Allyson Johnson

Pieces of my Mind

Archive for the category “hidden treasures”

14 May 2024

Freeway Free in Texas: Canoeing on Caddo

I wake up to the same utter stillness that lulled me to sleep. I walk through lovely wet green woods under maybe-clearing skies to the loo. 

Breakfast at 9ish of yogurt, fruit, nuts, and tea,then down to the Park HQ to confirm our arrival, get a parking sticker, pick up post cards, and rent a canoe for the PM.

A note of reality: Caddo Lake State Park is not, strictly speaking, on Caddo Lake. The boat ramp and canoe launch area actually border a small side reach of the lake, Saw Mill Pond. The good news: this sequestered area has no speed boats, no water skiers, and very few really deep areas – a perfect place for a couple of senior ladies, or for families with small swimmers, to try their paddling skills. for a reasonable $7 for a half day’s use, the friendly ranger at the Visitors’ Center gave us directions to the canoe launch area, keys which opened the storage shed full of life jackets and oars as well as our designated canoe. A few false starts (we forgot our hats, went to the wrong boat ramp) and then we found our canoe, donned life jackets, grabbed oars, and launched.

Well, we nearly launched, but ran aground on a cypress knee immediately.  Happily, a couple of guys came along, laughed that they had done the same the day before, and pushed us off.   I was feeling very unsteady balancing in the canoe in the far front end, and we had to fend ourselves off a number of cypress trees as the wind kept pushing us around.  We ran aground again on a buried log in a backwater and were on the point of thinking one of us would have to get out and push, but a hefty shove against a tree got us afloat again.  After that we were quite careful about staying in more open water.  We were almost alone in the Pond – maybe one family with a couple of children maneuvering at the far end. We admired the shimmering water, and its reflections in the hollows of the trees. We listened to the stillness. We stayed out about an hour, long enough for our backs to feel the effort of paddling, and then ran ourselves into the canoe harbor perfectly.

Next, return the key, find out where to buy an extra propane canister, visit Johnston’s Caddo Grocery and Bait Shop 5 miles down the road, and then it is time for naps, reading, catching up with the expense sheet, and maybe writing a few post cards if we feel ambitious. Quiet is a wonderful sedative.

—-

I didn’t feel ambitious so contented myself with puttering around, until we decided that as we had skipped lunch making dinner early would be appropriate.  So I got out the materials for basic glop, crossing my fingers that it could be cooked as well in a saucepan as in a skillet, and with me chopping onions and W browning the meat we had it together and cooking nicely on the Coleman’s stove in a half hour or so.   I puttered around interfering with Wnifred’s building of a charcoal-based fire, until we began to smell a scorching at about the time the casserole  should have been done.  Hmmm.  Although I had added some extra liquid to rinse out the tomato can, I did not allow enough extra to account for 1 the noodles being rotini instead of flat egg noodles and thus required Ng more time and 2 the Coleman stove, even at low heat, with only a thin aluminum saucepan to deal with, cooked HOT.  so we had a layer of scorched substance on the bottom of the pan, and rather chewy rotini on the top.  Still, hunger is the best pickle, and we managed to eat more than half, leaving enough for a second meal if we have appetizers before hand.

After dinner I kept fooling with the fire, as the termperature was dropping and the wind picking up.  Although plenty of smoke was generated by the wood we had taken from the firewood rack at the boat dock, the only real flame camer from kindling sticks and pine cones I scrounged from the environment.  We brewed some herbal tea and sat and chatted and i kept  getting colder, adding a thin but oozy yoga jacket, my warm hat , my Biffy , my longjohn sottoms and my sweatshirt to my costume.  By the time we gave up on the fire (a couple of logs had smoldered through, but no real heat generated) and climbed into our cots, i had decided to keep my sweatshirt on, with hood.  I should have also kept the long John’s, as my summer pj’s tended to ride up and were no contest for the dropping thermometer (which hit 43 degrees per the Weather app the next day).

[I have had arthritis in my right hip enough to keep me awake both nights – both nights I got up and took an ibuprofen which cut in enough to help me sleep eventually. tomorrow I will be sure to take a famotidine in the AM hoping my “miracle cure” works again.  It took a week to wear off from the Omoxxxxxx – or was it the Kathy Smith Aerobic workout?  Or is it the hard cot? Or the cold?)

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30 Apr 2024

Flying Down the Freeway in Texas

From Love Field in Dallas to Caddo Lake on the Louisiana Border – W and I first met in East Texas, so the afternoon is a trip through the mists of nostalgia as we flash past familiar landmarks on the ubiquitous interstates.

From DFW we pass familiar streets on the exit signs: Mockingbird Lane, Inwood Ave, Turtle Creek, Preston Road and University Park. The frontage road skirts neighborhoods full of the lovely brick and white-trimmed ranch-style houses of East Texas prosperity, set well back on impossibly wide and deep and green lawns. 

After several mis-directions we make it onto the freeway, past fields of bluebonnets, paintbrush, godetia, and crimson clover. There are more familiar names on the exit signs: Athens, Terrell, Gladewater, Tyler, Kilgore, and finally Marshall, our turnoff.  We stop at a Kroger’s, where W reveals that she had not glanced at her checklist before loading the car.  Just in case, we pick up things we turn out not to need (tea, salt and pepper, bowls) and things we will be glad to have (fruit, crackers, tinned fish, yogurt, fixings for a one-dish skillet dinner, and most importantly, a cooler).

Fifteen miles later we are at the CCC stone-piled entrance to Caddo Lake State Park.  We arrive at 4:45 at the check-in stand to discover that the office closes at 4:30. W’s computer pulls up Shelter 16 on the reservation.

It is dusk by the time we unpack, W is exhausted and wants to sit, and I am hungry. We have our snack lunch for dinner and save the skillet meal for later – a skillet is another thing W has forgotten.  An application of Off! keeps the bugs at bay, W has a mini-lantern for the table, and we make our way through a tin of sardines, a half-box of crackers, and half the cherry tomatoes – Excellent, and easy!

We had planned a post- prandial fire sit, but the fire is short-lived, as we had not stopped for firewood on the way in. Still there is magic, as the stillness thickens, and fireflies begin to flicker in the trees. The humidity is so high that the evening dew is condensing in puddles INSIDE the shelter, but W has brought a tarp for the floor, and cots to raise us above it. A sheet is all I need for a cover as I snuggle on top of my sleeping bag, listening to the stillness until I fall asleep.

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20 Feb 2024
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Graffitti – Gritty, Ubiquitous, Affirming

The railroad tracks from the Coliseum to Jack London Square – everywhere the trash and debris of homelessness… rusted out cars, plywood shanties, abandoned chairs, strollers, buckets, tires, tarps…. But everywhere also the triumphant gaiety of graffiti – a rainbow of indecipherable words adorning every available concrete surface – amazingly no pornographic or obscene drawings or postings, only an occasional sad face, Raiders logo, anime girl in a sarong, a smiling blue tiger.   Some of the artists have mastered techniques that I have failed to grasp in art classes – shading, three-D effects. Odd that these artists don’t express more anger and frustration.  Every tag, every angular or curvilinear phrase (some out in the water on pipes, some twenty feet high) expressing “I am here!”

Some businesses have given in to the graffiti and put up their own murals using the curvilinear or anime style – these seem to be respected.  It is very bad form to paint over another artist’s work. And now at Jack London Suare the graffiti disappears amid the apartments and banners and “public artwork” of the respectable and established world.

Per Wikipedia,Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view.  Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire.. Modern graffiti, focused on tagging, probably began on New York City subway cars and spread like a living cloak flung across railway cars, freeway overpasses, and abandoned buildings. When I first visited Japan in 1997 I remember my colleague remarking on the lack of graffiti . When I last visited in 2011 graffiti was everywhere. In some eyes, graffiti are acts of vandalism. In others, they are works of art.

We leave the Square, with its up-market businesses including a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, a BevMo, a Cost Plus World Market… and then abruptly we are into the Port area and the graffiti erupts again. Dingier here, as though the artists lacked the energy to walk this far from warmth and people.  A huge recycling center.  Stacks of shipping containers, A row of black oil tankers, oddly un-graffitied, unlike the box cars and flat cars on the next track over. Is it hard to make the paint stick on the curved surfaces? The cattle cars and box cars are painted as high as a man can reach. Of course – why paint a lowly concrete barrier when one can send one’s aspirations across the country?

Posted in California, Freeway Free, hidden treasures, Train travel and tagged , ,
21 Nov 2023
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Freeway Free in Washington – A Ghost of Lost Hawaii

When our boat docked at the small town of Kalama (population just under 3,000) I had a strange sense of deja vu. That three-story tile-roofed hotel facing the beach, with verandas wrapping around all three stories – hadn’t I seen it before?

It turned out I had – years earlier, on a honeymoon trip to Lahaina, and then again on an anniversary return trip to the same place. Nestled on the beach side of the railroad track which separates the town of Kalama from the marina, beach, and boat dock is a replica of the old Pioneer Inn in Lahaina, built from the same blueprints. This recreation is especially poignant as the original Pioneer Inn had been demolished less than two months earlier by the wildfire which destroyed most of historic Lahaina in August 2023.

The Oregon version has an extra level, and the palm trees are replaced by a trio of historic totem poles, but the exterior and interior are meticulously crafted to evoke the historic Pioneer Inn. Inside, the bar has a tiki theme, the walls are pine-paneled , a bark canoe hangs from the ceiling and the furniture is vintage.

But the Mcmenamins empire includes more than a single nostalgic lodge. At this establishment, instead of mai tais, the customer is offered beer from the Mcmenamins’ brewery and hard cider from the Mcmenamins- orchards. The brewery is conveniently located right across from the gift shop, so you can taste and buy onsite within a few steps.

Mcmenamins also owns a number of entertainment venues across the states of Washington and Oregon, and the pine-paneled walls are decorated with posters of noted concerts.

There is a claim, enshrined in oil paintings though not in photos, that Elvis Presley himself stayed, not at the Lodge, but nearby in Kalama on his way to film a movie in Seattle, and it is quite true that Marlon Brando was a frequent visitor to his son Christian’s home in Kalama. The oil painting of the two icons fishing together, however, is purely imaginary, as their visits were two decades apart.

Posted in Freeway Free, hidden treasures, Travel, Washington State and tagged , , ,
24 Oct 2023

Freeway Free in Washington: Eating Wild in Spokane

D and I were at the Hilton Garden Inn in Spokane, about to embark the next day on a cruise down the Snake and Columbia Rivers. The Garden Inn is a functional airport hotel, made charming by exceptionally pleasant, smiling staff. But dinner at the hotel looked like a bleak proposition; a bunch of folks were playing cards in the lounge, and the dining area was over-brightly lit and uninviting.

So we walked across the parking lot to the Rusty Moose, which, turned out to be very welcoming, despite being decorated with a lot of staring animal heads and other effigies. Though wild game burgers were the featured attractions, Destiny (our smiling server) served us a delicious dinner of seared halibut (D) and Idaho trout (me) with a yummy rice pilaf and baby asparagus on the side. We splurged on a bottle of the house Sauvignon Blanc from WA state, and a berry cobbler shared for desert (served with ice cream AND whipped cream on top – Washingtonians don’t stint!)

Maybe not a destination restaurant, but certainly a worthy haven en route to wherever!

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17 Oct 2023

Freeway Free in Washington: Surprising Stevenson

Stevenson Washington is a town of no more than 2000 people, with one main street that stretches from the Port of Skamania boat dock and park along the north bank of the Columbia River up three blocks to the brutally modern Skamania County Courthouse, with two cross streets, one of which is Washington State Route 14. But those three blocks are oddly charming, with shops that would be perfectly at home in an elegant Palo Alto shopping center. How do they survive?

Probably they survive because the boat dock is host several times a week during the summer months to American Cruise Line riverboats, which have picked Stevenson for a stopping point due to its convenient access to the Bonneville Dam, the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center, and Multnomah Falls. In between excursions, the passengers are tempted to stroll off the boat, through the green and inviting park, and up the gentle hill to browse in North Bank Books, one of the prettiest and best curated bookstores I have ever seen, or examine goods in Out and About, a purveyor of beautifully tailored outdoor clothing, look for buried treasures at the Gorge Thrift Store, or taste a local craft beer at the Big River Grill, admire local art and crafts at Riverhouse III Gallery, or… but you should stop in Stevenson and see for yourself.

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10 Oct 2023

Freeway Free in Washington: The REACH Museum celebrates unspoiled nature and toxic science

With all the discussion about “Oppenheimer” and his role in the development of the atomic bomb, one would have thought there were be more discussion of the other two locations which were key to his success. One was Oak Ridge in Tennessee, where uranium was refined for the first bomb, the other was Hanford, Washington, where plutonium for the second bomb was manufactured.

Like Los Alamos, Hanford was built in the most remote location possible, shrouded in secrecy, and filled with scientists who believed their labors would end World War II. At one point the town of Hanford was the fourth largest city in the state, with the largest General Post Office in the world (since addresses would have been Top Secret.) And as at Los Alamos, the scientists involved in the project worked with little apparent thought of the long-range effects of their labors.

The REACH museum outside of Hanford overlooks the longest undammed free-flowing reach of the Columbia River – hence its name. The country surrounding the museum is a sage and scrub desert, but it teems with wildlife including elk, antelope, an occasional bear, and all sorts of minor rodents, insects, and birds. Ironically, the reason for this virgin territory lies buried underground in unmarked sites and in leaking canisters – the radioactive waste left over from the plutonium project. No-one wants to drink water that may have overlain these poorly-conceived and poorly protected waste dumps.

The museum itself is a hybrid – half of it is devoted to the geology and wildlife associated with the Columbia River, the other half tells the story of Hanford, the plutonium project, and the community’s pride in its contribution to ending the war. Only one exhibit addresses the threat of radioactive contamination left behind, and that exhibit invites you to compare the amount of radioactivity in a vintage Fiestaware coffee cup to that in a sample of dirt from Hanford. (Surprise! the coffee cup’s red glaze has more!)

The US government has belatedly spent millions of dollars to remove or contain contamination around Hanford, and will need to spend millions more before it is safe to drink the ground water. But the town is still proud of its contribution to V-J day, still cherishes the government houses (Models A through F) thrown up almost overnight to accomodate the families, and wishes that “Barbenheimer” was”Barbanford”

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12 Sep 2023

Freeway Free in California – Hidden Gem – Triton Musuem in Santa Clara

The Triton Museum of Art, tucked away in a quiet corner near the City Hall, is one of the many small museums dotting the Bay Area, and one of the pleasantest. It specializes in contemporary and historical works with an emphasis on artists of the Greater Bay Area. The permanent collection includes 19th and 20th century American art of the Pacific Rim, Europe and beyond plus an extensive collection of American Indian art and artifacts. The museum was founded in 1965 in San Jose, California, by rancher, lawyer and art patron W. Robert Morgan and his wife June.[3][4] It is the oldest non-university museum in Santa Clara County. 

On a recent visit, there were four major exhibits being celebrated. The first featured abstract sculptures by Jeff Owen, placed around the lobby in accessible spots. I saw one man taking a picture of his wife peeking through the circle of a sculpture, like one of those carnival sets where you are invited to put your face on a blowup of Marilyn Monroe.

Perhaps she was inspired by the second exhibit, a collection of larger-than-life bill-board-like figures conceived by John Cerney and inviting viewers to make themselves part of the scene.

The third exhibit was a series of larger-than-life charcoal drawings, most of them self portraits of the artist Julie Grantz, and embodying a series of feminist themes.

The last and largest exhibit was a roomful of paintings by May Shei, inspired by Chinese tradition. They included calligraphy scrolls, delicate nature vignettes, vibrantly colored still lifes, and monumental landscapes in the style of Zhang Da Qian.

The Triton is perfectly sized to allow appreciation of the diversity of its offerings without wearing the viewer out with an over-supply of stimulation. Admission is free, as is the plentiful parking, though of course donations are encouraged.

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05 Sep 2023

Freeway Free in Colorado: Strolling through the past in Georgetown

Instead of turning north at the Granby junction off I-70, DM suggested that we continue another five miles and have our lunch in Georgetown, a discovery she and a friend had made in exploring the west side of the Colorado Rockies.

Georgetown is a town preserved in the 1889’s, except it has been somewhat cute-sified with colorful paint a la San Francisco’s Painted Ladies.  What used to be the bank is now painted a trendy purple and contains an assortment of “antiques”, “local crafts” (some made in China) and kitsch shops selling Xmas ornaments, Colorado souvenirs, “Indian” turquoise and silver jewelry,  etc.  The town includes several attractive restaurants; we ate at “The Happy Cooker” – a cottage with a cheerful patio outside decorated with oddments, friendly bustling service, and ample servings of French fries to go with wraps and salads. Wandering around as we waited for our table to be cleared I even found a shop with a fine assortment of Georgetown postcards – increasingly a rarity in the days of email and Instagram.

There is also a railroad running just outside of town, a relic of the old mining days. We did not visit the railroad, being on a schedule, but we heard a very authentic-sounding whistle, and there were postcards. (If you go, check out the railroad and report back!)

After lunch we strolled the other side of the street and stopped in at the charming little library beautifully laid out with the more modern children’s wing tucked away behind so as not to disturb the overall quaintness.

A perfect way to break a trip from Denver or Boulder to the western slope!

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29 Aug 2023

Freeway Free in California: Along the River in SLO

 This morning we went to downtown San Luis Obispo, magically stripped of its food stalls, produce, and acrobats from last night’s farmer’s market, and checked out the mission – lovely, quiet, full of apologetic acknowledgement of the mistreatment of Indigenous People’s.  We left W, who had seen plenty of missions, outside on a bench by the creek, and returned to find her having befriended Adrian, a very well-spoken and tidy vagrant who welcomed us all to SLO. 

We wandered along thecreek to the SLO Art museum, a very small but attractive venue with three local artists exhibiting (loved Anila Agha’s India-inspired lanterns), plus a colorful abstract mural which wrapped completely around the outside of the museum.

On our way back to the car we couldn’t pass up the old Carnegie Library, now the home of the SLO History Museum.  The exhibits and the docent who talked about them were unexpectedly fascinating – I had to go out for extra time on our (very expensive) parking meter. The docent was a Viet Nam vet who knew a lot about the Dust Bowl and the Japanese internment, and is doing research on WR Hearst.  He explained and enhanced a lot about the old photos which were displayed, and recommended The Habit for a light hamburger lunch just a block away.

The Habit is a fast food place a cut or several above McDonalds – I had a fancy burger with mushrooms and garlic aioli and tempura string beans instead of fries for about $12 including tax.  The most unusual aspect is the ordering, all done at touch-screen kiosks at the front of the store, with a buzz to your cell phone when your order is ready.

When we left the mission in the morning, we had seen people setting up already for the free Friday concert in the Plaza in the evening. (People were already reserving their spaces at 11AM). We thought about attending, but decided instead to reserve a riverside table at Novo just down San Luis Obispo Creek from the mission and the Plaza.

 Our dinner at Novo was a triumph – all participants raised a toast to D for having suggested and reserved the place.  We were outside next to the creek, but far enough down the creek and across so that the noise of “The Molly Ringwald Experience” rock band going in in the Plaza was just incidental background noise.  

We feasted on four appetizer plates:  calamari with 2 kinds of sauce, roasted Brussels sprouts, warm Chèvre (goat cheese) with olives and sourdough toast, and minced chicken in lettuce cups.  We finished off with a shared chocolate decadence fudge thing, all deliciously accompanied by a generous pour of the house Merlot. 

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