The Original Stash and a Really Big Fork

This is a continuation of my entry from July 21st. It's more about geocaching, so if you're not interested, please feel free to move on. After getting the cache needed to the south of me, I hiked out and then headed up to visit the spot where Geocaching first started. Back in May 2000, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order which descrambled satellite GPS signals making handheld GPS units exceedingly more accurate. This also lead to navigation systems in the cars which are pretty ubiquitous. It also lead to the game we know as geocaching.

A man in Oregon, Dave Ulmer thought that if he hid a container in the woods and took a geographic reading, he could then publish the coordinates of that container on line and other people could go out and find it. He did and the next day someone else found his five gallon container using just his handheld GPS unit. Originally, the containers were called "stashes," but eventually it evolved into the game of Geocaching we know today.

The original stash is long gone, but parts of it still survive and are brought around to different large events all around the world. There is now a plaque placed where the original stash was placed and you can visit it if you know the coordinates. Needless to say, this is one of the places geocachers want to visit and I was no exception. I stopped at the turnout, geeked out for awhile, found the other geocache that was nearby, took photos and then went on my way back to my motel.

Later that evening, I went to a nearby area to find another virtual geocache and discovered a great spot to eat dinner. What's not to like about good taco trucks? Anyway, this was the perfect location for a giant fork.  No really, it's probably one of the largest forks I've ever seen in my life, but it was a great way to bring people into the food court area. I can honestly say I've had better, but then again, I can also say that I enjoyed myself here, so it was good.

After getting back to my motel room, I planned out the next day's adventure. Part of it would be a foray into the state of Washington to get a couple of caches for a challenge that I wanted to complete. But that would be the second goal of the day because the primary goal was to find the third oldest geocache still active in Oregon which would complete another challenge that I'd been working on for several years.

Exploration

It's the beginning of the month and although it's a little late, it's time for P.J.'s photo blogging challenge for the month of February. The theme this past month was Exploration. After looking at my photos that I took last month, the explore theme fell right into my lap and the tough part was picking the photos that I wanted to represent each exploration, but I narrowed them down to five and so here we go.  This is my take on the theme Exploration.

First off, I want everyone to know right now that most of this post will be about geocaching, so if you're not interested in geocaching, then feel free to stop at this point in time. All of the photos for this month's theme dealt with geocaching in one form or another, sort of.

1. Exploring Geology

The first weekend in February I took a road trip to southwestern Arizona, most particularly, Yuma, Arizona. The geocaching group down there hosts a large event on the Sunday and there's all sorts of things happening the entire weekend. One of the things I like to do when I'm on a road trip is to get as many different icons (geocaching types) as possible. One of the types that I found that weekend were five earth caches, where you learn about a geologic phenomenon of some kind, then answer some questions regarding what you've seen.

This particular earth cache is located just north of the town square in Yuma. We actually had a little time to kill before heading down to the town square for a flash mob event, so we stopped off here to study the rock and answer the questions put to us on the cache page. Most geologists that I know always carry a coin in their pockets so they can use it as a reference marker for grain size of a particular rock, hence the photo of the quarter on this rock. We ended up finding five different earth caches that weekend, not a large total, but it was enough for us with all of the other things that we explored that weekend.

2. Exploring History

One of the newer types of geocaches are the Adventures. They are kind of a cross between a multi cache and a virtual cache. We did quite a few Adventures on our way down to Yuma, mainly because it was raining all the way down there and the Adventures tend to work better, because you're looking for information, as opposed to an actual container and so you can usually get the answer much more quickly.

However, several of the Adventures that we'd chosen to do that day were quite moving and we ended up getting pretty wet in the process. One Adventure in Cathedral City had a stop at a Cancer Survivor's Park, which, for obvious reasons, was quite emotional for me. I chose not to post a photo for that one, mainly because I didn't feel a got any really good photos and so I opted to post this second photo instead.

This Adventure was in Palm Desert and explored a huge park in the city. One of the stops along the Adventure was the Desert Holocaust Memorial. This particular sculpture was right in the middle of the spot and I felt the sculptor caught the essence of the tragedy of this event. I hope I was able to convey with my photo what I felt the sculptor had already done.

3 & 4. Exploring Food

In our local geocaching community, I have a reputation of liking my food and I also have a reputation that when I say I'm hungry, that's usually the signal that we need to stop very soon and find a place to eat, otherwise "Webfoot" is going to get hangry. And hangry Webfoot is not a pleasant individual to be around. On this trip, I don't think I ever had to worry about being hangry, or even hungry because we ate well.

We were in the Palm Springs area on the first day and my daughter, when she heard that we were going to be going through Palm Springs, recommended Sherman's Deli and Bakery. The menu was extensive and I eventually settled on Sherman's Philly, with brisket, peppers, onions and provolone. Then of course, I almost had buyer's regret when I saw the man at the next table get served his Reuben sandwich. Man, that looked good, but once my sandwich came, I was all in. I guess what this really means is I need to go back there again to try the Reuben. Yeah, I can do that.

We had an asian buffet later that weekend and the last night we were there, we had fantastic Mexican food at this place that used to serve up from a Taco truck, but in the past year or so have found a brick and mortar building to serve great food. After we finished there, I mentioned that we really needed to go get some ice cream and so we ended up driving up to Mooos Creamery.

The wait was a little long, but the ice cream was worth the wait. My friend Kami had already decided when we walked into the place that she was going to sit on the ice cream bench as opposed to a booth, and so that's why we ended up there.The place had so many choices, that this is one of those places where you're going to have to go back more than once to really enjoy yourself. I had two different flavors and I could have probably chosen six or seven different ones; they all looked so good. Once we were totally satiated with that, as always, we checked our geocaching apps and realized there was a geocache right behind the building, so we walked out and around to the back of the building to score one more find before the night was done.

5. Exploring Geography

If you don't already know it, then I should tell you that I majored in Geography in college. I ended up taking a physical geography course while in community college and I was off and running from there. I'd found a subject that really interested me and I took more and more courses there and when I transferred to Humboldt State University, I continued to take courses in Geography pursuant to my degree.

I can honestly say that most of my hobbies revolve around geography in some way or another. I discovered Where's George? the dollar bill tracking web site. You enter your dollar bills, mark them in some way telling people to come to the website and then you spend your money in the hope that it will show up again. This hobby led me to Geocaching and although I still find Where's George? interesting, it's more of a passive type of hobby since you can't really control where your bills go.

Geocaching, on the other hand, you control what you do.  You want to go on a road trip to find geocaches? Go for it. You want to find urban micros? Go for it. I guess the point I'm trying to make is you can decide how your geocaching hobby works for you and that's why I like it so much more so than Where's George? I think that I like geocaching so much more because it involves all sorts of the different types of geography that I studied when I was in college, physical, historical, political, and many others.

Geography in general is a combination of different fields that sort of overlap. For instance in this last photo, we can see the physical geography of an area, what the lay of the land is doing and how those mountains in the background might be influenced by the river that you can't quite see behind me (that's an irrigation canal directly behind me). You can also see the political and human implications if you explore more deeply into this photo. I found this photo interesting from that point of view. Here I am, exploring my hobby of geocaching in Arizona, with California over my left shoulder and Mexico over my right shoulder.

And there you have it, my interpretation of the theme for this month Exploration. Please feel free to stop by P.J.'s blog and see how he and others interpreted the same theme. Please feel to comment here. I promise, I won't bite.

When is Graffiti not Graffiti?

Every now and then I stumble across things that make me go "Hmmmmm." I'm sure most people have a working definition of graffiti, but I thought, why not write about it anyway. I'm sure most people would recognize the artwork on this truck which was parked on a street in San Francisco as graffiti.

According to most sources, "graffiti is a form of visual communication, usually illegal, involving the unauthorized marking of public space by an individual or group." In each of the three examples I'm posting with this, I'm pretty sure that the image makers were not given permission to create what they created, although some will argue, and I think rightfully so, that the middle example probably didn't need permission before creating what they did. But are we sure that the first example of the truck isn't a piece of art that's on display on the streets? I did not research who created the artwork on the truck. I didn't feel like I had to.

What I wanted to do was examine each piece and try and figure out if it's art, graffiti, or something else entirely. I think I would argue that all three pieces are art and graffiti. The phrase, "One person's trash is another person's treasure" comes to mind immediately. I think most people would say that the first piece is graffiti, but some graffiti is wonderful art at the same time. If you don't believe me, then look at the last photo I've attached to this. Those images, on the last four columns, are original graffiti that was placed on the Berlin Wall during the Cold War era.

The second one is the most interesting, I believe. If we look at the definition that I wrote earlier we can makes some judgements about it. Visual Communication?  I would say so. Illegal? Hard to say, but probably not. Unauthorized marking of a public space? Probably, but then again, the Ancients of Utah and Colorado probably didn't have the concept of ownership of land, so it was all public space and who's to say they didn't have permission to create those symbols on that rock outcropping? Today, I know that almost everyone who sees this would view it as artwork, not to be disturbed. I mean, the state of Colorado has viewing points set up alongside the road where you can look at these pieces of art from afar. There are also posted signs stating that the defacement of the art is considered a crime. 

So I guess, time plays an element in all of this. Even the National Park Service has weighed in on this issue. While they don't condone graffiti, they actually preserve graffiti in some of the areas they are set up to protect. I know of at least one instance in Great Basin National Park where writing inside of Lehman Caves inside the park have been preserved as part of the history of the park and cave. The writings (mostly signatures and dates) were done by employees of the National Forest Service over a hundred years ago. Time heals all wounds?

What it boils down to I guess is the public's perception of it or maybe the authority's perception of it. The Berlin Wall, when it was all in Berlin was a striking example of this. The western side contained all of the graffiti. The eastern side was pretty much pristine. Different forms of authority obviously made this a reality. People in West Berlin let their feelings known about the wall in the one way they could at the time and that was by drawing on it. People on the east side didn't not have that kind of freedom since there were barriers in place that prevented people from even getting close enough to it to place graffiti on it.

And while I don't like the gang related graffiti that is so pervasive in some areas, I'm not going to deny that some of it is amazing artwork. What's your take on this? Graffiti? Art? A combination of both? As always, comments are welcome.

Curbside Appeal

The title of this blog is Webfoot Wanderings, but it seems like I haven't been wandering very much outside of my own town. So, I guess I'll take what I can get. 

On my Instagram account (@webfoot55), I posted a photo of an imprint that I used to see all the time growing up in Santa Ana, CA. This photo was actually taken in Claremont, CA, but it reminded me of the neighborhood where I grew up, so I took a photo of it. I also liked the fact that this particular imprint, designating when the cement for the sidewalk or curb in this case, was poured. Contractors would get some free advertising and the city would get some nice curbs and sidewalks, plus an additional bonus of some historical perspective. Kind of nice to realize this particular curb has been around since before my parents were born.

Most of these imprints seem to come in two different varieties, either stamped into the face of the curb, or stamped at the junction between two pieces of the sidewalk. I seem to remember that most of these in Santa Ana tended to be in the sidewalks as opposed to the curbs. Claremont seems to have both. It's probably more of the contractor's preference more than anything else. The one posted above is the oldest I've seen, but there's one on a sidewalk north of my house that is dated 2002, so they've been used at least in the last two decades.

As I wandered around town today, I did notice that the sidewalk version of these imprints tended to be more worn than the curbside imprints. That's pretty obvious since there's a lot more foot traffic and so erosion is going to take its toll over the course of the years. I found one in a sidewalk today dated 1947 that was very difficult to read, almost looking like 1997. That was highly improbable however, due to the age of the houses and the look of the rest of the sidewalk on either side of that particular imprint. But hopefully you can see the difference between the first two images, the first being on the side of the curb, while the second is in the sidewalk. The curb imprint appears to be in much better shape than the sidewalk imprint, which is 27 years younger. Between these two imprints were other imprints dated 1943, 1946, and 1947, showing the progress of the streets, curbs and sidewalks northward leading to Route 66 which is Foothill Blvd., in Claremont. That's a nice historical record there.

However, the historical record is slowly being wiped away by progress and government laws. Not that this is a bad thing, it's just happening. Tree roots uplift the sidewalk and sidewalks need to be replaced, or shave down. If the tree happens to uplift a section of sidewalk that the imprint is on, the imprint will either be shaved away as the city attempts to even out the pavement, or be replaced entirely by another section of pavement.

The American with Disabilities Act (ADA) has also taken a toll on these historical artifacts. This law, passed in 1990, is a civil rights law which prevents discrimination against individuals with disabilities. It's the reason we have ramps now at street corners so people in wheel chairs can traverse throughout the city in which they live without having to bump off a curb, or go down the street to the nearest driveway so they can cross the street. As you can see in the third shot, what is likely a 1926 vintage imprint was wiped out because the curbing at this point had to be lowered to accommodate wheelchair access. 

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about the ADA, I'm just noting that the law has some unintended consequences. Stuff happens. Some of these will hang around for a longer time frame, while others will disappear due to where they were placed.

Which brings me to my final thought. I seem to remember that most of the imprints in my Santa Ana neighborhood tended to be in sidewalks, but I also seem to remember them being on corners. I wonder if most of them have been wiped out because newer wheelchair accessible sidewalks have had to be built? I guess I need to head back to the old neighborhood sometime to see if those are still there.

Abilene

This entry is another trip back in time to the 2017 road trip my youngest and I took that summer. After touring Harry Truman's library in Independence, MO, we crossed over into Kansa for a short trip to Abilene. Why Abilene? Well, we had some geocaching to do, plus some more history, since Abilene is where Dwight D. Eisenhower's Presidential Library is located. It's also the northern terminus for the Texas Cattle Trail. We learned that while finding a virtual geocache at the boulder that marked the terminus of the trail in the middle of town. After checking in to our motel, we just sat around as we were going to visit the library the next day. My youngest hung out in the room and I found some nearby geocaches and then we called it a night.

The next morning we drove south a couple of miles to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Museum and toured both his boyhood home and then later in the morning the library and museum dedicated to his presidency. Eisenhower's house was enjoyable, but unfortunately, due to safety standards we weren't able to go upstairs to visit the upper rooms as the foundation established originally didn't want to have to alter the house in any way. Fire codes would have necessitated adding an outside fire escape on the upper floor and that was out of the question, so no one was allowed upstairs. It was still interesting as to what we saw. The family bible was on display and it had the birth record of Eisenhower displayed.

Following our tour, we headed over to the museum to learn about the life of our 34th president. It should be noted that this museum was originally operated by the Friends of Eisenhower and so did not have any Government influence at first. Eventually, the National Archives and Records Administration took over the library. Because of its origins, the library had a certain slant and there didn't seem to be a balance approach to the coverage of Eisenhower. Everything we saw was hued in a way to put Eisenhower in a positive light, contrary to what we had seen the day before at the Truman museum. Truman's was operated by the National Archives from the get go and presented, in my opinion, a much more balanced approach to Truman.

I was very pleased with the amount of artifacts from Eisenhower's life, including the Emmy he won for his extensive use of television during his presidency (thus far, he's the only president to win an Emmy). We were able to see his cars, his military uniforms, his cadet hat from West Point, plus a golf card for a round of golf with Ben Hogan, Paul Helms and George Allen. Hogan won the round straight up, but when you calculate the handicaps in, the president actually won the round.

The only thing I found curious about the library in general was the almost total lack of any mention of his wife Mamie at the library. One room had some artifacts, but for the most part, it was almost as if she was just a footnote on his historical journey through life. Maybe that's the way it was, but the other presidential libraries I've toured, the First Ladies were definitely a part of the history. Mamie didn't seem to be much of an influence in his life at all.

Once we'd toured the museum proper, we then walked across the ground and paid our respects at the graves of the President and First Lady. From there, it was time to drive the length of Kansas, heading to the Mecca of all geocachers, the oldest active geocache in the world.

Homeward Bound

The purpose of our 2017 road trip was to bring back family heirlooms from my father-in-law's house to his daughter who lives in Wisconsin. We spent a couple of days with my sister-in-law, then headed for home, taking a more southerly route on the way back to see other things, with our first stop being Springfield, Illinois. The trip out had mostly been scenic, with stops in several national parks, but the trip back would be more historical, with us visiting three different presidential libraries, so the focus of three of the next four posts will be a different presidential library. 

Obviously, we were in Springfield to see things related to Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president. Our first part of the day was devoted to the newly developed presidential library and museum. This particular library has been set up well after the death of Lincoln, so many things that are incorporated into other presidential libraries/museums weren't present at this one. One thing I have to say about this particular museum is, it's slick, meaning there's a lot of high tech things to keep everyone interested, but not a lot of artifacts that one would normally associate with a typical museum of someone's life.

We watched a presentation about Lincoln's time in office presented by a docent as he walked us through the Civil War, only to find out at the end that the docent was a hologram. Like I said, very slick and high tech. Now I have to assume his papers  and writings were probably over in the library part of these two buildings for scholars, but as a history buff, I would have liked to have seen actual artifacts that Lincoln used, etc. The lack of actual artifacts probably stems because of the amount of time between his death and the actual creation of the museum. Things like that tend to vanish into other private collections or, as in this case the National Park Service owns many actual artifacts at the Lincoln Home National Historic Site. 

I'd been to Lincoln's home when I was around 10 years old, but wanted to see it again as did my youngest. So after walking through the museum, we drove over to the Historic district and bought tickets for Lincoln's home tour. While we waited, we toured the grounds and the museum learning more about our 16th president. For those of you who don't know, Abraham Lincoln moved from Indiana to Illinois as a young man and settled in Springfield where he made his living as a lawyer and later as a politician. This house is the only house that he ever owned and many of the furnishings are original. You get a tour of both upstairs and down, seeing all of the rooms in the house. I asked about the tree out in front as there's a photo of the front of the house and the tree appears to be about the same height now as it was back in 1861 right before Lincoln was to head to Washington D.C. to become president. For historical accuracy, the National Park Service wanted to keep the tree the same height as it was in the photo, so the tree is literally dug up and a new tree is planted every so often, so the tree is not the original.

At the home, we were able to see a top hat that had been worn by Lincoln, furniture that was actually in the house when he moved to Washington, plus the bed that he slept in while living there for 16 years. The photo doesn't do the bed justice, but that bed is no longer than about 5 and a half feet in length and it could possibly be shorter. Knowing that he was our tallest president at 6 feet 4 inches, he had to have slept diagonally across the bed as there's no way he would have fit lengthwise. And yes, that's a chamber pot under the bed that would have had to have been used, at least in the winter months, due to the cold weather. I'm not sure if that was actually used by Lincoln or not and I didn't ask.

The house and grounds surrounding the house (they extend for several blocks in all directions from the house) are extensive and have many historical plaques to read as you wander around the grounds. Overall, this led to a much more pleasant experience for a couple of reasons. The museum was loud, there weren't as many actual historical artifacts that could be traced directly to Lincoln, while the Lincoln Home NHS had many artifacts and buildings that were standing during the time that he actually walked the streets of Springfield. Couple that with it being outdoors and the atmosphere was just more pleasant. I'm not saying to not go to the library. I thought it was a neat experience, but I thought his home was a better place representation of his life there in Springfield.

The next day was the 4th of July, the first that I would spend outside of California since I was 3 years old. 

Manzanar

One of the things I've always written about in all of my blogs are trips that I take that I find significant.  Back in 2017, I went on a 16 state road trip with my youngest and yet, for some strange reason, never chronicled that trip in any way, shape or form, outside of some photos that I posted to Facebook. I will attempt to rectify that over the course of the next couple of months as I share some of the photography from that trip and some of the places we visited along the way.

Originally, the two of us had thought about taking a trip to Yellowstone National Park that particular summer.  We had discussed it casually in the fall of the year before but hadn't really solidified anything, so it sort of stayed on the back burner.  Then in February of 2017, my father-in-law passed away and the family had to sort out his house and deal with the things that you have to deal with when a grandparent/parent dies.  There were several pieces of artwork that my wife's sister particularly wanted. The question was how to get it back to her in Wisconsin.  That's where the idea of this 16 day road trip was spawned.

We started planning our route out and once the planning had been done, I then started looking for places we could camp each night.  It was then my son pointed out the errors of my thought process by pointing out, that with all of the extra stuff we were taking back to Wisconsin with us, we wouldn't have any room in the Jeep for camping equipment.  Yeah, I'd sort of forgotten that the Jeep is a little bit smaller than our former minivan that we'd used on previous camping trips.

So we ended up staying most of the time in motels along the way. As with all of our road trips, geocaching is involved and so there were several goals attached to that end of the trip as well.  Getting different kinds of geocaches in each state we passed through, finding a geocache in every county we passed through in Nevada.  If we played our cards right, we'd have the entire state covered at the end.

So the trip started and we drove north on Hwy 395 through the Owens Valley up the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada, stopping for lunch, stopping for gas and stopping once again at Manzanar National Historic Site. I say, once again, because every time I head north along Hwy 395, I stop there.  The historical importance of this "Relocation Center" cannot be stressed enough.  Over 110,000 Japanese Americans were relocated to 10 different camps in the Western United States during World War II, ostensibly because of their race and who we were fighting in the war.  The premise that was given by our own government was that it was for the protection of the people in the camps.  If that was the case, why were the guns pointed inward at the camps?  I'll let that sink in a little.

The first time I visited, I was 19 years old and had no idea what Manzanar was all about.  I made sure each of my children visited the place at least once.  This should never happen again in our country.  Ever.