Images

California Road Trip, October 2014

Trip date: 10/11/14-10/21/14

Eloise and I hit the open road to see family in Mount Shasta and Sacramento, California. In those 11 days, we drove 2,444.2 miles, with stops in:

  • Casa Grande, Arizona
    • We started the trip out with a delightful meal at the highly rated Feli’s Cuban Kitchen in Casa Grande. Eloise’s dinner was especially tasteful and artfully presented (flounder with mango and pineapple)
  • Palm Desert, California
  • Merced, California
  • Weed/Mount Shasta, California (3 nights)
    • I hiked to the top of Black Butte, an extinct dacite dome volcano just north of the City of Mount Shasta on the east side of Interstate 5. A trip report and photoset for the hike is posted on this site, as well as at hikearizona.com
    • Culinary highlights included Mom’s cooking, a nice family dinner at the Best Western Tree House Inn in Mount Shasta, a late night snack at the Black Bear Diner (Mount Shasta), and Hi-Lo Café in Weed for breakfast
  • Folsom, California (2 nights)
    • We had dinner with our son and one of Eloise’s brothers at a wonderful restaurant in Auburn, California, Carpe Vino. Among us we had fresh popcorn in melted black truffle butter, muscovy duck breast (farro, butternut squash, purslane, seared onion, huckleberry), niman ranch bistro filet (chanterelles, pole beans, fingerling potato, black garlic soubise), and skuna bay salmon (sunchokes, fuji apple, brussels sprouts, dill, apple must brown butter). For dessert, 3 out of 4 of us had chocolate profiteroles,  which were walnut ice cream balls wrapped in caramel and walnut streusel.  Simply unbelievable. The service was outstanding.
    • I bagged a couple of highpoints in the area: Carpenter Hill, which is the Sacramento County highpoint, and a small hill in neighboring El Dorado Hills, Peak 1161. Click on the names to go to trip reports at hikearizona.com
  • Monrovia, California
    2014-10-19 15.16.01 web
    Nectar of the gods
    • The drive from Folsom to Monrovia included a stop in Atwater at the Foster’s Freeze. Those of you unfamiliar with California drive-in cuisine, Foster’s is a DQ-like chain. I had been saving my calorie budget for an extra larger chocolate malt, with extra malt. Later I found out that this Foster’s Freeze was featured in Pulp Fiction(which I have not seen), where apparently Bruce Willis runs Ving Rhames over in the parking lot.
  • Yuma, Arizona
    • An easy day’s drive with a couple of stops along the Salton Sea, where we had never been. It’s an impressive body of water, dramatic with it’s sea to desert interface. I would consider camping here sometime during the offseason – none of the campgrounds along any campers in them, save one or two here or there. Solitude abounded. We stopped at the North Shore Beach & Yacht Club along State Route 111, a county recreation facility that once was a marina and resort for Hollywood types. There we watched pelicans, egrets and other birds, while enjoying the pleasant autumn sun and sound o the water lapping the shore.
    •  I spent a couple hours of the morning before we drove to Tucson exploring Yuma and taking pictures of trains crossing the Colorado River next to Interstate 8. We hit the road about noon, stopping in Dateland to buy dates. I’ve always been fascinated by abandoned places, especially abandoned airfields, so I remembered that there were several old WWII training fields in the area. One was back west a couple of miles on the south side of the interstate. So we headed there, and as we crossed the adjacent railroad tracks, we came across signs proclaiming “Barry M Goldwater Firing Range : Do Not Enter : Live Fire Range, yada, yada, yada”. I pondered ignoring the sign for a few moments, I mean the airfield was just another quarter mile down the road, and not an A-10 or F-35 to be seen. Well, wisdom prevailed, and I turned around – only to see a Border Patrol agent coming from the direction of the airfield 30 seconds later. An encounter with any federal agent would not have been good. But that’s ok, because just on the other side of Interstate 8 is Dateland Field, another abandoned WWII training field, so I was able to stop there. Passing Gila Bend, I got a good look at the Sand Tank Mountains, part of the Sonora Desert National Monument. It looks like a fascinating area to explore, and I’ve put it on my bucket list. There’s a great series of trip reports about this area by Desert Mountaineer.
  • DSCN0042 web DSCN0042 web The Tom Mix Memorial on Arizona State Route 79 north of Oracle Junction
  • DSCN0049 web DSCN0049 web Farmland near Florence, Arizona
  • DSCN0046 web DSCN0046 web Cotton fields, Florence, Arizona
  • DSCN0050 web DSCN0050 web Feli's Cuban Kitchen, Casa Grande, Arizona
  • DSCN0052 web DSCN0052 web Feli's Cuban Kitchen
  • DSCN0057 web DSCN0057 web Flounder with mango and pineapple, Feli's Cuban Kitchen
  • DSCN0064 web DSCN0064 web Heading west out of the Phoenix metroplex at sunset
  • DSCN0070 web DSCN0070 web Wind turbines outside of Palm Springs, California
  • DSCN0074 web DSCN0074 web Cottonwoods along California State Route 138
  • DSCN0077 web 2 DSCN0077 web 2
  • DSCN0078 web DSCN0078 web Amtrak cab car "Mount Shasta" heading north, Merced, California
  • DSCN0080 web DSCN0080 web Southbound freight on the BNSF line, Merced, California
  • DSCN0083 web DSCN0083 web Local BNSF crew setting out freight cars
  • DSCN0092 web DSCN0092 web SW1200 switch engine at the Foster Farms Collier Road plant
  • DSCN0117 web DSCN0117 web City of Mount Shasta below its namesake
  • DSCN0101 web DSCN0101 web Mount Shasta from the northwest side
  • DSCN0155 web DSCN0155 web The Shastina cone of Mount Shasta
  • DSCN0110 web DSCN0110 web Weed, California
  • DSCN0105 web DSCN0105 web Switch engine at Roseburg Lumber Products in Weed, California
  • DSCN0115 web DSCN0115 web The Sacramento River, Dunsmuir, California
  • DSCN0161 web DSCN0161 web Black Butte, just north of Mount Shasta. Black Butte is an extinct dacite dome volcano.
  • DSCN0207 web DSCN0207 web Locomotive turntable replica, downtown Folsom, California
  • DSCN0211 web DSCN0211 web A bar sign in Auburn, California
  • IMG_1852 A web IMG_1852 A web On the east side of the Salton Sea, California, looking west
  • IMG_1856 web IMG_1856 web Pelicans, Salton Sea
  • DSCN0223 web DSCN0223 web An eastbound freight train crosses the Colorado River at Yuma, Arizona
  • DSCN0224 web DSCN0224 web Balwin steam locomotive SP 2521 on display in Yuma.
  • DSCN0227 web DSCN0227 web Inside of the cab of SP 2521
  • DSCN0218 bw web DSCN0218 bw web Abandoned train station, Fort Yuma-Quechan Indian Reservation, which straddles the California/Arizona state line at Yuma.
  • DSCN0233 web DSCN0233 web One of the former runways of the WWII Army Air Corps training field Dateland Field, Dateland, Arizona
  • DSCN0231 web DSCN0231 web Abandoned water tower, used for steam locomotives along the former Southern Pacific Railroad line, just east of Dateland, Arizona