Veron­ica and I just got back from a trip to visit my Mom out west. I flew to Nevada a few days before Christ­mas. My orig­i­nal flight was greatly delayed, but an adept United ticket agent rebooked me on a US Air flight that left Mil­wau­kee and arrived in Reno slightly ear­lier than my orig­i­nal itin­er­ary. Other than the air­line, the only other dif­fer­ences were that I flew through Phoenix rather than Den­ver, and the the sec­ond leg of my trip was in first class (merry Christ­mas to me!). On Christ­mas Eve day, we spent much of our time prep­ping food for a repeat of last year’s big din­ner party — between us we made three pies, a big salad, roasted veg­eta­bles, and a baked brie. The din­ner itself was quite a suc­cess; I think we had thir­teen peo­ple for the meal and a cou­ple more for dessert.

Tule Plants

We didn’t cel­e­brate on Christ­mas Day itself, as Veron­ica wasn’t fly­ing into Reno until that evening. Instead, my mom and I drove out to the Still­wa­ter Wildlife Refuge east of Fal­lon, hop­ing to see some migrat­ing Tun­dra Swans. We only saw one other per­son at the refuge, and that was only briefly. Most of the time, the only evi­dence of civ­i­liza­tion we could see was the very road on which we were dri­ving. Unfor­tu­nately, there weren’t any swans to see, either. The refuge com­prises a net­work of lakes and wet­lands, but on the day we were there they were all frozen over. So, no open water to attract migrat­ing birds. We did see a few hawks, some Prairie Fal­cons, a cou­ple of Great Blue Herons, and one Bald Eagle, but all from a dis­tance. That evening, Veron­ica arrived fol­low­ing a rel­a­tively smooth trip.

Soar­ing Hawk at Washoe Lake

We had our Christ­mas on Box­ing Day, emp­ty­ing our over­stuffed stock­ings, unwrap­ping presents, and eat­ing my mom’s deli­cious crème brûlée French toast. Then, we headed up to Reno (stop­ping at Washoe Lake along the way) for some shop­ping and a visit to the Nevada Museum of Art. The Museum isn’t huge, but it always seems to have very inter­est­ing exhibits. The fea­tured exhi­bi­tion this time was a col­lec­tion of more than 100 of Rembrandt’s prints. Although he’s known pri­mar­ily for his paint­ings, the Dutch­man was also a pro­lific print­maker. Since many of the works are small and have very fine details, the museum pro­vided mag­ni­fy­ing glasses to carry around the gallery with you. Not know­ing much about print­mak­ing, I appre­ci­ated that the cura­tors pro­vided good expla­na­tions of the processes, often show­ing mul­ti­ple ver­sions of the same print to show how changes in tech­nique can alter the final product.

Us on the Marin Headlands

The next day, we headed over the moun­tains to the Bay Area to stay with our friends David and Francesca. We had a pretty relax­ing visit — one day hang­ing out in Berke­ley, and one in San Fran­cisco. Among other things, we made a pil­grim­age to the orig­i­nal Peet’s, drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, shopped at the City Lights Book­store (where many of the beat poets hung out, and one of the best book­stores I’ve ever been to), and vis­ited the Legion of Honor Art Museum (more on that in another post). Our one sched­uled event while we were in Cal­i­for­nia was a great one — my mom took us to see Wicked. Veron­ica had seen it before, but the other two of us hadn’t. The pseudo-clockwork set was very cool, the show was funny, and the singers were amaz­ing. The lead roles were being played by the stand­bys, but they were great; except for the pro­gram, I wouldn’t have known they weren’t the regulars.

I didn’t take all that many pho­tos on the trip, but click the thumb­nails above to see my small­ish gallery. I’ll leave you with a pic­ture of Veron­ica behind bars at Bat­tery Spencer, over­look­ing the Golden Gate Bridge:

Enter­ing the Cave

Over labor day week­end, my dad drove up to Wis­con­sin for a visit. Among other things, we hit the farm­ers’ mar­ket, went for a bike ride, and attempted to tour the Cap­i­tal Brew­ery (but, they were closed for a pri­vate event). But, one of the coolest things we did was a visit to the Cave of the Mounds in Blue Mounds, Wis­con­sin. The cave, which has no nat­ural open­ings of sig­nif­i­cant size, was dis­cov­ered in 1939 dur­ing a lime­stone quar­ry­ing oper­a­tion. Quar­ry­ing was halted, the cave was quickly devel­oped, and pub­lic tours began the fol­low­ing year. Though not a huge cave, the tour took about an hour. High­lights included a six-foot long cephalo­pod fos­sil in the cave’s ceil­ing and some inter­est­ing mul­ti­col­ored cave for­ma­tions.

Pur­ple Asters with Bugs

Cave of the Mounds also offers a cou­ple of short above-ground trails, which we walked after emerg­ing from the cav­ern. The trails offered myr­iad beau­ti­ful plant life, lots of insects and spi­ders, and not a few birds. I wasn’t able to get any decent bird pic­tures, but I did get a few good flower and bug pho­tos. Veron­ica gets the buf-spotting prize for the day; she found a katy­did blend­ing in with leaves, a cou­ple of siz­able grasshop­pers, and a bunch of daddy-long legs, all of which seemed quite con­tent to stay put long enough to be pho­tographed. Click here to see all of my above and below-ground pho­tos from Cave of the Mounds.

Also, here are some of my pre­vi­ous wild cav­ing pic­tures taken in Ten­nessee caves: Camp’s Gulf Cave, Indian Grave Point Cave, Cave of the Skulls, and Christ­mas Cave.

Golden Gate Bridge

The week before last, I headed out west to visit my mom in Nevada. We spent one day at Lake Tahoe, swim­ming, sun­ning, and Shake­speare­ing. We saw Much Ado About Noth­ing, which was far bet­ter than last year’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream. The next day, we drove to Napa (by way of Fry’s Elec­tron­ics) to visit friends Mark and Dawn. We weren’t there long enough to actu­ally tour any winer­ies, but we did take a scenic drive through the vineyards.

Most of our time, though, was spent in the Bay Area. We again stayed with friends David and Francesca (and their daugh­ter Maria) in Oak­land. Our intent was to have a relax­ing visit, so we spent quite a bit of our time there just hang­ing out and doing some shop­ping in Berke­ley. I made a pil­grim­age to the orig­i­nal Peet’s on Vine, and picked up a good sup­ply of Moli­nari salame — one of my favorite foods in the world — at Gen­ova Del­i­catessen. I also made a trip to Forrest’s for a bas­soon pickup (more on that soon).

Sphinx Out­side the de Young

My mom and I only went across the bay to San Fran­cisco on one day, but we squeezed in quite a bit. We started off at the de Young Museum to see the trav­el­ing King Tut exhibit. We got there early, and man­aged to see much of it before the crowds arrived. The exhibit included many arti­facts asso­ci­ated with Tutankhamun’s prob­a­ble ances­tors (his pre­cise lin­eage is uncer­tain), as well as those from the tomb of the boy king him­self. Unfor­tu­nately the most famous Tut arti­fact, his gold funeral mask, no longer trav­els out­side Egypt. But there was cer­tainly no short­age of other breath­tak­ingly beau­ti­ful objects to see.

Golden Gate Park Band

We spent about an hour and a half work­ing our way through the exhibit, then spent some time else­where in Golden Gate Park. We took a stroll through the Japan­ese tea gar­den, although since we’d just stopped at the de Young’s cafe, we didn’t actu­ally have tea. Then, we walked over to the Tem­ple of Music, where the Golden Gate Park Band was set­ting up for an after­noon con­cert. That afternoon’s con­cert con­sisted of all Broad­way tunes, and we stuck around and lis­tened for a lit­tle while.

Kite­boarder Under the Bridge

We’d brought a pic­nic lunch with us, and we drove out to the beach to eat it. It was over­cast and hazy, but still nice to sit on the sand and enjoy the sea breeze dur­ing our meal. After lunch, we headed over to the Golden Gate Bridge. We parked at bridge level and walked down a steep path to the water­front near Fort Point. The clouds were low enough to obscure the tops of the bridge’s tow­ers, which made for some dra­matic photo oppor­tu­ni­ties. Many sail­ing craft of all sorts were out on the bay that day, tak­ing advan­tage of the brisk wind. We spot­ted a group of kite board­ers zoom­ing across the water. A cou­ple of the more dar­ing ones were play­ing under the bridge and even beyond it in the open ocean.

As usual, click the pho­tos above for larger ver­sions, or check out the whole gallery here. The gallery con­tains a panorama of the city across the bay I stitched together from five or six sep­a­rate pic­tures. The ver­sion in the gallery isn’t very big, though. Here’s a much larger ver­sion.

Vir­ginia & Truc­kee
Loco­mo­tive #27

Last Mon­day, I paid a visit to the Nevada State Rail­road Museum in Car­son City. I’ve always been fas­ci­nated by trains — I used to spend long hours play­ing with my elec­tric train set, tak­ing over as much floor space in the liv­ing room as I could get away with. I still like watch­ing trains go by, and have taken some rail­road pho­tos before. The museum is small, but they’ve man­aged to pack quite a bit into the avail­able space. Also, they’ve done a pretty good job with the inter­pre­tive signs that accom­pany each exhibit. The museum’s col­lec­tion and exhibits focus on the Vir­ginia & Truc­kee Rail­road. The V&T was a short line that ran from 1870 until 1938 1950, con­nect­ing the mines in and around Vir­ginia City with ore pro­cess­ing plants in Car­son City and Reno. Pas­sen­ger trains ran between these cities and sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties, as well. Update: See NSRM vol­un­teer Jim Lohse’s com­ment on this post for more about the final days of the V&T.

V&T #22 — Inyo

The crown jewel of the museum’s col­lec­tion is Vir­ginia & Truc­kee Loco­mo­tive #22, which was given the name Inyo. The Inyo was built in 1875 by the Bald­win Loco­mo­tive Works in Philadel­phia, PA. The loco­mo­tive pulled both freight and pas­sen­ger trains on the V&T for about 50 years, being more or less retired in 1926. This yeo­man ser­vice surely earned the Inyo the admi­ra­tion of its engi­neers and crew, but its real fame did come about until later. In 1937, Para­mount Pic­tures acquired two loco­mo­tives and a num­ber of rail­cars from the V&T for use in movies. The Inyo’s first on-screen appear­ance was in the Jerome Kern/Oscar Ham­mer­stein musi­cal High, Wide, and Hand­some. The loco­mo­tive also appeared in Union Pacific, Red River, and The Great Loco­mo­tive Chase. But, the role in which I know the Inyo best is in the old TV show “The Wild Wild West” — the 60s series on which the hor­ri­ble Will Smith/Kevin Kline movie was loosely based. Para­mount sold the Inyo to the State of Nevada in 1974, and sub­se­quently under­went restora­tion to its orig­i­nal appear­ance and functionality.

A Union Pacific Caboose
Out­side the Museum

In addi­tion to the two loco­mo­tives pic­tured above (and their ten­ders), the main museum build­ing cur­rently houses a box car, a flat car, and a cou­ple of pas­sen­ger coaches. There are a cou­ple of smaller-scale exhibits as well. HO-scale mod­els of var­i­ous his­toric pas­sen­ger trains are dis­played in a case next to a work­ing HO lay­out. A small case con­tains items from Nevada’s “Merci Car” — one of 49 box­cars given to the cit­i­zens of the US by France fol­low­ing World War II. My favorite of the smaller exhibits was “Loco­mo­tive Sto­ries of the V&T.” This con­sists of exquis­itely detailed hand­made mod­els of six­teen V&T loco­mo­tives, cre­ated by George L. Richard­son and donated to the museum. The mod­els are accom­pa­nied by pho­tographs of the orig­i­nal loco­mo­tives in ser­vice, infor­ma­tion about their con­struc­tion and use, and details about their cur­rent sta­tuses and post V&T uses, if any.

Turntable and Roundhouse

The museum grounds include a num­ber of things out­side the main build­ing. A Union Pacific caboose (pic­tured above) sits on rails just out­side the museum proper. Not far from that is a round­house with accom­pa­ny­ing turntable. The muse­ums col­lec­tion is much larger that what is on dis­play, and at any one time, a few of its pieces are under­go­ing restora­tion. Although I wasn’t able to inves­ti­gate fur­ther, I assume that this round­house is used for both stor­age and restora­tion. A short track encir­cles the museum grounds, con­nect­ing to the round­house and serv­ing a small recre­ated sta­tion. Steam trains and gas-powered motor­cars tra­verse this track dur­ing warmer months — I look for­ward to revis­it­ing the museum when they’re running.

View From 9,123 Feet

Last Sun­day, my mom and I drove back up to Tahoe, this time to the south end of the lake. Just on the Cal­i­for­nia side of the CA/NV bor­der lies the Heav­enly Moun­tain Resort, a pop­u­lar des­ti­na­tion for skiers and snow­board­ers. We weren’t there for the ride down the moun­tain, though; we were there for the ride to the top, and the views it would afford of the lake and other sur­round­ing moun­tains. The lower end of the ski area is actu­ally quite a way up the moun­tain, and is acces­si­ble either by road, or by a 2.4-mile-long gon­dola lift (our choice).

Gon­do­las Leav­ing the
Bot­tom Station

The gon­do­las leave from a sta­tion that sits at about 6,200 feet, less than a half mile from the shore of Lake Tahoe. As you ride to Malcolm’s Deck — the first stop — you climb an ear-popping 3,000 feet or so. In the photo at left, the ver­ti­cal white line on the left side is the path the gon­do­las take up the moun­tain. The Deck sits below the actual ski area, and is solely for sight-seeing. On the day we vis­ited, the resort was packed with skiers and snow­board­ers, but they all con­tin­ued up the moun­tain, leav­ing the Deck much less crowded. The view from 9,123 feet is spec­tac­u­lar — you can see prac­ti­cally all of the 191 square miles of lake sur­face, and moun­tains in every direc­tion. Smaller and closer sights include inter­est­ing rock for­ma­tions, snow-covered conifers, and lit­tle chick­adees flit­ting around in the snow.

View on the Trip Down

After we’d had our fill of the view (and hot choco­late), we hopped back into a gon­dola and rode to the bot­tom of the ski area. This actu­ally involved a neg­li­gi­ble change in ele­va­tion — we only climbed another 30 feet or so. The resort actu­ally strad­dles the state line, and at the ski area, one has to choose between Cal­i­for­nia trails (to the right) or Nevada trails (to the left). We stayed only briefly at the top, then again boarded a gon­dola for the trip back down the moun­tain. As it was early in the day, few peo­ple were trav­el­ing back down, and we man­aged to get a gon­dola all to our­selves. The view trav­el­ing down the line was quite impressive.

As usual, click the pho­tos above to view the entire gallery.

We cel­e­brated Christ­mas in Car­son City this year, where my mom recently started a new job as the Folk­life Pro­gram Coor­di­na­tor at the Nevada Arts Coun­cil. We spent the morn­ing extract­ing good­ies from our stock­ings, gorg­ing our­selves on crème brûlée French toast, and unwrap­ping presents. After a bit of loung­ing around, we bun­dled up, piled into my mom’s car, and set out west towards Lake Tahoe.

Car­son City lies at about 4,800 feet above sea level, and the sur­face of Lake Tahoe is at 6,229 feet. Between the two lie some of the Sier­ras, which we crossed via Spooner Pass (at 7,146 feet) on U.S. 50. We approached the lake sort of in the mid­dle of the east­ern side, and our first view as we emerged from the moun­tains was absolutely breath­tak­ing. We drove a lit­tle ways towards the south end, stop­ping a cou­ple of times along the way to enjoy the scenery and take some pic­tures. At our sec­ond stop, we came upon the M.S. Dixie, one of a num­ber of Mis­sis­sippi River pad­dle­wheel­ers that have been brought to Tahoe over the years.

Next, we turned around and headed for Incline Vil­lage at the north end of the lake. We stopped once more along the way at a spot with lots of big rocks along the shore. I ven­tured out as far as I could onto the rocks, in order to get a good look into the water. Lake Tahoe is amaz­ingly clear, with an aver­age vis­i­bil­ity of around 70 feet. This has appar­ently declined in recent years, with ear­lier mea­sure­ments of water clar­ity top­ping 100 feet. A vari­ety of fac­tors are thought to have caused the decrease in clar­ity, most of which are directly related to human activ­i­ties on, in, and around the lake. For­tu­nately, it seems that the com­mu­ni­ties around Tahoe are becom­ing aware of their own impact on the lake, and are work­ing to pre­vent fur­ther contamination.

As usual, click any of the pic­tures above to view the whole gallery.

A few weeks ago, Veron­ica and I spent the week­end at her grandmother’s in Neshkoro, WI. It was a nice relax­ing week­end — we read, hung out on and around a cou­ple of lakes, went canoing, and made s’mores two nights in a row. On Sat­ur­day after­noon, we took a neighbor’s pedal boat out on the lake. Those things are not built for any­one taller than about 5’6″. But, I digress. Soon after leav­ing shore, we spot­ted a great blue heron fish­ing for its lunch. We stalked it for awhile, and I took a bunch of pic­tures. Luck­ily, we were sta­ble enough for me to use a long lens. Three of my best pics are below, and there are a few more in the gallery.