Home at last! Home at last! Home at last!

Sunday I completed the final leg of my trip home to Vista. I left Daly City late in the morning, stopping at Andy Mariani's fruit orchard in Morgan Hill. It was cherry tasting day, with at least 40 varieties to taste. I was under directions to bring some to friend Steve Facciola, so Andy gave me a slew of paper bags, into each of which I put a handful of one variety, being careful to label the bag. Very important step, as Steve is an authority on edible plants and is working on the 3rd edition of his sourcebook, Cornucopia. I asked Andy if he had ever met my father, from his connection with the Rare Fruit Society. He hadn't but said he had heard of him. "He was legendary!"

Otherwise, the trip was non-eventful until I got near Santa Barbara. For some unknown reason the traffic crawled from north of Goleta to way south of Carpinteria. It took me an hour and a half to go 30 miles. Lots of traffic going through L.A., as usual, but it moved pretty well. The Angelenos really know how to deal with traffic, they have enough practice. With stops for lunch and dinner, I didn't get home until after 11 pm. But the house was cleaner than when I had left it nearly 8 months ago! Steve did it! Good thing I stopped to get those cherries.

It is wonderful to be back in California. Jacaranda is in bloom in the southern half of the state. Beautiful! Even better to sleep in my own bed and to have a wonderful pot of tea in the morning.

[See the comment on my previous post re arriving in Daly City. I could not post to the blog from Mother's computer, tho I could comment.]

Basques in Nevada

We are keeping to the straight and narrow. No side trips. No museums, tempting though they are. Lots of road work on I-80, sometimes for 10 miles at a stretch. We had planned to have lunch in or near Salt Lake City. For some reason, I turned off at the Park City exit, remembering the three wonderful ski vacations we had there. But right near the exit (still 6 miles from Park City) was a shopping center. I pulled in to look for a restaurant and right away found "Good Thymes Bistro," with outdoor seating. We both had the melted brie & chicken quesadilla, served with a yummy salsa with a very slight tinge of curry. Terrific! Both Mother & I independently thought our server looked a lot like Paul Boissevain. Casey Rommel is a pre-med student at Colorado College, and his mother went to S.F. State before Mother and Guido retired. We gave him their names to ask his mother if she knew either one. A charming young man who will go far. Fun to talk to. (Even though Joel told me not to talk to strangers.)

We passed the Great Salt Lake, and then a huge salt evaporation reservoir coming from the lake. Wonderful snow-capped mountains to the south of us most of the way. We seem to be following the Emigrant Trail. We knew when we got to the Nevada state line from all the casinos.

Even though we gained another hour and are now on Pacific time, we stopped fairly early at Elko, Nevada for the night. We chose a Basque restaurant for dinner, since that's where you should eat in Nevada, and lamb is what you should eat, since the Basques are/were sheepherders here. If you have never eaten in a Basque restaurant, you may not be familiar with the QUANTITY of food. Mother and I split one dinner order of lamb chops and could not finish all the food: a big bowl of bean soup AND a big bowl of salad AND spaghetti AND baked potato AND a bowl of steamed veggies AND sheepherder's bread AND the lamb chops. Kind of reminded me of the fixed price meals we used to get in North Beach.

Will we make it to San Francisco tomorrow?

Back to I-80

Once again, I am following in my father's footsteps. After breakfast, Cousin Kyla brought over boxes of family photos. It turns out my father came to Scottsbluff in 1966, to her grandmother's funeral. There is a photo to prove it. I never knew he ever got to Scottsbluff, but I was in Brazil then. And I have been told I resemble Cousin Verla, but I haven't seen a picture of her, so I don't know about that.

By mid-morning, Mother & I headed south, back to I-80, to make tracks, finally, for Daly City. We passed some beautiful scenery in Wyoming, including one mountain pass at 8640'. Maybe that was the Continental Divide? Stopping for the night at Rock Springs, Wyoming. A little over 100 miles from Utah. And the car has gone over 3000 miles on this trip.

Scottsbluff and Cousins

Before breakfast on Saturday, in between our showers, Mother and I watched (most of) the French Open Women's Final. It was not the greatest match, as often happens when someone is in the final for the first time (Ivanovic) against an old-timer (Henin). After breakfast, we went off to see Scotts Bluff, another landmark for those making their way across the plains. The site was on the Oregon Trail and vestiges of the trail can still be seen. The visitor center has a short video, some exhibits, and a room full of paintings by Joseph Henry Jackson, done a half century after his crossing in the 1840s, based on his sketches at the time. One can also hike or drive to the summit of the bluff for a fantastic view. We chose to drive: there are three tunnels on the way. The bluffs are truly spectacular!

The (2nd) cousins gathered for lunch. Kyla lives in the area; her sister Dawna was returning home to Chadron (in the North) after depositing her son in Fort Collins for a 10-week summer internship and stopped here on the way. We all managed to meet and have lunch together at a restaurant cum coffeehouse, "The Emporium," in a cute little house. We sat outside on the front patio. We cousins had never met, but had no trouble exchanging lots of family stories. Kyla and Dawna's grandfather Jim Casselman was the brother of my grandmother, Jane Casselman Ballard. After lunch, Dawna headed back home, and Kyla drove us around. We saw some of the buildings built by Grandfather Jim about 100 years ago, including the first bank in town and the high school, now a middle school. At the cemetery, I took photos of the Casselman gravestones. Finally we saw the home her grandparents bought to live in in Scottsbluff; they had each homesteaded elsewhere. Kyla and her husband and son are renovating the house. Lots of beautiful tilework inspired by their son's stay in Italy.

Mother and I truly enjoyed Nebraska. Meeting such compatible relatives was an unexpected added bonus. Tomorrow it's on to Wyoming.

100th Meridian, Buffalo Bill, and Chimney Rock

Friday's weather was calm, at last. Our goal today was Scottsbluff, and we made it! We are almost in Wyoming. Along the way we passed the 100th Meridian at Cozad. This is supposedly the point which divides the wetter eastern topography from the drier western climate. Not long after that, we gained another hour and are now in the Mountain Time zone.

A stop for lunch at North Platte after visiting the Buffalo Bill Ranch. It is owned and run by the State of Nebraska and thus suffers from low funding so that exhibits are poorly labelled, if at all. And recent funding cuts meant personnel cuts, so they no longer have anyone to show the video with actual film clips from one of his Wild West Shows. Still, it was fun to see the house and the barn, with an exhibit relating to Annie Oakley and Frank Butler in the farthest corner.

Our last stop before reaching Scottsbluff was at Chimney Rock, which you really can see from miles away. On our route we could see it from about 20 miles; the pioneers saw it from at least 40 miles. It was the most noted landscape feature in pioneer diaries. It really looks like an upside down funnel. We did manage to see the video and were about 2/3 through the exhibits when they announced closing time and threw us out with no pre-warning.

Scottsbluff was not much farther and has more of those wonderful rock formations, which we will explore tomorrow. It also has cousins we will meet for the first time tomorrow. We had dinner at Whiskey Creek, across the street from the motel. The kind of place where you throw your peanut shells on the floor. I had a great steak. After all, we are still in Nebraska.

Pilgrimage to Red Cloud

We started our day on Thursday at the Hastings Museum of Natural and Cultural History, a real gem of all aspects of Nebraska history. Of special interest to me was the Kool-Aid exhibit, showing its development in the area, to success, to sale to General Foods. I have fond memories of mountain hikes from Lake Kirkwood, as a youngster, when we always took along Kool-Aid for our lunch-time drinks, and used it to flavor stream and lake water. I am not sure we can drink from those same streams and lakes now.

We had lunch at the nearby O.K. Cafe, as recommended by museum personnel. It was clearly the most popular place in town, and a museum in its own right. Several model trains were running around the edges of the walls, up near the ceiling. The cafe was also full of old time dishes, kitchen implements, dolls, and you name it on display. I had chiles rellenos and Mother had a fried egg sandwich.

Off south to Red Cloud, where Willa Cather grew up, and which inspired many of the characters in her books. We took the "tour" of the Cather home at the time, the bank, which figures in one of her books, and the Opera House. Our guide was a good friend of Mildred Bennett, who wrote the biography I am reading, and who also roped our guide into working with the Willa Cather Historic Site starting way back in 1955 and has been at it ever since. I was glad to know I was reading the "good" biography. And we got lots of extra "inside" stories.

For the most part, the day's weather was much better than on Wednesday, since we were far south of I-80. Only a little wind in Hastings in the morning. But later, as we headed back up north to I-80, the winds really picked up, and we went through a few of those dark patchy areas where you can't see. This was the remnants in Nebraska of the "severe weather" that hit the midwest with tornadoes in Wisconsin and tied up air traffic in Chicago.

We managed to make our way to Kearney and squeaked into the Great Platte River Road Archway Monument before closing. This museum is really an archway all the way over I-80. As you walk through, you experience successive methods of making the journey along the Great Platte River Road, starting with the pioneer's wagon train. A buffalo stampede is quite realistic. At the end you have a window down to cars speeding by on I-80 right below. We spent the night in Kearney, with a good dinner at "Sydney's", which was the motel restaurant.

Cousins, Runzas, and Tornados

I have at least 3 Casselman 2nd cousins in Nebraska, children of my father's 1st cousin Kyle Casselman, on his mother's side. I have been in correspondence with Dawna, who lives in Chadron, in the northwest part of the state. Don't know if we will be able to connect. Kyla lives in Scottsbluff, which we will pass through, so we hope to see her. Dawna and Kyla put me in touch with Cynthia, who lives not too far from Lincoln. We touched base by (many calls) phone Wednesday morning and managed to get together briefly before Mother and I left Lincoln. Cynthia brought along her mother, Shirley, who had attended my wedding just about 44 years ago. I had had no previous contact with Cynthia, but we had fun gossiping about the Casselmans in Canada and the "Southern Casselmans."

We didn't spend too much time together because Mother & I were trying to get out of Lincoln and as close to our next outpost before any really bad weather. As we were leaving the motel, someone told Mother about the incredible winds & thunderstorms & hail predicted. And it was pretty windy outside. We did see the beautiful art deco capitol building in Lincoln, but not any of the other great museums in town. Driving west got spookier and spookier. Several times we drove through patches of what seemed like brown fog--couldn't see very far ahead, then suddenly out of the patch. All the Nebraskans seemed to take it in stride. We stopped for gas, and I nearly got blown away when I went in to talk to the attendant. He said to worry if there were a sudden temperature drop. We bypassed two towns with good museums I had on my list and just kept going to Hastings, which is south of I-80, but on the way to Red Cloud. It was windy there too, but the worst weather was now north of us. The motel's guest directory had instructions re tornado warnings, tornado watches, etc. While we were watching bits of the French Open, we were told to watch another channel for the tornado advisory. The counties affected were north of us.

We didn't eat lunch until we got to Hastings. We found a "Runza," which seems to be a widespread Nebraska fast food chain. It could be elsewhere but it was new to us. In some towns there are more Runzas than McDonalds. Runza has a namesake signature sandwich: dough stuffed with ground beef & spices. We had the variation with cheese. Pretty tasty, but very filling. We found and closed a good Chinese restaurant for a late dinner, still full from our late Runza.