Austin and Furnace Mountains – Visit to Sacramento and Monterey Peninsula – The Gridiron Club dinner – Evening statistics
It has been an eventful week, but since I had only intermittent access to a workstation there have been no entries until now.
A week ago on Tuesday I went with the Vigorous Hikers to the hike along the Austin and Furnace Mountain Trails in the southern portion of Shenandoah National Park. It is a substantial hike, 17 miles in length with nearly 4500 feet in elevation gain, and it encompasses the view from the summit of Blackrock, one of the finest in the entire park. The trail skirts around a great tumbled heap of boulders, but even from the side of the rock pile it is nearly a 360-degree view looking down upon nearby Trayfoot Mountain and various other peaks further beyond. It is a longish drive to the trailhead (more than 2 hours each way), and moreover I was obliged to participate in the annual Wanderbirds club meeting via Zoom after I returned, so I had little time remaining to prepare for my journey that evening and thus made no entry before my California trip began on the following day.
Now that the effects of the pandemic are easing, travel has become somewhat less taxing and I had determined to visit some friends of mine in Sacramento and Salinas, whom I had not seen for some time – six years for those in Sacramento, nine for those in Salinas. As these timespans indicate, the pandemic alone is not entirely responsible for this long hiatus, but it certainly has hampered me in renewing face-to-face contact with them. The beginning of April seemed like a good time to see them, since I will be occupied a great deal in succeeding months with various other trips.
I flew in to the San Francisco airport, and even with this flight it became apparent how much less inconvenient air travel has become. Despite the crowds, the passage through security took about ten minutes in all. It appears that the scanners for checking out the passengers have been improved, for we were told not to remove our shoes, whereas in the past we were required to do. From the airport I picked up my rental car and drove to Sacramento. My host was occupied during the afternoon, so I strolled through Curtis Park before arriving at his house; it is a long grassplot lined with trees and flowering shrubs with a trail around the perimeter, whose streets contain elegant houses with elaborate gardens on the edge facing the park. Afterwards I went to my host’s house. We had a quiet dinner, which suited me after having traveled by plane for about five hours and by rental car for an additional two. On the following day we spent a good deal of time in Old Town and the day after that in the downtown area.
Sacramento is a pleasant city that has the potential of being a very attractive one. For quite a while the downtown area had a rather shabby and disheveled appearance, but it is being cleaned up gradually – very gradually, perhaps, but it has certainly improved over the past several years. In particular, renovations have been made to an extensive covered mall that leads into Old Town and that for a long time was decaying and acquiring a depressed, downtrodden appearance. Now, however, it is an open-air walkway reserved for pedestrians, and it wends its way around a new and elaborate arena for sports events and stage performances. People were thronging the road and the adjacent stores seem to be doing a thriving business. This improvement has come with a cost, of course. I was told that the arena in particular aroused considerable resentment, since taxes had to be raised for pay for its construction and the city already has an arena not far from the new one. The controversy it inspired, in fact, is similar to that surrounding the Verizon arena in the Chinatown area of Washington.
The Old Town is of great historical interest, whose preserved buildings and wooden sidewalks give a vivid impression of what life was like during the gold rush of the mid-19th century. Most of the area’s 53 original buildings date from this period. It possesses a museum-like quality, however, since most of the buildings are no longer residences and are now used as stores and restaurants. The Old Town includes the Delta King, a large paddlewheel steamboat that is at this point permanently moored on the American River and has been converted to a hotel with restaurants and a special venue for wedding festivities. We did not dine there, but we did visit the deck for the views of the river curving around the border of the city proper.
Although I like the city on the whole, I would not make a special trip to see it on its own account. Monterey is a different matter. My friends actually live in Salinas, but most of the hotels available for the area are in Monterey, which is only a 20-minute drive from their place. Monterey is a former cannery town, whose sardine industry was most active in the early 20th century. But its history goes back much further. It was founded in 1770 and was the capital of Alta California when the area was owned by Spain. Even before it was established as a town various lagoons in its proximity were used by the Spanish explorers to guide their boats into a safe harbor. Numerous old adobe houses set up by the most prominent of the colonial families are scattered throughout the downtown area.
The physical setting alone is beautiful: a bay of mingled green- and blue-tinged water framed against pine-forested mountains rising in the background and beaches broken up here and there with large rounded boulders which numerous marine mammals use as stopping points during their migratory routes. Marine life is extensive and varied: not only mammals such as seals, otters, sea lions, and whales, but many varieties of birds, including gulls, terns, glebe, loons, and pelicans. Kelp forests are extensive, particularly along the Cannery Row area. A large marina stocked with yachts of all sizes and designs dominates the bay area close to downtown, as well as an old wharf whose space is now devoted to various shops and restaurants.
The Cannery Row neighborhood lies further to the north and west along the peninsula. It is not quite what I expected. I thought that it would show more signs of the canning industry that once dominated the area. But it is now a collection of fashionable hotels and upscale restaurants. In a sense it has reverted to its original design. In early days a few of the most influential people in the city had toyed with the idea of making it the equivalent of the Riviera. Once the canning industry was established, however, those plans had to be abandoned: the odors from the factories made it impossible to set it up as a tourist center. Now the industry has long gone, and the neighborhood has simply become a spruce, smart, high-priced area along the beach. It is sufficiently pretty, but the main interest of Monterey lies in the downtown area, with its historic homes (many of them converted to small museums) and the marina, where the seals swim and occasionally bask on the rocks, while the seabirds wheel overhead.
I arrived on a Saturday. A combination of a fair and an outdoor market was being held in the park adjacent to the old Customs House near the marina. Here I lunched before checking into the hotel and then walked extensively to explore the city, perhaps 14 miles in all. The hotel itself was located a couple of miles from downtown and that evening I stayed in its vicinity rather than travel to downtown again; it had been a long day, though a pleasurable one. The following day I met with my friends. We went from the hotel to the downtown area and the marina as well. Colonies of seals were floating by the pier; a few had taken shelter underneath the pier itself for relaxation. There were numerous signs warning tourists that marine mammals, and sea lions in particular, are far from harmless; they have been known to attack people who get too close to them, and they have the ability to maul humans if they are provoked, being quite rapid in their movements despite their size. For dinner that evening I ate at one of the restaurants on the wharf, tasting sea dabs for the first time: their flesh is white and delicate, and since they are small (about six inches long) it is easy to overcook them; fortunately the chef who prepared my meal grilled them to just the right texture. This day also I walked a great deal, going as far along the beach as Pacific Grove before returning to the hotel.
On Monday I went to my friends’ house in Salinas, the town to the northeast of Monterey, and a few miles inland. It is a somewhat less interesting city than Monterey –fairly prosperous or at any rate well enough, but not worth seeing on its own account. My friends settled there because, as they told me, property values in Monterey are very inflated and one gets relatively little square footage in return for rent or mortgage payments, whereas Salinas prices are much more reasonable. One of my friends has an interest in history and acts as a guide to one of the museums in downtown Monterey formed from the adobe homes in colonial days . Under his guidance we took a drive to Spreckels, an old corporate town that is one of the best-preserved in the country. Its emporium, which was established in 1898, is still operative. Spreckels used to house workers for the Spreckels Sugar Company plant, which operated from 1899 to 1982. It was the largest sugar beet factory for many years. The houses there are somewhat surprising. Most of the company towns centered about factories provided fairly rudimentary quarters for their workers, often cramped and jerry-built; these houses, however, were comfortable, solid, and, while not large, were sufficiently spacious to rear a family of children. All of them had yards to the front and to the back. Unlike Cannery Row, it has not altered in appearance, even though the town is now more of a bedroom community to Monterey and Salinas rather than a factory town. A few new houses have been added, but their architectural style is similar to those of the earlier dwellings.
At one point during the late evening I passed by a hotel where free COVID tests were being offered. It seemed to me that I might as well take advantage of this opportunity, since I had recently traveled five hours by plane and had since dined out in restaurants more frequently during the past few days than I had done for many months combined. The process took only a few minutes and the results came back much more promptly than I expected; on the following day I received a text that my results were negative.
Various tasks that are always associated with return from travel occupied much of my evening on the day of my return. In addition, the weather affected my mood; the days in Sacramento and Monterey were warm and fairly sunny, becoming very clear for the last two days of the trip; and while the nights were cold, they were not at all damp. In contrast, the weather during the evening of my return and the two days following seemed surpassingly dreary: rain continually off and on, with gray, sullen-looking clouds and an atmosphere infused with water droplets, creating a perpetual chill despite temperatures being in the fifties. On the other hand, even though I was away for less than a week, a kind of botanical explosion appears to be occurred in my absence: trees and shrubs are unfurling their leaves and hardly any of the boughs are now bare, while ground flowers that were budding when I departed from California are in full bloom.
Amidst all of these private pleasures I have, as may be inferred, not been avidly following developments in the news, and there is a great deal of catching up to do. But one item may be noted, since it has implications for the DC metro area. The annual Gridiron Club dinner is something of an institution in Washington, one of the few large-scale, white-tie events that are still held in the city. The club is one of the most prestigious journalistic clubs in the nation. Its annual dinner traditionally features the United States Marine Band, along with satirical musical skits by the club members, and often by members of the two House chambers as well. It was not held during 2020 or 2021, on account of the pandemic, but conditions were deemed to be much less risky this year and the dinner was accordingly reinstated, with about 630 guests in attendance. However, a few days after the dinner was held, 14 attendees tested positive for COVID. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Democratic Representatives Adam Schiff (CA) and Joaquin Castro (TX) are among these. It is suspected – or rather more than suspected – that many others attending the dinner have also been afflicted, but have not yet publicly announced it. In short, the dinner might prove to have been a super-spreader event.
This outcome might have a side effect that admittedly is minor importance in comparison with the illness of many influential politicians, journalists and public officials, but is nonetheless undesirable from my point of view. The Wanderbirds club has, as I indicated, recently been making plans to restore its bus hikes; but this development is causing its Board members to reconsider its decision. I hope we can revert to using the bus again, despite the risk. After all, people are taking public transit every day – although, as one Board member pointed out, subways and city buses open their doors every few minutes, causing air to circulate freely and disperse droplets that may spread the virus, and this would not be the case for bus rides to Shenandoah and the Massanuttens. Well, one must bow to the decision, whatever it may be, of the Board’s Health Committee, whose members are considerably more knowledgeable about such matters than I am.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 496,157,333; # of deaths worldwide: 6,194,803; # of cases U.S.: 81,987,733; # of deaths; U.S.: 1,011,087.