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Memory Lane at the Museum

by Shannon on June 7, 2013 in Travel

One hundred years after Thomas Moran painted his 1912 work Grand Canyon with Rainbow (left), we discovered it pretty much exactly as he had left it (right).

A collection of travel-related magnets on a friend’s refrigerator in Seattle recently inspired a guessing game; one of our newfound favorites, actually. It’s the same game we played to an audience of salespeople at a Peter Lik photography gallery in Las Vegas. To their great annoyance (and our great amusement) we showed far less interest in spending thousands of dollars on glossy, wall-sized landscapes than we did in guessing their location.

Detour: San Jose

by Shannon on May 31, 2013 in California, Travel, United States

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph

The downside of living in an RV is that when repairs need to be made, your entire residence is in the shop. The upside is that when your house is unavailable, it frees up time for additional sightseeing.

During a stopover in San Jose while the RV’s engine was being given a once-over, we sought out places that otherwise weren’t on the agenda. In the heart of Silicon Valley, we bypassed modern or tech-related for historical immersion.

Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum

Replica of King Tutankhamun’s Sarcophagus

Where might a museum acquire a pair of sarcophagi? If your answer was the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book, the over-the-top holiday catalog featuring fantasy gifts like a jet pack and a $100K Versailles-inspired hen house, you would be right. In 1971, the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum bought two ancient Egyptian coffins touted in a section of the catalog titled “His and Her Gifts for People Who Have Everything.” One of the sarcophagi came with an unexpected bonus: a mummy.

Burgeoning from a single artifact, a statue of Sekhmet, the lion goddess, to more than 4,000 items—including its Neiman Marcus purchases—the Rosicrucian displays the largest collection of authentic ancient Egyptian artifacts in the Western U.S. There is also a two-room, walk-through recreation of an ancient subterranean tomb.

Baboon Mummy

Just enough information is offered to inform and intrigue about aspects of ancient Egyptian life—mummification (including that of animals such as the much-revered cats that were part of nearly every home) and other burial practices, everyday household items and their uses, the roles of pharaohs, and the pantheon of gods and goddesses they worshipped.

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph

Even the non-religious can worship architectural beauty. The Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph has the hallmarks of a grandiose Catholic church—stained glass, marble, murals, statuary. The sum of the whole is greater and more vivid than those we’ve seen at other churches and cathedrals across the country. Instead of one dome there are four, while vaulted ceilings stretch skyward.

The current incarnation of St. Joseph, which began as a modest adobe structure, dates to the late 1800s and is the fourth one constructed on this site. The others were destroyed by earthquake or fire. The cathedral is still in use as a place of worship and a performance venue for choral and music ensembles, accompanied by a circa 1886 mechanical Odell organ, one of only four in the U.S.

After a day of admiring artifacts and architecture, we received word that the RV was outfitted with a brand-new battery and fit for the road once again. Music to our ears.

Mighty Big Sur (Part II)

by Shannon on May 17, 2013 in California, Travel, United States

So mighty is Big Sur, its riches were too many to be showcased in a single post. Our tour through el sur grande continues…

Partington Cove

With only an approximate location and vague instructions to look for an iron gate along Hwy 1, we found the unmarked trail to Partington Cove on our second try. A short, steep hike leads through a wooded, wildflower-bedecked canyon before branching in two directions, one toward a secluded patch of rocky beach.

The other way leads through a century-old, 60-foot tunnel, once used to transport cargo onto ships and later a rumored rendezvous point for liquor smugglers during Prohibition. A wooden walkway leads to another rocky outcropping, where we spied on an otter frolicking in the water—our first sighting in the wild of the elusive creature, once nearly hunted to extinction.

Bixby Bridge

Spanning a canyon along Hwy 1, the arched Bixby Bridge was completed in 1932 and styled to blend in with its surroundings. One of the world’s highest single-span bridges, topping out at 260 feet, it’s a popular backdrop for car commercials and a favorite spot for camera-wielding visitors, including us.

Pfeiffer Beach

A $5 admission fee buys access to striking Pfeiffer Beach, where massive sandstone rocks stand among the waves just offshore. One boulder features a cutout in its center, as if framing the ocean vista, while purple-hued sand brightens up the beach, stained by minerals washing down from a hillside.

Henry Miller Memorial Library

Books suspended from the ceiling adorn the Henry Miller Memorial Library

Since novelist and one-time Big Sur resident Henry Miller makes a cameo in my forthcoming book, Writers Between the Covers, stopping by his namesake Library—a nonprofit bookstore, arts center and live music venue (the likes of the Red Hot Chili Peppers have played there)—was on the agenda. As it turns out, it happened to be the only place in Big Sur where we could connect during our media blackout. The Library offers wi-fi to customers, and we lounged on their porch among the redwoods checking email and sipping Earl Grey tea in exchange for a small donation.

Before we showed up I had affectionately dubbed the place the “dirty Henry Miller” Library because of what I had learned about his salacious relationship with the writer Anaïs Nin in Paris during the 1930s. And the Library does indeed manage the interesting combination of being both literary and playfully dirty. Along with copies of Miller’s books, including Tropic of Cancer, which was banned for obscenity in the U.S. for nearly thirty years, on display were tomes for those looking to spice up their sex lives.

Valentines Day at Big Sur's Henry Miller Memorial Library

Valentines Day table at the Henry Miller Memorial Library

One of many writers and artists drawn to Big Sur, Miller lived in the area for fifteen years. In Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, he summed up the striking landscape by saying, “This is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look.”

Mighty Big Sur (Part I)

by Shannon on May 13, 2013 in Travel

After spending time in the high-intensity urban sprawl of southern California, Big Sur seemed like an alternate realm. Remote and rugged, this 90-mile stretch of land is bordered by the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Lucia Mountains. A single, winding road, Highway 1, leads travelers north and south into and out of the area. Strict property laws have kept Big Sur largely undeveloped, and its three towns consist of only a few buildings each.

With four days to explore and expectations running high after catching a glimpse of jagged cliffs and dramatic waves on the drive in, we parked the RV and set out to see what “el sur grande” (the big south, as Spanish settlers called it) had to offer.

Taxpayer Dollars at Work

by Shannon on April 22, 2013 in California, Travel, United States

What could 1.3 million dollars buy in the mid-1920s? After an earthquake rumbled through Santa Barbara in 1925 and leveled the county courthouse, a grandiose new one rose up in its place (tight-fisted voters had earlier denied funding for a grander municipal building).