When we decided to go through Four Corners and to Mesa Verde, we heard about a coal-powered steam train that runs from Durango to Silverton in southwestern Colorado. As soon as I heard the word “Durango,” I wanted to go – coolest, most evocative Western town name! (The name actually comes from the Basque word “urango” meaning “water town” – not very romantic.)

Durango was founded by the Denver & Rio Grande Railway in 1879. The railroad arrived in Durango on August 5, 1881, and construction on the line to Silverton began in the fall of the same year. By July of 1882 (9 months later! – private money, not government), the tracks to Silverton were completed, and the train began hauling both freight and passengers. The line was constructed to haul silver and gold ore from the San Juan Mountains, but passengers soon realized it was the view that was truly precious. The train has been in continuous operation between Durango and Silverton since 1882, carrying passengers behind vintage steam locomotives and rolling stock indigenous to the line.

The train was steamed up and waiting for us at the station.

Patrick could have booked a seat in the cab with the engineer, but it would have cost $1000!

The narrow-gauge track follows the Animas River, back and forth on both sides of the river

for 3½ hours along cliffs,

through steep canyons,

and next to rock walls

of the most gorgeous granite you’ll ever see.

Along the side of the tracks we saw many piles of brush, and one of our fellow passengers, who had recently retired from the Forest Service, explained what they were: during the summer months, crews clear out underbrush that would be fuel for forest fires and leave it in piles. Then after the snow flies, they come through and torch it. Good plan! We saw no evidence of forest fires along the route.

In places the river was placid, but there were some rapids that invite white-water rafting in warmer weather.

Shortly before we arrived in Silverton, there was a train holdup! Masked men on horseback stopped the train and rode along the side.

They didn’t actually take our money, though, although we offered it – we know that volunteers often collect for charity by these train robberies.

Silverton is at 9,000 feet, and as we approached we began seeing snow on the San Juan Mountains to the east. These mountains are all over 10,000 feet high, but they seem shorter because we’re looking at them from only a few thousand feet lower.

The weather continues blessedly cool and comfortable, in the 60s and 70s. But the altitude is difficult to handle: our RV park and Durango are at 7,000 feet, and we haven’t been below 6,500 feet for several days. We have been told to drink liquids constantly, and we do. It seems that at these altitudes, ordinary breathing causes a loss of moisture, which leads to dehydration and headaches. Every night here I’ve woken up in the small hours with a headache, dry mouth, and thirst. I’m told our bodies are adjusting by producing more red corpuscles that will process oxygen better, but we’re not going to be hanging around long enough for those new corpuscles to catch up.

We had a couple of hours in Silverton, ate lunch, visited little shops – cute place, about what you’d expect.

Then we climbed aboard for the ride back to Durango, clickety clack, clickety clack. Fun day!

We woke up in Tuba City yesterday to a cool, crisp morning – yay! We have been hot for months, and we don’t like hot. At all. What a blessed relief. Finally!

Continuing northeast through the Navajo reservation, geologic history continued to unfold in the tiers of sandstone layer-caked in bands of red, bright orange-red, pink, and greyish-white,

with weirdly formed monadnocks dotting the landscape (monadnock: an isolated rock hill, knob, ridge, or small mountain that rises abruptly from a gently sloping or level surrounding plain).

Erosion reduces plateaus to mesas, mesas to buttes, and buttes to pinnacles. Every formation was interesting,

with the stories of mud, dinosaurs, inland seas and lagoons, wind, sea creatures, and sand dunes told in the structures left behind.

By lunchtime we reached Four Corners, the point where the states of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet. It is the only point in the United States shared by four states, and in addition it marks the boundary between two Native American governments, the Navajo Nation to the south (which maintains the monument and charges for entrance as a tourist attraction) and the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe Reservation. Like everyone else there, we had our photo taken:

The rock here changed from mostly red to mostly grey sandstone,

and as we drove into southwestern Colorado we found broad sweeps of mesas

and fewer of the bizarre monadnocks.

Our RV park is located just outside the entrance to Mesa Verde National Park, and from our site we have a stunning view of the eponymous mesa.

This morning we took a bus excursion called The 700 Years Tour to learn about the Ancestral Pueblo people who lived here. We had an excellent guide, an anthropologist/ biologist recently retired from 30 years with the National Parks System and equally conversant in the geology, archeology, flora and fauna of the park. We drove to and along the top of the mesa, carpeted with a dwarf juniper-piñon forest.

Unfortunately this part of Colorado has suffered drought for all but one of the past 17 years, which caused lightning-struck fires through two-thirds of the forest, so most of it now looks like this:

Because both juniper and piñon trees branch out immediately above the ground, a forest fire doesn’t just burn the needles or leaves at the treetops, it scorches everything down into the ground, including all the microbes and worms and everything. They estimate it will take 300-400 years for these forests to recover.

The mesa is not actually a mesa but a cuesta – an important distinction because a cuesta is not level, it slopes to one end. This cuesta slopes to the south, providing ideal growing conditions for the Puebloans as they transitioned from hunter-gatherers to farmers. You’d think that would be a good thing, right? But actually hunter-gatherers were healthier and had life easier: because they ate basically meat and veggies (the “paleo” diet), they were taller and healthier, had better teeth and fewer children (average two) because the women had so little body fat they rarely ovulated, and worked only about 19 hours a week to sustain themselves. As corn, beans, and squash (carbs) were introduced and became staples, women gained body fat and gave birth every year from the onset of menses until a young death – they have not yet found a female skeleton over the age of 30.

The Mesa Verde area was settled by 400 AD, and we saw evidence of early semi-subterranean “pit” houses with walls and roofs of mud, clay and grasses. Later they started building masonry walls and integrated villages rather than scattered homes. They developed pottery and replaced spears with bows and arrows.

We visited a structure called the Sun Temple, built over a period of some 20 years around 1200 AD and never finished. It’s large and finely crafted, obviously a ceremonial center.

The theory is that some change was taking place for the Pueblo people and maybe they were appealing to their gods for assistance or relief. Around this time they all started moving from the top of the cuesta to alcoves in the rock sides, spaces created by sandstone sitting on a shale (hardened ocean bottom) shelf where water had accumulated to carve out the alcoves from the softer sandstone.

Why did they move? Unknown. Because the population had grown so large that all the top of the cuesta was needed for crops, or for better protection from the elements, or for defense? Whatever the reason, they brought their masonry skills to the construction of complicated and elaborate pueblos in these alcoves, not just a few but many, many pueblos in many alcoves.

Our last stop was Cliff Palace, and there we climbed down the cliff to see it up close.

Going down was steep and precarious – no OSHA rules here! (Our guide told us they were grandfathered in.) In the picture above, it looks like a dollhouse – here’s one with people to show the scale:

This multi-storied pueblo is south- and southwest-facing, providing greater warmth from the sun in the winter, had 200 rooms, including storage rooms, open courts, walkways, and 23 kivas (round, below-ground ceremonial and communal gathering rooms). Many of the rooms had been plastered and brightly painted, with art on the walls. Standing right next to where these people lived a thousand years ago was mind boggling.

Then we climbed back up, and the way out was even more perilous than the trail down.

We used the same handholds that the Puebloans had carved out of the rock and worn with their fingertips when they went up and down the cliffs even before they moved into the alcoves.

They lived in these cliff dwellings for only about 80 years; by 1300 all the people were gone – no one knows why. The last quarter of the 13th century was dry, but they had survived droughts before. It was also unusually cold; this was the time of the mini-ice age in Europe. They probably went south to New Mexico and Arizona and became or merged with today’s Zuni, Laguna, and Acoma people. Our guide told us that when he has asked people from those tribes what their traditions tell them about why their ancestors left, they say: It was time to go.

We drove north from Phoenix through the surprisingly green Sonoran desert with its iconic Saguaro cactuses.

We’ve driven this road before, two years ago, on our way to Cottonwood and Sedona, but this time we stayed east and went through Flagstaff and into the Painted Desert and the huge Navajo reservation. North of Flagstaff, sheltered by its imposing San Francisco Peaks,

we passed through a volcanic area of cinder cones and craters. Then suddenly we were in the Painted Desert and the vast valley of the Little Colorado River. Most of this side of the valley, what is called the Moenkopi Foundation, is surfaced with dark red sandstone, shale, siltstone, and mudstone layers, in myriad combinations of colors.

The Moenkopi Foundation was laid down on an extensive west-sloping plain across which a Triassic sea advanced and retreated several times, leaving behind the bones of sea creatures that decomposed into sandstone and shale. Skeletons of fossil amphibians and casts of reptile footprints have been recovered from Triassic rocks over 250 million years old, at a time when the continents were still attached to one another.

Our road turned east and traveled through more colorful Mesozoic rock formations in hues of green, blue, and yellow as well as all the shades of red and pink.

The layers of rock were endlessly fascinating to watch. Photos can’t begin to do it justice.

Our destination for today was Tuba City, and I wondered what connection there could be between the Navajo and tubas. The story is that Tuba City was named to honor Chief Tuuvi, a Hopi leader of the late 19th century. The Navajo name for the town is Tó Naneesdizi, which refers to springs under the ground. The Navajo reservation completely surrounds the Hopi reservation, like a donut around its hole, and Tuba City is on the Navajo reservation, not the Hopi reservation, so I don’t know why the Navajos don’t call the town by its Navajo name instead of by an adaptation of a Hopi name. Clearly there’s a lot I don’t understand here.

Anyway, our RV park is just behind the Navajo Interactive Museum, a wonderful interpretive center that we spent some time in this afternoon. In it is a Code Talkers display that celebrates one of the most important moments in Marine Corps history, when during World War II 29 Navajo volunteers were recruited by a Marine general who had grown up with his missionary parents on the Navajo reservation. The Navajo language has a complex grammar and an unwritten language, and it was spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest. Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, made it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training, so it was thought that it could be used to transmit military information by undecipherable code.

Staged tests of these 29 volunteers under simulated combat conditions demonstrated that Navajo men could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds, versus the 30 minutes required by machines at that time. The Navajo code talkers were commended for their skill, speed, and accuracy demonstrated throughout the war. At the Battle of Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle. These six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error. Connor later stated, “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” By the end of the war, there were over 500 Code Talker Marines. The museum has a number of artifacts and memorabilia from their experiences.

In the cultural part of the museum, the first thing you see is a replica of a hogan, the traditional home of the Diné (Din-EH), which is actually what the Navajo call themselves. It can be round, cone-shaped, multi-sided, or square, with or without internal posts. The frame is covered with weeds, bark, or grass, and earth, except at the apex, where the smoke from the fire in the center of the floor is allowed to escape. The door always faces east to welcome the rising sun for blessings, wealth, and good fortune (which I believe is also a Chinese feng shui principle).

Inside were some beautiful pieces of pottery,

although the Navajo are known not for their pottery but for their weaving.

There were lots of magnificent examples of weaving that, I’m sorry to say, brought back the memory of when we wove small Navajo rugs in 3rd grade and a classmate convinced the teacher that my beautiful and intricate design was hers. I was stuck with her boring and misshapen rug, and I’m still pissed.

We traveled to Phoenix via Interstate10, and I was skeptical when I saw this segment designated as a Scenic Highway. I mean, I like the desert, but I wasn’t expecting real scenicness. But it was, it was just beautiful, right from the hills of Banning Canyon on the north that looked like the green rug my brother Steve used to heap up to make hills for train layouts

to the jaggedy young mountains on the south, nearer Phoenix, that I think were either the New Water or the Kofa Mountains. (I’m not sure which because I didn’t have an Arizona map and never knew exactly where we were.)

We were surprised to find Arizona much greener than the parched California that we’ve spent more than a month in. It seems the hurricanes that made San Diego so muggy brought actual rain to Arizona, lots of it, on numerous occasions. So unusual for this time of year!

In fact, we arrived in Phoenix in the last moments of a huge rainstorm that brought down trees, caused widespread power outages, and dumped record rainfall on Sky Harbor Airport. (Note: best airport name anywhere!)

Although the rain pretty much stopped before we got there, seeing Phoenix wet was just plain weird.

So why did I not have an Arizona map? It’s not like me to be unprepared in that way. It’s because we hadn’t planned to be in Arizona. The next chapter of this trip takes place in southern Utah, visiting the national parks there, and we had thought we’d be driving there through Nevada (which I do have a map for). But recently I got to thinking about the fact that it’s going to be hard for me to visit the Arizona Diamondbacks stadium during baseball season because I don’t want to GO to Arizona during baseball season – too hot! Then it’s also a fact that it’s possible to get to Utah by way of Phoenix rather than Las Vegas, that the last day of the regular baseball season is two days after the end of the muster, and that Phoenix is only 167 miles east of Hemet, so – here we are!

Chase Field, in downtown Phoenix, is about the same age as the Mariners’ Safeco Field, but the two are so different. For starters, Chase has a roof that is closed almost all the time due to the heat, so it has the feel of an indoor stadium, although there is glass that lets in sunlight high up, and natural grass. (Safeco doesn’t actually have a roof – it has a sort of umbrella, so it’s never completely closed, and when the roof is extended you can see the rain falling.) I know a lot of people like Chase, but for me an indoor baseball stadium immediately loses its raison d’être, and I just can’t like it very much.

The stadium has a very architectural look, inside and out, in the sense that you never forget that you’re in a built environment – everything you see has obviously been designed by CAD. The interior is visually very busy! The center field video scoreboard, known as DBTV, is one of the largest television screens in the country. During the game, DBTV has more stats posted on it about every hitter and pitcher than any one person would ever need to know, and lots more information gets put up there in between pitches. Then there are two large video boards on each side of it primarily used for the lineups, although sometimes that information disappears and other things go up. There’s also an electronic screen showing scores of other current games, and I think one for standings, and other electronics that I never did quite figure out.

However, for some reason we could never tell what the actual score in the game was. It was probably up there somewhere, but there was no plain hand-operated score board that would tell you what inning it was, and who was winning. It was all too busy and confusing. I compare it to the scoreboard at Fenway Park, which was also electronic, expensive, and sophisticated, but which somehow retained the simplicity and directness of an old-fashioned scoreboard.

We took our walkabout around the concourses and found much to like on the main concourse. The field is easily seen from everywhere, although places to relax and view the game from other than your paid seat were few. There are lots of suites. One unique feature of this stadium: a swimming pool and hot tub just beyond the right-centerfield fence. You have to reserve it ahead of time, just as you would a suite, for a mere $3500 per game. But you can invite up to 35 friends, and the pool opens two hours before first pitch and includes food and beverage – what a deal!

Now, you would assume that the Diamondbacks mascot would be a snake, right? and I was wondering how that snake would slither around and dance on the roof of the dugout and high-five the fans. But no. It’s D. Baxter, the Bobcat – ??

Chase Field does have a live organ player, and not a lot of overamplified recorded music is played during the game, which is a blessing. Artwork and historical pieces from all of baseball, not just the Diamondbacks, line many of the corridors, and they’re cool (especially the one of Kirk Gibson hitting the walk-off home run in Game 1 of the 1988 earthquake World Series).

But I was astonished not to see a single thing recognizing Randy Johnson, who only led the D-backs to a World Series win in 2001 and pitched a perfect game for Arizona in 2004. They don’t seem to celebrate their own history. What team doesn’t celebrate its own history? What team doesn’t boast that it’s better than everyone else in some way, that doesn’t think it should win and the other guys should lose? I think of the snarling tigers all over Tiger Stadium – you never forget whose stadium you’re in. Chase Field seems to profess a sort of pleasant neutrality, as if it’s the home of Anyteam, so as not to offend anyone. That seemed odd to me, off-key, as did a number of things about the park. There just seemed to be something lacking in this stadium, some essence of baseball, some nucleus of charm, that had been omitted in the CAD designs.

Now, I know you’re wondering about the food. Chase Field offers a huge variety of food throughout the ballpark and the concourse is lined with concession stands, permanent ones along the outside wall and various carts that are right above the seating areas, where they don’t block your view of the game. Many carts offer the D-Backs signature $4 beer, billed as the cheapest beer in Major League Baseball. There are chain outlets such as Fatburgers, Panda Express, Subway, and Cold Stone Creamery, which I don’t like to see at ballparks (although that didn’t stop us from having some CSC ice cream, very yummy).

Deciding what to eat took some research and thought, but we finally settled on a $7 Sonoran-style hot dog from Red Hot Grill. The thick, juicy dog comes wrapped in mesquite-smoked bacon, covered in pico de gallo and ranch-style beans, with an artistic drizzle of some sort of white stuff over all (sour cream? mayo?). Messy, but very, very tasty.

The D-Backs were playing the St Louis Cardinals, who had just clinched their playoff spot before the game. There were a lot of Cards fans in the house, as a lot of Phoenix residents and visitors are Midwesterners, and both teams wear red, so we heard cheering for both sides.

I was quite distracted, though, throughout the game because simultaneously the Mariners were playing the Angels with a wild-card spot in the playoffs at stake. The Ms won, but we needed the As to lose to the Rangers at the same time, and unfortunately they didn’t. Sigh. So baseball is over for this season for the Mariners, but we’re amazed at and proud of what they accomplished this year. As far as who won the Diamondbacks-Cardinals game, I dunno. Never figured it out.

Busy day at the Muster yesterday, after our bike ride. Several seminars, and then at noon I went over to the dining room to lay out the blocks for my third striped quilt. I finished sewing them a couple of weeks ago, but until now I haven’t had a large enough floor space to lay them out.

Within SMART is a group of quilters who get together at each muster to plan the following year’s raffle quilt, which raises funds for donation to two veterans’ charities. As I was laying out my blocks, and moving them around again and again, the quilters drifted in for the meeting and were oohing and ahhing about the stripes.

Then the meeting started, with some discussion about this year’s quilt, which was a simple house pattern:

I had sent in four or five of the house blocks, which were necessarily simple since there is a wide range of skills within the group. One of the quilters who tends to be pretty blunt said that she didn’t make any because she didn’t like the block. I liked the block okay, but I was disappointed in the way they were set: plain muslin strips, with not even any corner blocks to liven them up. Boring. I hoped we could come up with a more interesting quilt for next year. Good quilts raise more raffle money, it’s as simple as that.

So last night I came up with a design that requires two different blocks that together create a single Irish chain and star pattern, complex in appearance but fairly easy to piece. I wrote out directions for both blocks, with some help from Patrick on the graphics, and printed out copies. After the person who had been in charge of this year’s raffle quilt presented two ideas for blocks (a Hole in the Barn Door and another one I can’t even remember – snore), I said I also had an idea and passed out my patterns. Everyone liked mine better, so that’s what we’re going to make. Later I was taken to task by one of the older members of the group who told me I had hurt the other person’s feelings by barging in and taking over. Oh, well.

For dinner tonight we had a potluck with our Washington State chapter, nice people we have gotten to know over the past year at local musters, followed by a chapter meeting. One of our chapter members has also been the Director for the Northwest Region of SMART, one of the nine geographical divisions that includes WA, OR, ID, and MT, and he announced at the meeting that he and his wife have decided to sell their RV and stop traveling. Consequently he is stepping down as Regional Director, which is kind of a big problem because the NW Region until last week had only two chapters, WA and OR, and last week the OR chapter folded. So ours is now the only chapter in the region, and we don’t have that many members either. The chapter president is willing to continue in that role but not to step up to Regional Director. After some moments of surprise and befuddlement by the group, Patrick said that he was willing to take on the job. Everyone was thrilled! He oozes energy and competence of course, and was immediately nominated by the chapter.

Things moved fast from there. By breakfast today everyone on the Board had been informed, and Patrick attended the Board meeting and provided a letter of interest and a resume. At the installation of officers this afternoon, he was sworn in as Northwest Regional Director and given a notebook, a banner to hang from the motorhome, a “swinger” with his title that goes on his name tag, and a lot of responsibility.

Then we had dinner followed by entertainment – a fun musical/comedy act that included pulling our newly installed president, past president, and 1st vice president up on the stage to perform as three Elvises!

And then the Muster was over for this year. Most people leave tomorrow morning, but we’re staying another day so that we can do laundry and some cleaning, rest a bit, and catch our breath before we head east on Saturday.

We’re now in Hemet CA to attend the National Muster of S*M*A*R*T: the Special Military Active Recreation Travelers. This is the organization of military RVers with whom we caravanned to Alaska last summer, as well as attending other local musters with.
I don’t know if this area is technically desert or not, but it feels like desert, very dry and very hot. They call this area the “Inland Empire,” actually a designation for the spread of population east of L.A.

Hemet is located in the San Jacinto Valley, south and west of the San Jacinto Mountains, which range in a southeasterly direction. These are the northernmost of the Peninsular Ranges which run over 900 miles to the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula. The range is a fault block of granitic rocks squeezed between the San Jacinto fault on the west and the San Andreas fault on the east. The fault escarpment on the northern and eastern side (not the side we’re on) is one of the most abrupt in North America, going from sea level to 10,000 feet in a few miles; on this side it’s more gradual, but still does go pretty quickly from very flat to mountainous. The height and steepness of the range points out that the San Jacinto and San Andreas faults are very active and very capable of producing major earthquakes (well in excess of magnitude 7). The last massive quake struck the southern segment of the San Andreas-San Jacinto fault complex more than 200 years ago, so the area is probably overdue for a major earthquake.

The Soboba Cahuilla tribe of indigenous people used to inhabit the area in small hunter-gatherer groups, living too far inland to be of interest to Spanish soldiers, priests, or missionaries, who tended to view the desert as a place to avoid. They first encountered Spaniards in 1774, and Anglo-Europeans in the 1840s. The California gold rush of the 1850s brought an influx of settlers, and in 1877 the Cahuilla were moved to a reservation east of here. In 1895, Hemet Dam was completed on the San Jacinto River, creating Lake Hemet and providing a reliable water supply to the San Jacinto Valley.

Today’s inhabitants are mostly retirees in mobile-home parks who don’t want to or can’t afford to live in more urban areas of Southern California, along with the working people who provide services to them. We were hot before, in Coronado. Now we’re really in the oven. It’s been around 100 degrees every day. But it does cool down overnight, so that we’ve been able to continue with our bike rides almost every morning. Now that the Muster has started, we have lots of activities to do and people to talk with. We’ve been in S*M*A*R*T for two years now and are seeing some of the same people again, so gatherings are more fun and less stressful.

The Opening Ceremonies were Sunday night, and this group of veterans and spouses is of course quite patriotic. First there was a flag ceremony during which a former member of each of the services carried in his service’s flag, to the accompaniment of his service’s song; as one of only two Coasties here, Patrick carried the Coast Guard flag:

Monday night a hypnotist provided the evening entertainment, using members of the group as his subjects – pretty funny!

Today the men had a Hot Dog Bash with a speaker who was a police officer, while at the Ladies Luncheon we had a fashion show. The origami table decorations, all made by one spouse who is Japanese, were gorgeous!

Ladies from the group modeled fashions from a local boutique:

After the show, of course, the boutique owner had lots of clothes available for purchase. Three of us liked the same outfit from the show and tried it on in the ladies’ room:

We all liked it so much, we bought it. Good thing we live in different parts of the country!

We’re spending a few days back in the L.A. area for three reasons:
• See the Fairplex Garden Railroad
• Shop at Downtown Disney
• Go to an Angels game
Since all three of those activities are on the east side of L.A., we’re doing them all today.

The Fairplex Garden Railroad is a permanent garden-scale railroad located within Fairplex (formerly the Los Angeles County Fairground). We’ve been interested in garden railroads for a long time and would love to create one in our yard but haven’t yet figured out how we could, with our topography. Like indoor layouts, the trains run through scale scenes and vignettes, but the trains are larger than indoor trains and run through outdoor gardens planted with miniature/dwarf plants also scaled to the train dimensions.

To see the railroad we had to drive out to Pomona, which is in the even-hotter inland country. Patrick rented a wheelchair at the Fairplex and pushed me around in it, as my twisted ankle won’t take the amount of walking we’ll be doing today. So in the wheelchair and under my parasol that I bought at the Festival of Sail in San Diego, I was fairly comfortable, but Patrick was not only in the 90+-degree sun but pushing me to boot. Large misting fans dotted the fairgrounds, and several vendors told us: You think this is hot?! You should have been here yesterday, it was 105! No, thanks.

The Fairplex Garden Railroad is the oldest (1924) and possibly the largest miniature railroad of its kind in the United States, at 100 x 300 feet. It was as fabulous as we expected! There are lots and lots and lots of trains, and the vignettes that they run through are so creative and wonderfully executed. There is a circus with a little circus train,

a 20-mule team in a desert scene,

a California mission,

a baseball game,

and many, many more scenes. Always at model railroads there are the Old Guys who love and run the trains.

What a treat! Steve, you have to come and see this place.

From Pomona we drove to Anaheim, to Downtown Disney to buy Patrick some new Goofy T-shirts. We walked through the big store that usually has several new designs, and there were NONE. No Goofy T-shirts. What’s up with that?! There were lots of Frozen and Monster items. I think Disney is forgetting its roots.

It was just a short hop from there to Angel Stadium, where by luck the Angels were playing the Mariners! “The Big A”

is the fourth-oldest Major League Baseball stadium, just behind Dodger Stadium. Even though it lacks some of the latest amenities, it doesn’t feel almost 50 years old, and I found a lot to like about it. It underwent a major renovation in 1997 (when Disney was the major shareholder) that included the “California Spectacular,” faux rocks beyond the outfield with a stream that cascades down a “mountainside” covered with real trees. It’s pretty hokey, but charmingly so, really. To the left are flags honoring the many division championships (there will be a new one for this year), American League Championships, and of course the 2002 World Series Championship. Beyond the Spectacular you see the San Gabriel and Santa Ana Mountains, a view that I think makes the stadium seem more expansive on TV. In person, it’s much more intimate.

Usually at any ball park I’ll try out their signature hot dog, the one they’re known for. But this time we went for the “Big Cheese” which offers specialty grilled cheese sandwiches. I thought we might find something we had seen at the Fairplex, a burger piled with macaroni & cheese, which looked mighty tasty – comfort food upon comfort food. But no, this was different. We split a Short Rib Grilled Cheese Sandwich: short ribs cooked tender for many hours, then layered over the cheese in a perfectly toasted hot grilled cheese sandwich – brilliant!

We weren’t able to walk around much due to my injured ankle, so we didn’t come in the Home Plate Gate, marked by two enormous baseball hats, or see the 2002 World Series Trophy, the Hall of Fame, or the murals on the walls celebrating the history of the Angels. (We did see a giant blow-up photo of Mark Langston, the former Mariners pitcher who went over to the Angels and blew the 1995 one-game playoff, about whom Mariners manager Dick Williams famously said, “He doesn’t have a gut in his body.” That always cracks me up.) The stadium is surrounded by parking lot, an unattractive but efficient feature, and the many ramps and escalators make for easy access which normally I might not appreciate, but with my limited mobility today I was grateful for it.

The fans seemed laid back, like a Spring Training crowd, but into the game at all the right moments; definitely less intense than the Dodger fans. The people around us were friendly to us in our Mariners gear, especially some teenaged boys who were asking about the Mariners’ chances in the Wild Card race (slim, but not non-existent). There was still no score by the 7th inning, which called forth the Rally Monkey on the big screens, and some fans pulled them out of backpacks. Mildly annoying, but not obnoxious. The woman who sang the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning of the game also led the crowd in Take Me Out to the Ballgame, and the words were not provided on the big screens, an omission that I think is respectful to the fans. If they don’t know the words, maybe they should just go watch football.

In keeping with California stadium tradition (and because we’d had such a long day and my ankle was throbbing), we left after the 7th Inning Stretch. We were home in time to turn on the TV and watch Logan Morrison hit a 3-run home run in the top of the 9th to win the game for the Mariners. Go Mariners!!!

Yesterday we moved up from Coronado to Seal Beach, where we’ll be for the next few days. We’re in a FamCamp on the Naval Weapons Station, and the area around the base is not very bike-friendly. Nevertheless, we’ve been riding every day and want to continue that practice, so Patrick located a Starbucks not far from the base and plotted a route to it. We had to ride on and turn left on a busy highway, but we got through that okay. We turned into the parking lot for the strip mall where we thought Starbucks was located, but it wasn’t – Patrick figured out it must be the next driveway down.

In getting out of that parking area and back onto the busy street, I wasn’t able to negotiate that tight right turn into the bike lane and saw myself headed out into traffic, so I slammed on my brakes and ended up in a heap. I was pretty much inside the bike lane but with cars whizzing by just feet away and the bike on top of me. Patrick stopped and came running back to me as I started scooting myself back toward the curb. I couldn’t tell yet if I could stand up or not; I could feel that I had hurt my left knee and my right ankle. A very nice lady in a car pulled over and stopped and offered to take me to the ER, and a man on a bike also stopped to offer aid.

Once I was on the sidewalk, I stood up and figured out that my left knee was just scraped and my right ankle wrenched but not too badly. I was able to limp with my bike to the Starbucks, where Patrick got me a bag of ice to put on my ankle. I was really distressed and emotional. Those cars whizzing by – whew, that was scary!

I was able to ride back to the base, finding riding actually less painful than walking. Fortunately there was no damage to my beautiful new bike except for a smashed mirror, which can easily be replaced. It could have been a lot worse.

Hot as it’s been here on Coronado, it’s even hotter and more miserable inland, where my nephew Mike and his family live in the Poway area: temperatures around and over 100 degrees. This afternoon they came to visit with us, Mike and his wife Kristen, and their boys Nathaniel (5), Matthew (3), and William, who is less than 2 months old.

The older boys are very busy! Their Grandpa Steve has infected them with a consuming love of trains, and they brought with them trains that they played with on the RV dashboard, little palm-sized trains that seemed almost like extensions of their hands.

Almost as soon as they got here, Patrick took the boys and Mike over to the marina and rented a Boston Whaler power boat to take them out for several hours on the bay, where it’s much cooler and there are lots of interesting things to see along the water.

Meanwhile, Kristen and I sat in the air-conditioned motorhome and visited while of course she was caring for baby William.

She and I had met several times before but only briefly, so it was nice to relax and chat and get to know one another. When the men and boys got back, the action revved up again and I got to hold William while Patrick grilled some hot dogs and various things got taken care of – so much to do with a family of young children!

I gave William the quilt that I just finished for him, an original design of mine but in the same blues and greens as the quilts I had made for Nathaniel and William when they were babies.

I know it was a lot of work for them to get the family underway and down to visit us, so we really appreciated the effort and had a wonderful time with them. We look forward to seeing them again when we’re down here next January.

Here in Coronado we’re less than an hour south of Leucadia, which is where Peps is living these days. Yesterday he took the train down to San Diego, rode his bike to the Coronado Island ferry, took the ferry across the bay, then rode down to our RV park.

For lunch we went to an Italian restaurant called Sapori, and there we met up with a high school classmate of ours named Steve. He was a year ahead of me in school, and a year behind our older brother Mike. Steve got in touch with me several weeks ago to tell me that he’d like to get together to share stories about Mike, who died in a mountain-climbing accident on Mt. Rainier in 1971, just after he turned 24.

In high school, Mike and Steve were on a medley relay team that set new school records that still stand today. Steve told us that Mike was absolutely the driving force behind the team and its success. He got the football team strength trainers to work with them, and he constantly coached them on their mental race. One time he brought 4 unusual hats to a track meet and made the team walk around in them before the race, just to psych out their competition. In addition, Mike was a personal inspiration for Steve, who went on to compete in track for a number of years, then coached track and began a career in writing about track and then about women’s bodybuilding, which he has had a major influence in promoting.

After this very special lunch, we went back to the RV park/ marina and rented a boat to take Peps out on a tour of the fascinating marine elements in the bay. The weather is still beastly, so being out on the water in the wind and the spray of the boat was delightful.

This morning before it got too hot we went out for a bike ride up to Starbucks with Peps. He’s been so helpful answering all our bike questions!