Tag Archives: HI Sacramento

Heat Rises, Even in the Mountains

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Posted by on in animal and plant life, Community, Hiking and Nature, Historical, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

July 19, 2023, Medford, OR- As I drove through the southern Cascades and the Siskiyou Mountains, this afternoon, I was amazed at the consistency of the heat index, regardless of altitude. It remained a constant 95-102, from Sacramento to Ashland.

Yes, choices, choices…I made this bed and am actually quite happy in it-as long as I keep hydrating, sun-screening and safari-hat wearing, all will be well. So, here is how the day went, otherwise.

Sacramento- My third visit to HI Sacramento was another round of toddlers playing in a sand box-everyone getting along, but essentially doing their own thing. It was packed, yet not once did I feel like anyone was in anyone else’s way. A Korean gentleman and I were the first ones up, so we got first dibs on the men’s showers. We were also first to breakfast. I checked out around 9:40, then went over to Old Sacramento. The place is pretty much Stock Old West, but it doesn’t feel shopworn. I walked a loop, across Tower Bridge, along West Sacramento’s River Walk, then back across the Old Bridge, north of Old Town and back along dusty Main Street.

Along the way, I met a world-weary man, sitting in the park above River Walk and gave him some encouragement, along with a dollar bill-which I don’t usually do, but he looked like he had earned at least that much. I also shooed away a too-friendly squirrel and passed a flock of Canadian geese, who were diligently cleansing the park of bugs and grubs. My reward, back in Old Sacramento, was an Arnold Palmer (lemonade and iced tea) with a fresh blueberry scone, at Steamers Coffee House, so named for the steamships which connected Sacramento with San Francisco, in the latter 19th Century.

Tower Bridge, one of two spans connecting Sacramento with West Sacramento.

Sacramento Riverfront, from Tower Bridge
West Sacramento River Walk, with City Hall in background
The roses of Washington Park-in West Sacramento, not in Portland
View of Tower Bridge, from Riverwalk, West Sacramento
“Old” Bridge over Sacramento River
Sacramento River, from Old Bridge
Old Sacramento

Sacramento to Medford- Leaving Old Town at 11:30, gassed up at Costco, in Woodland, fifteen minutes north, and drove on to Dunnigan North Rest Area, where a crew was busily raking up leaves, in anticipation of the August “fire season”-which is now a year-round event. I noticed that there were huge piles of cut dead wood, on a lot not far north of there. There seems to be a will to reduce fire risk, at long last.

The highway started to get winding, after I stopped at the California Welcome Center, in Anderson, just south of Redding. I spent several minutes talking with the attendant, and a winsome fellow visitor, about the Pacific Crest Trail, of all things. The trail is nowhere near Anderson, but we each picked up a map of the route. There were a couple of spots thereafter, where the traffic backed up, as construction is in intermittent swing, between Redding and Dunsmuir. At Lake Shasta, I stopped for a look at the water level, which seems to have dropped about five inches from last Spring’s copious rain.

Lake Shasta

Gradually cresting Siskiyou Mountain and heading downhill, I spotted a sign for Penny’s Diner, in Dunsmuir, and decided to check it out. I walked into a room devoid of humans, save a gentleman who said he was a regular customer, and who was bellowing at the kitchen workers in Spanish. I started to order a meal from the QR Code, and a server came over to hand me a paper menu. The meal was rather good, the server rather blase’ about her work. I mentioned that Penny was my late wife’s name, eliciting a blank expression. Maybe every other person who comes in has a comment about knowing someone with that name.

So here I am, in smoky Medford, thankful for a comfortable room, nonetheless.

The Middle Matters

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Posted by on in Assistance, collaborating, Community, impediments, Inner Struggles, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

July 18, 2023, Sacramento- The day spent getting here had a potpourri of interesting stops, at least through the morning.

Ludlow– Holly B. served up a nice plate of scrambled eggs, Polish sausage, home fries and an English muffin, with a caveat: The eggs-and much chicken meat, no longer taste like much, when they come from a large factory farm. She has her own chickens at the small desert farm that she shares with her husband. They roam at will-as any chickens that taste good, and produce delicious eggs, are wont to do.

The others workers at Ludlow Cafe concurred. They, too, are farm folk. We spoke of health issues and I heard them out, about the health scares that have recently troubled their revered chef and their own family members. There is an alkaline taste in the local tap water, likely adding to those issues. Ludlow is at the eastern edge of California’s midsection-which starts at Calexico, on the southern border and zips on through, past Barstow, Bakersfield, Fresno and the ‘M’ cities- Madera, Merced and Modesto, to this bustling capital city, and on up to Redding and Chico, thence to the Oregon line.

Barstow- I decided that the triple digit heat was not going to factor, in making a drive through this often overlooked, but essential, part of the Golden State. In Barstow, where I stopped after checking out of Ludlow Motel, there is a Harvey House, which serves as the city’s Amtrak Station. A Harvey House, of which there are still a few in the West, was a hotel built by Fred Harvey, in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. Barstow was seen as a vital link between Los Angeles and the great National Parks of central California-as well as with Death Valley, Joshua Tree and the Grand Canyon.

Today, the town soldiers on and keeps this superb building in mint condition. The two ballrooms can be rented for events, and look as if they are waiting for those who can still “trip the light fantastic”.

Railroad Museum, Barstow- at the Harvey House complex.
Harvey House,Barstow
East Ballroom, Harvey House, Barstow
Upstairs, there is a small NASA Museum, focusing on the Sun and planets of “our” Solar System. This montage of Neptune includes a drawing of the outermost planet, (it is actually farther from the Sun than is Pluto), by a young visitor named Paul. I like how he depicted Neptune’s North Pole. Barstow, and the western Mojave, have no shortage of creative talent.

Boron- My last photo-oriented stop of the day was the resurgent home of Twenty Mule Team Borax. I recall, in middle school, that a sometime bully chortled, about yours truly, “He is a low-grade moron, who thinks he lives on boron.” No one laughed at his quip, and I pondered how, besides the two rhyming words, he ever saw himself as clever. We became friends as older teens, though, and he went on to live an exemplary life, before dying just prior to the COVID outbreak. So, I stopped here and took shots of the two active borax mines. Here, for Sean-and in honour of Mr. Reagan, when he hosted “Death Valley Days”, are those sites, from a distance.

West side mine, Boron
East side mine, Boron

Roadside observations- There was much that was unphotographed, but registered in my mind’s camera: The lava beds outside Newberry Springs, extending almost to Daggett, were blocked off by road construction at Newberry. Joshua Trees, the standout feature of the Mojave Desert, are plentiful in some areas and scarce in others. There is a huge stand of them, just north of the City of Mojave, west of Bakersfield. The latter-mentioned city pays proper homage to two of its great musical talents: Buck Owens and Merle Haggard, with streets named for both gentlemen and centers that showcase their respective life’s work. Fresno, and the three ‘Ms’, focus a fair amount of their agricultural wealth on education. Fresno is as much worthy of mention for its health care system, as for its farming.

A horrid accident, on the opposite side of road from us, stopped south bound traffic from the north side of Turlock, clear to the south end of Modesto. Our side of Highway 99 experienced a slowing, but mostly because of the need to position emergency vehicles opposite the crash site. Two vehicles were mangled, one of them lying upside down in the middle of the road.

I got to HI Sacramento around 6 p.m. and after struggling to get the parking lot gate open, due to solar flares interfering with the radio frequency of the gate’s system, enjoyed a lovely carnitas and black bean salad at La Cosecha, three blocks south of the hostel.

No assessment of life anywhere can fail to include its midsection-and California’s Central Valley is second to none.

Their Joyful Freedom

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Posted by on in "sibling-ish", Assistance, children, collaborating, Community, distraction issues, Family, impediments, Inspiration, Personal goals, Personal Values, Social, Spiritual, Striving, Travel

May 12, 2023, Carson City-

“What we have here, is a failure to communicate”-Strother Martin, Cool Hand Luke

The seemingly forlorn young woman remained holed up, in our shared Mixed Dorm room, speaking briefly, when spoken to, but not offering much, in the way of information about herself. She was functioning and while not outwardly fearful of her two male roommates, had clearly been through a bit of trauma somewhere else, and recently.

The little girl was chatty with her mother, and with another woman, who was from China and who conversed through a translation app on her phone. She went back and forth to her grandmother, in the next car of our train from Sacramento to points east (mine being Reno) and was a kind big sister to her toddler brother, when he got sick and vomited- to which their parents tended, without making a big scene. The family was friendly, but were a self-contained unit. They considered, and politely declined, offers of help from me and from the Chinese woman.

The Turo automobile renter apologized profusely, when his wife took the car I had rented from them, and went to work, returning about ten minutes after my appointed pick-up time, and having put a full tank of gas in, on her way back. While we waited, he told me of the struggles that face both the fast food industry and the truck stops that house many such establishments, as mergers and AI make decisions that are out of whack with reality on the ground. The representatives of High Management are “shocked” to discover that the lay-offs and budget cuts, which their overlords demand, will actually serve to make things far worse, as staff is frequently already at bare minimum.

The two winsome pre-adolescent girls stuck together, brought an issue to the motel owner’s attention and looked after me, while I was checking into my room, later remarking to one of their other friends that they thought I was “special”, though I barely said much more than “Thank you” to one who had picked up a dropped item. The group of children later gathered in a small play area that the owner has established where families can relax and where children can safely enjoy the fresh air.

My extended family, here in Carson, communicated their plans to me, via their matriarch’s texts. It sounds like a delightful two days, as always. We spoke a lot, back and forth, about how essential unconditional love is for children and how that love is most always passed on to the next generation, as well as how it can be brought into the lives of those whose lives have been hell. The woman I call my spiritual sister has raised countless foster children, her two adopted children and her natural-born daughter-and has been a rock for her grandchildren of two generations. Communication has been her staple.

Communication once came hard to my autistic self, but as the love that has always been in my heart overcame the reticence that consumed my mind, connecting with others has become an essential part of being. With Artificial Intelligence and more distant decision-making, often based more on incomplete information and wildly overblown assumptions, being de rigueur, even the most seemingly banal texts and IMs have assumed essential status, in order for the right thing to happen for the good of the order.

Miscommunication can be a snowball going downhill. It is our lot, to prevent it from becoming an avalanche.