenic view’ in my book. It looked down from a rocky ledge to the ocean. Although the advisor told us that they are really in the fog belt—sometimes they can’t see across the sidewalk because it’s so thick.

The first week included long days and short nights. I was still on central time, so was waking up every morning by 4:30-5:00 am, and not eating supper until around 8 pm Pacific time, so we weren’t getting to bed until close to midnight. Probably due to the lack of sleep, I ended up with a raging cold—a cough that wouldn’t quit and the need to have a handful of Kleenex at all times.

One evening, we went to the Winchester Mystery House and were in awe of this Victorian mansion which was built by Sarah Winchester, who was the heiress of the Winchester Rifle Company. After the deaths of her infant daughter and husband, she consulted a medium, who told her to move to San Jose in 1884 and start building a house. Mrs. Winchester was convinced by a medium that continuous building would appease the evil spirits of those killed by the famous "Gun that Won the West" and help her attain eternal life. If she ever finished the house, she would die, so she began a construction project of such magnitude that it was to occupy the lives of carpenters and craftsmen 24 hours a day, until her death thirty-eight years later.

The mansion was totally designed by the Winchester Rifle heiress. She went to a special ‘seance’ room every evening where the spirits told her how the house should be designed. Because Sarah needed to be working on the house every minute of every day, she had the workers build rooms, only to tear them apart and remodel them. The house is filled with so many unexplained oddities, that nobody understands. Some people think it’s because she wasn’t trained as an architect or she just wanted to keep the building going on.

Sarah Winchester built a home that is an architectural marvel. Unlike most homes of its era, this 160-room Victorian mansion had modern heating and sewer systems, gas lights that operated by pressing a button, three working elevators, and 47 fireplaces. From rambling roofs and exquisite hand inlaid parquet floors to the gold and silver chandeliers and Tiffany art glass windows, you will be impressed by the staggering amount of creativity, energy, and expense poured into each and every detail.

There is even a million dollar storeroom—which is filled with Tiffany glass windows, Italian made wall covering, and other things that were never used. We did a tour through 110 of the 160 rooms and saw some of the bizarre things in the mansion; a window built into the floor, another that opens into the rest of the house, staircases leading to nowhere, a chimney that rises four floors and yet doesn’t go through the roof, doors that open onto blank walls, and upside down posts!

Mrs. Winchester was also a recluse; she never had any photos taken of herself. She had massive front doors with beautiful Tiffany Windows, put in the front of the house, but no one ever walked through them. Even Teddy Roosevelt came and was turned away.

After San Jose, we moved down to Merced, which is pretty close to Yosemite National Park, so we had to plan one day in the park—which is beautiful. First we drove up and up through very winding roads with beautiful scenery in all directions. My ears were popping and plugged all the time. Yosemite is mainly in a valley with high cliffs and mountains all around. Many of the hiking paths weren’t open due to the snow, but they had a free shuttle bus that went all around the park and then we took a bus tour that had a narrator and we were able to get out and look around. There were some beautiful vistas that absolutely took your breath away. This is someplace we are going to have to visit again—with hiking boots!

The spring flowers were in bloom and some of the ditches and mountain sides were totally covered with yellow and orange flowers. It was so bright and beautiful that you had to shade your eyes. We visited colleges in Merced, Modesto, and Porterville and that is really a farming area. There were trees in bloom with white or pink flowers and trees that were laden with oranges, lemons, grapefruits, and limes. Some were right along the road—I wanted to stop the car and fill up the backseat with fruit. I asked one of the advisors if people didn’t just stop and pick some that was right in town and she said they often did. A lot of nuts are grown around that area as well, so some of the flowering trees would have been almond, walnut and pecan.

On Sunday, we drove to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. Again many of the roads were impassable except in summer because they are very low maintained gravel roads. Those areas have really been kept a wilderness area. We were able to see some of the giant sequoias—they are some of the largest trees in the world. They only grow at 5000 feet—so there aren’t too many places that they will grow and it was hard for loggers to harvest them until after better roads were built, so some of them are thousands of years old.

From there, we went to Sacramento and spent a week visiting chapters in that area. We checked in to our hotel and went to eat supper. As we were leaving the hotel, we saw the college that we would be visiting the next day, so we were able to walk over to it. We had some great visits in Sacramento and we found several really neat restaurants to eat at, but we were really busy every single day and so didn’t get any chance to see any of the sights around Sacramento. And, I was disappointed that we never found a place to buy fresh fruit just before we were leaving for home.

We did have a fairly interesting trip home. I had visited with one chapter and they were holding their induction ceremony on Friday evening at 5 pm. Since we didn’t leave until midnight from San Francisco, I told them I could speak at their induction ceremony—so I did—even though we really had to rush from one appointment to get there. Their induction ceremony was very nice and we got the chance to visit with the advisors and some students again (and eat cake). Then we left to catch the red eye home—We both slept pretty good on the trip home, but still took a nap that afternoon.