Explore the World

Well, it's the first of the month again and once again, it's time for P.J.'s monthly photo blog. This time the theme is "Explore the World" and while I didn't leave the country or even the state, I did get around, so I have lots of shots to choose from for this month's theme. Without further ago, here's my take on the theme, Explore the World.

1. Reaching milestones

Part of the fun of geocaching are the goals that we attain as we play this silly game. I keep a number of goals in the back of my mind all the time just in case. Sometime back in February, someone told me that they were going to make one of their number milestones the Block Party in Elysian Park near Dodger Stadium. Geocaching has given any Mega Event (Events over 300 people attending) the chance to be a Block Party this year since it's Geocaching's 25th year of existence. The Block Party icon is different than the normal Mega event icon, which got me to thinking. I wonder if I could get my numbers to such a point that I could make the Block Party a major milestone?

I looked at my numbers and I was in a dilemma as I would either have to really slow my amount of geocaching down in order to make my 26,000th geocache find the Block Party which I plan on attending in late June up in San Jose, or pick up the pace of my geocaching and make my 26,000th fall at the Block Party happening at the beginning of May. Well, as you can see, I picked up the pace considerable, and made the Spring Fling Block Party my 26,000th find since I started back in March of 2001. In reality, it's just a number and I have many of my friends that have bigger numbers in less years and others who have less numbers in about the same number of years as I have been geocaching, but it's kind of cool to look at my geocaching profile and see the icon as 26,000. WARNING! If you click on that link, you'll be inundated by more maps and statistics that you probably thought were possible, but it'll give you a little bit of a glance into some of the things that interests me when I'm geocaching.

2. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Another thing that interests me is walking around in cemeteries. Yeah, that might sound kind of morbid, but usually I'm there for a purpose. In this case, I was up visiting my tiny human just before Memorial Day weekend and on one of the days when she was at pre-school, I decided to visit the town of Colma, California. Colma has the distinction of most of its land being dedicated to cemeteries and the dead in town number around 1.5 million, which outnumbers the living by about 1000 to 1. This has led to Colma being called "the City of the Silent" and has given rise to a humorous motto that was featured on the city's website in the past: "It's great to be alive in Colma." I actually visited a couple of cemeteries in Colma as there were earth caches to discover and a virtual cache as well. Sometimes people will place Adventure Labs at cemeteries to allow people to discover some of the interesting aspects of that particular cemetery. I was actually doing research at Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in order to create my own Adventure for others to discover.

When I wander around cemeteries, it's also intriguing to figure out why people ended up there as opposed to somewhere else. I know that most of the San Francisco politicians end up being buried in Colma, because there isn't any land available in San Francisco proper to be buried unless you have a plot in one of the military cemeteries there. But others make you think a little bit, for example Joltin' Joe. He was born in Martinez, California, but spent most of his adult life in New York and later Florida. Why did he choose to be buried in this particular Catholic cemetery in Colma? And it's especially intriguing since none of the rest of his family are buried there.  His brother Dom is buried in Massachusetts and his other brother Vince is buried at Ft. Bragg National Cemetery in California. But after a little digging, I figured out that both of his parents are buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in the Mausoleum, so now it makes sense.

3. Always watch where you put your feet

Coming home from Colma, I stopped in several locations to find some geocaches and I stopped in a Park n Ride just off the freeway. I pulled into the parking lot, parked the car, then got out and walked through the lot over to where the geocache was hidden. The cache wasn't hidden very well, as I could see it as I walked up and I was focused on it as I took my first step off of the pavement into the surrounding terrain. Something in the back of my mind said, "Self, have you looked to see where your feet are going to land?" So I glanced down and then pulled my foot back as I was about to step on this nice 3 foot gopher snake. Curious, it didn't seem to be the least bit interested in me and didn't flee right away, which allowed me to get several shots off, before it decided to head down a hole which was right in front of it.

So I circled around the snake, went over and found the geocache, signed the log sheet, replaced the geocache, turned around and was surprised to see the snake in the same spot, about a third of the way down the hole.  What the heck? About the time I got close, I saw the snake jerk a little bit and then I could see its body tense up. Then I understood. It had been silently waiting for that squirrel or gopher to come out of the hole and I kind of interrupted its lunch. So it went after the rodent instead. I believe it had a hold of the rodent in the hole and was slowly tensing its body in order for the rodent to expire so it could have lunch. Lots of constrictor snakes don't need to wrap their bodies around their food, they just have to maneuver them into an area where they can press against it and basically accomplish the same thing as constricting around the animal.

At that point in time, I could hear my own lunch calling my name, so I left the snake go and walked back over to the car. As I drove out of the Park n Ride, I could see the snake still partway in the hole, so I'm pretty sure that's what it was doing.

4. Zoo and Museum with the tiny human

Friday of Memorial Day weekend was a "Day with Daddy and Papa." The tiny human didn't have pre-school that day, so we decided to go down to Palo Alto to a children's museum and zoo. Meercats, giant tortoises, flamingoes, rabbits were all on display. 

There were several areas that were designed for children to view the animals in a different way, including this very large tank of African Cichlids. Of all the photos that I took of my tiny human this weekend, I believe this is my favorite of them all. She just loved looking at the fish and we stayed there quite a while until other aspects of the zoo and museum beckoned.

5. David in pieces

On the last day of the month I went geocaching with a friend of mine down in the Fullerton area. On the campus of Cal State Fullerton was a new Adventure Lab that highlighted some of the pieces of artwork that dotted the campus. One of the places the Adventure took us to was this life size replica of the statue of David, although it was in pieces, with just the feet still in the upright position. The statue was originally installed at the Forest Lawn cemetery in Cypress, California, but fell over and was damaged beyond repair during the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake.

Donated to the CSUF campus, it was installed in pretty much the way the statue was laying when it fell. The Adventure also went on to say that campus legend states that you will receive good luck on your finals if you rub a certain area of David. Hmmm.  I wonder what that could be?

And there you have it, my take on the theme for this month of Explore the World. Please feel free to comment. I will not bite and I read each and every comment and try to comment back on each one. Click on the link to P.J.'s page in order to see how others dealt with the same theme.

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.