Piedras Blancas Lighthouse

several miles north of San Simeon stands the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse. construction of the lighthouse began in mid-1874 and the first-order Fresnel lens was first lit in February 1875. the U.S. Lighthouse Service oversaw operations until 1939, when it was transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard. the tower originally stood 100 feet tall but a series of earthquakes damaged it and, following one in 1948 centered just 6 miles away, the top three floors were removed – including the watchroom and lantern. the original lens now sits on display in Cambria.

from 1906, the station also used a sound signal to alert passing vessels of danger. the sound alert was removed in 1975 when the station was automated; the Coast Guard continued to operate it until 2001 at which time it was handed over to the Bureau of Land Management to allow “structured public access.” the light continues to operate, but the land now serves as a natural sanctuary and  research station, offering tours of the light station and wildlife refuge throughout the week. the largest colony of elephant seals on the west coast makes their home on a beach about a mile south of Piedras Blancas.

there are plans to move several miles of Highway 1 near Piedras Blancas farther inland in anticipation of rising sea levels. there are portions of the highway jsut north of the lighthouse that are only protected from the ocean by an artificial embankment and cement traffic barriers, which high swells periodically over-top, causing traffic hazards.

California’s Highway 1

SONY DSC

one thing I’ve wanted to do since I first lived in California was to drive along Highway 1. the few times I drove up to the Bay area while living in San Diego, though, I had time constraints and no one to enjoy the drive with me. in hindsight, I’m glad I waited because we had a great time driving back from Monterey along Highway 1 as part of our mini-moon. neither the drive nor the weather disappointed as we set off early on a late-August morning.

the highway, which runs along the coast from Orange to Mendecino County was constructed in segments starting in 1910 and sported many names over the last century, until a legislative act designated it all California State Route 1. between 1915 and 1964, all the different segments had numerical designations, but only highway planners and legislators ever referred to those numbers; designations never appeared along the roads themselves.

the stretch between Carmel (just south of Monterey) and San Simeon (site of newspaper magnate William Randoph Hearst’s famous castle) received initial state funding in 1919, followed by some federal funding in 1921 and support from the New Deal later. much of the highway went up because of the labor of convicts. the San Quentin State Prison set up three camps along the route, paid inmates $0.35 a day and offered reductions in sentences in exchange for their unskilled labor.

View of Coastal Hwy 1

the stretch of highway we drove required the construction of 33 concrete bridges, including the iconic Bixby Creek Bridge near Big Sur. prior to the completion of the bridge, residents of Big Sur often endured months of isolation in winter; the single-lane stagecoach Old Coast Road, which connected the community to the inland, became impassable with rain and the rugged coastline made deliveries from Monterey or San Francsico by boat difficult. the bridge (and creek) are named after a gent who moved to the Monterey Peninsula in 1868 and purchased a large tract of land near Big Sur to harvest lumber and produce and distribute other wood products from his sawmill. the bridge was designed by F.W. Panhorst who, along with highway engineer C.H. Purcell, opted for a cement span for its lower material and maintenance costs (a steel span! that close to the ocean! what kind of fool would do that?!) and for its more natural aesthetic. it took 14 months to construct and, upon completion, was the longest concrete arch span bridge in the California highway system. the bridge itself is 714 feet long, the main arch is 320 feet long, and over 280 feet high. extensive seismic retrofitting occurred in the late 1990s but even after the updates, the bridge remains classified as “functionally obsolete” because it is less than 32 feet wide, as required with newly-built bridges.

the route finally got consistent numbering in 1964 thanks to legislative action, though different segments of highway have different names (Pacific Coast, Cabrillo, and Shoreline) going up the coast and local roads often weren’t changed to align with the numbering. the entirety of route 1 is a Blue Star Memorial Highway, honoring armed forces and the section between Big Sur and Carmel is a national scenic byway, declared in 1965 and dedicated in 1966 by Lady Bird Johnson from the Bixby Creek Bridge. and all around well worth the drive time!

welcome!

welcome to my polished up site! as you may notice, you’re now coming directly to www.ericagoestraveling.com – hooray! all the posts you’ve read in the past are still here, right where you last saw them. take time to look around, read blogs about a specific location or check out something random.

new stuff will keep coming – stay tuned!

Sequoia National Park & General Sherman

to decompress after a flurry of wedding activity, we embarked on a two-day, 930-mile road trip to take in Sequoia National Park, the General Sherman tree, Monterrey, Highway 1, and a whole lot of California’s
Central Valley.

first stop on our tour: General Sherman at the heart of Sequoia National Park; just a touch farther west than strictly warranted on our route to Monterrey, but certainly worth the trip. when I asked the hubs whether he wanted to see General Sherman, I only had a vague sense of what it was – a great big tree. turns out it’s the largest living tree by volume – not tallest (a Coastal redwood) nor widest (a cypress or baobab) nor oldest (a bristlecone pine) – but still incredibly impressive.

naturalist James Wolverton named the tree after the Civil War general in 1879, more than a decade before the area became a national park. at that time, white settlers seeking to establish a utopian society had begun felling sequoias for trade; thousands of sequoias were taken down before it their tendency to splinter became clear and the logging operation ceased (when the area became a park in 1890).

the military oversaw the park until the early 1900s, when it was turned over to civilian supervision. during the early years of the park, the military spent much of its time cutting access trails and roadways. when the park transferred from the military to civilian control, greater attention was paid to making the park more accessible to the general public. Walter Fry, who originally came to the Sierra Nevadas as a logger (but quickly changed courses when he counted the growth rings on the first sequoia he helped fell and discovered they’d brought down a tree more than 3,200 years old), became the first civilian superintendent. he oversaw the gradual expansion of county roads and the development of a wagon road by the Mount Whitney Power Company.

after the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, the idea of a park-to-park highway system prompted further road improvements in and between Sequoia and General Grant National Parks (now Kings Canyon National Park). the new road – the Generals Highway and built in sections of switchbacks and wedged between giant sequoias in some places – was dedicated in June of 1935 with some 669 cars carrying 2,488 passengers traversing the road from either end, meeting in the middle. during this time, CCC workers also cut a 400-step staircase into the granite dome of Moro Rock, which offers staggering views from the rock of the park and of the Great Western divide (though pollution often obscures views west over the San Joaquin valley).

the improvements suited the burgeoning numbers of tourists and now more than one million visitors take advantage of the park each year.

Iowa again

this past weekend took me to Iowa City for the wedding of a good college friend. the last time I was in Iowa City was January 2011, visiting that same friend. while there in 2011 we swung by the old capitol building and I thought I might do so again to see what it looks like in good weather (much nicer). additionally, it seemed like a fun idea since the night I drove back from Iowa City – after stopping by the old capitols both there and in Belmont, WI – I went off to meet the gent who was to become my husband. and just a few years later both my college friend and I are married!
my original post on the Old Iowa Capitol Building.

Voodoo Doughnut

when I solicited things to do in Portland from my friends, Voodoo Doughnut was on more than a few lists. while I’d heard plenty about the shop (and it’s maple-bacon doughnuts), I still didn’t know what to expect when we made our way to the corner of SW 3rd and Ankeny.

a line was the first thing to anticipate. a neatly cordoned queue with an assortment of people – older, younger, nattily dressed, prepared for the weather, in strollers, in groups, alone. almost all conversing about which doughnuts they were going to pick out. we pulled up the menu from the website and read through all our options before we made it through the door, deciding on more than we could possibly eat in the three days we’d be in Oregon … and then ended up ordering an extra two on top of that. all very tasty, in the end.

two friends came up with the idea to open a doughnut shop in Old Town Portland in the early 2000 (reputedly between cans of beer on a tubing trip). they sought out some expert doughnut makers to provide guidance in how to become doughnut-makers (as neither had experience in that part of their proposed venture) and opened up their first location in 2003 in downtown Portland, just south of the Burnside Bridge. they’ve now expanded to four locations (another in Portland, one in Eugene, one in Denver) and a food cart.

in addition to its obvious doughnut function, Voodoo also offers wedding services and has collaborated with Rogue Ales to create some Voodoo-inspired beers. nothing that I’d ever be tempted to try, but then I’m not one for maple-bacon flavored anything.

San Francisco’s Cable Cars

while now the San Francisco Cable Cars are primarily a tourist activity (carrying some 7 million people annually) , they grew from a need for a better method for hauling vehicles and people over the city’s famously steep hills. prior to development of the current wire-rope system, horses hauled cable cars around the city, enduring extreme hardship on the often-slick cobblestones. one story contends that the man who initiated the system, Andrew Smith Hallidie, witnessed a terrible accident between cable cars and a vehicle that resulted in the death of all five work horses. (another version has him taking over the Clay Street Hill Railroad when the initial promoter couldn’t raise the necessary capital to get the project off the ground.)

Hallidie immigrated to the United States with his father during the gold rush. while his father returned to the UK after several unsuccessful years prospecting, Hallidie remained, finding success in mining, engineering, and bridge building in the 1850s. in 1856, returned to San Francisco to start a wire rope manufacture, using principals his father previously held a patent on.

the first test of Hallidie’s Clay Street Hill cable car occurred on August 2, 1873, and it went into public operation on September 1 of the same year. for four years, Clay Street was the sole cable car company operating in San Francisco. in 1877, the previously horse-drawn Sutter Street Railroad converted to cable operation using a newly-patented side-grip style (designed to avoid paying Hallidie royalties on his patent), followed in short order by the creation or conversion of several other street railroads. in all, between 1873 and 1890, twenty-three different cable car lines run by eight different companies covered some 53 miles of cable track. of all those tracks, only three remain in operation today (all run by the San Francisco Municipal Railway).

popularity of cable cars began to decline with the advent electrical streetcars, which first arrived in San Francisco in 1892. the cost of constructing and operating electric streetcars proved significantly less than those of cable cars and by 1906 United Railroads of San Francisco (which owned most of the cable lines at that time) was campaigning to convert their existing lines to electric. opposition to the “unsightly” overhead electric cables was effectively silenced by the great earthquake and resulting fire, which destroyed most of the power houses, car barns, and 117 of the cable cars contained therein. by 1912, only 8 lines remained, all climbing gradients too steep for the electric cars to surmount. by 1944, facing competition from improved buses, only 5 cable car lines remained (two operated by Muni and one by Cal Cable – the third cable car company, established in 1878). in 1947, the Mayor proposed closing the remaining city-run lines but fierce community opposition scuttled the idea, though difficulty that Cal Cable encountered in procuring insurance in the early 1950s ultimately resulted in the closure of several lines and consolidation into the lines that remain today.

by the late 1970s, the existing cable car infrastructure had become unsafe and desperately needed repairs. then-mayor Dianne Feinstein spearheaded the effort to acquire the necessary  funds to completely rebuild the system; over two years, the entire system was replaced and updated. efforts to maintain the system are ongoing, with cars occasionally being refurbished and replaced and turntables for the single-end cars being updated.

our San Francisco wanderings found us at the end of the Powell-Mason line, running from near Fisherman’s Wharf to Powell & Market. taking the street car, rather than walking, wasn’t exactly convenient for our day’s activities – but riding the cable cars is one of those iconic things that you really ought to do while visiting the city. most of the riders seemed tourists – apparently the east-west California line is the one more often frequented by commuters.

Gas Works Park

word has it that Seattle hosts one of the most impressive Fourth of July fireworks displays. the best vantages for the show are from Gas Works Park on the northern shore of Lake Union – once home to a gasification plant for Seattle Gas and Electric and made famous (to my generation) by ’10 Things I Hate About You.’

even as Seattle Gas & Electric purchased the land for industrial use, the promontory and its commanding views of downtown Seattle were recognized as an ideal setting for a park. the coal gasification plant operated from 1906 to 1956 and, at its peak, served more than 43,000 customers and employed more than 130 people in crews running around the clock. the rising cost of operating a coke oven prompted the city to convert to natural gas and shutter the plant in 1956.

starting in 1962, the city began to purchase the abandoned buildings with an eye to convert it into a park. initially, it was named for the woman who spearheaded the project, but her family requested it be changed after it became clear that many of the gas works structures would remain on the site. (another park in Seattle is now named for her.) advocates successfully campaigned that, as the last gas works in the country, the city had a unique opportunity to preserve the structures for their historic and architectural value. some of the structures remain as they stood while operating (e.g. “in ruins”), others were painted and refurbished to became part of a children’s play area and picnic shelter.

in order to make the land safe for public use, remediation techniques sought to “clean and green” the land; the soil was bioremediated with 18 inches of sewage sludge and sawdust, which allows grass to grow throughout the park.our vantage point for the fireworks was on the side of the Great Mound, an artificial hill designed with kite-flying in mind. the mound was formed with rubble from structural foundations covered in topsoil and topped with a sundial designed by local artists. we even saw a few kites out during the afternoon as we waited for the fireworks to start!

Mt Baldy

one novelty of being back in southern California are the mountains. so accessible! within an hour you can be in the foothills or climbing one of the tallest peaks in the San Gabriel Mountains and hiking the highest peak in the San Bernardino Mountains even sooner! it’ll make for much more interesting trekking as we prepare for our next big hiking adventure.

last weekend we headed out for the summit of Mt. Baldy (or, officially, Mount San Antonio), the highest peak in Los Angeles county. it’s part of the Transverse Ranges that lie along the San Andreas Fault and was likely bestowed the name of Mount San Antonio in the 1840s by a rancher, after his patron saint. indigenous people in the area had other names for it, but today everyone calls it Mt. Baldy.

early entrepreneurs took advantage of the water resources of the canyons, building a sawmill (which burned down within a few years of construction and was never replaced) and starting an ice-hauling business. the steep walls of the canyon preserved snow on the northface slopes well into the spring. in the late 1850s, one-time mayor of Los Angeles, Damien Marchessault, and a partner built an ice house in the canyon (hence its current name) and started hauling ice down from Icehouse Canyon and selling it door-to-door. they also used it in their ice cream parlor in the city – the only one at the time.

it wasn’t until the late 1870s that prospectors tried their luck at gold mining around Mt. Baldy, without much success. water levels at the mines proved uncertain and people living downstream from the runoff filed suit over pollution of the creeks. more importantly, however, there wasn’t that much ore to be found and in relatively short order recreation overtook mining as a primary activity around Mt. Baldy.

the first successful summit of the mountain occurred via Lytle Creek in 1875 by a group of army surveyors and it wasn’t long before the adventurous took to climbing the mountain for recreation, generally via one of today’s common routes (Mt. Baldy Trail and the Devil’s Backbone – which we took). in the 1930s, the Civilian Conservation Corps improved and expanded the Devil’s Backbone Trail, to help stabilize and widen the trail, offering better protection from the occasionally precipitous drops on either side.

the first “resort” went up in 1880 and shortly thereafter the owner of one of the mining support stations (near what is now the village of Mt. Baldy) converted it into a rental resort; by the turn of the century, the latter entertained up to 100 guests per weekend (keeping in mind that at this time the canyon was not yet accessible by automobile). on enterprising mountain guide opened up a “resort” some 80 feet below the summit (really just a set of tents), but after damage from a cooking fire in 1913, it was abandoned.

the shift to recreational use of the canyon resulted in bitter disputes between the camp operators and the San Antonio Water Company, which controlled water rights for the area. the Water Company ultimately wrangled control of the road and closed it off to all comers for several years; eventually, however, they decided to profit from the interest in recreation and bought one of the remaining camps (and hiring the previous owner to run it) and reopened the road with tolls. Camp Baldy, as the Water Company renamed it, became a haven for tipplers during Prohibition, though it was subject to periodic raids (agents only found contraband on one occasion). Foster Curry, whose family was known for running the resorts at Yellowstone, came down to help run the resort with the assistance of a woman he met at Camp Baldy and who later became his wife. under their supervision, the resort grew to include cabins built along the creek, a pool (called “The Plunge), barber and beauty shop, post office, casino, dance pavilion, photography studio and a school.

in 1938, a flood swept through San Antonio and Icehouse Canyons, destroying nearly all of the existing structures, including most of Camp Baldy. the Forest Service (which took over land and leases when the area became a a national forest in 1908) did not permit new structures in Icehouse Canyon, but much of Camp Baldy returned as Mt. Baldy Village, which now includes stores, lodges, fire department, school, and Forest Service information center. the Sierra Club built a lodge near Manker Flats (open to club members) and a ski hut on the Mt. Baldy Trail, near the headwaters of San Antonio Creek and named for the first female president of the Sierra Club (Aurelia Harwood, for whom a peak on the Devil’s Backbone Trail is also named). today, in addition to the numerous hikers in all types of weather, there is also the Mt. Baldy Ski Lifts (which operates the closest ski slopes to Los Angeles, and which runs the lift we rode to get to Baldy Notch on summer weekends). as long as the haze isn’t bad, you can see all the way to Catalina from the top of the peak!

we could only see cities to the north of the mountains; above the haze we could see to the horizon … just nothing on the ground.

Golden Gate Bridge

the last time I was in San Francisco, I was still very new to the idea of “running” and certainly didn’t consider using the descriptor on myself. but I’d brought my shoes with me and one morning a couple of us headed out from our hotel for (what now seems remarkably) an easy out-and-back run to Ghirardelli Square. I distinctly remember thinking, when my friend quipped “I’m going to sprint the last block!”, that she was completely nuts.

three years later, I proposed a run across the Golden Gate Bridge as one of our pillar sightseeing activities. what better way to see one of the most impressive engineering feats in American history than on foot! at slightly-faster-than-walking pace! the journey to get to the visitor’s center proved its own adventure and gave us a more street-level introduction to the city than perhaps anticipated (riding local public transit will do that).

prior to the construction of the bridge, getting from the city across the bay to Marin County required a ferry ride, which was subject to certain weather-related travel constraints and ultimately hampered the growth potential of the city. as the city and area grew, the need for a better means of travel became increasingly apparent as the growth rate of comparable cities outstripped San Francisco. ferries began running as early as the 1820s and regular service began in the 1840s, eventually becoming an extension of rail service. discussion of a bridge began around the same time but did not bear fruit until the 1930s.

for a long time, engineers held that, due to the depth of the channel, strong currents, persistent fog, and winds, building a bridge across the strait was impractical, if not impossible. in 1916, the City Engineer estimated, while theoretically possible, the cost of constructing a bridge could exceed $100 million – a prohibitive price tag – but allowed that a project might work, should it prove possible to do it for less. engineer Joseph Strauss (who designed a 55 mile railroad bridge over the Bering Strait) presented a plan for a cantilevered system joined by a suspension in the middle, the price of which came in at $17 million. the city assented to let him proceed on the condition he consult additional experts, who determined a suspension system the most practical for the site.

it took quite a few years of litigation and negotiation, however, before the project ultimately began construction. the Department of War feared a bridge could interfere with ship traffic or be a target for sabotage (terrorism); the railroads litigated because a bridge would compete directly with their ferry business. eventually the Department of War came around, even granting necessary land for construction on the San Francisco side; the fledgling auto industry supported the project, providing a useful counterbalance to the railroads, and serious design discussions began in 1923.

while Strauss was officially the chief engineer on the Golden Gate project, his initial design was both impractical and visually unappealing; in later years he spent a good amount of time downplaying the contributions of his collaborators, with an eye to posterity. Leon Moisseiff, who designed the Manhattan Bridge, championed the suspension design, while Charles Alton Ellis did much of the technical and theoretical work for the design, including figuring out how to preserve Fort Point at the foot of the southern end of the bridge. in 1931, Strauss fired Ellis from the project (for “wasting money” sending telegrams to Moisseiff for consulting purposes) but Ellis, who could not find subsequent work during the Depression, continued to work some 70 hours a week on calculations for the project. as a result of this dispute, Ellis received no credit for his work when the bridge opened in 1937 (that snub was corrected in 2007 in a governmental report, which gave Ellis major credit for the design).

funding for the Bridge, once it was ready to go up, proved challenging. after the crash of 1929, the Bridge & Highway District incorporated by the legislature to see the project through, was unable to raise funds for the project; they lobbied for a bond measure, which voters approved in 1930, but the bonds didn’t sell. ultimately, the founder of Bank of America (Amadeo Giannini) agreed to buy the lot in an effort to boost the local economy.

construction began on January 5, 1933, under Strauss’ supervision, and was completed in April 1937 (ahead of schedule and under budget. at the time of its completion, it was the longest suspension bridge in the world; today it is second only to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. until 1998, it was also the tallest, with the span towering 746 feet high and the span some 220 feet above the surface of the water. steel in the bridge was fabricated by Bethlehem Steel in plants in New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. it contains some 1.2 million rivets and over 80,000 miles of wire (with some 27,572 wires comprising one cable).

during the project, eleven workers died; one in October 1936, and ten in February when a portion of scaffolding fell through a safety net that hung below the work area. by contrast, the net saved the lives of some 19 men who fell from the work area; they became members of the informal Half-Way to Hell club.

proposals to install netting or higher fences to reduce suicides from the bridge in recent hears have not yet borne fruit. impediments to such measures have included cost, aesthetics, and concerns about what kind of effect additional weight might have on the structural integrity of the bridge. in 2008, the Bridge’s Board of Directors voted to approve a plastic-covered stainless steel net beneath and extending out from the bridge, but cost has prevented that from being installed. instead, information about a suicide helpline is installed at frequent intervals along the bridge, have trained volunteers and law enforcement officers to watch for people in distress, and closed the bridge to pedestrians at night. despite those efforts, however, the number of suicides each year remains high.

it remains one of the most iconic and visited landmarks in the United States. we saw countless pedestrians and tourists on rented bicycles traversing the span as we ourselves took it in on foot. San Francisco City Guides runs free walking tours of the bridge as well, for those that want to know more about the history of the bridge and its construction.