Tag: Old California

Casmalia, a healing beauty

Just off of the Vandenberg Air Force Base reservation we turned inland and rode through this hidden valley of oaks and sycamores surrounded by rolling green hills. I’d never been through Casmalia, and it looked like a hidden gem.

But this beautiful place has a rough past. It had been a railroad boomtown when the Southern Pacific first came through, then an oil boomtown when the oilfields nearby were still producing. Finally, just over the hill in the background somebody opened a toxic waste dump in 1973 that wound up polluting the groundwater. The EPA shut the dump down and took it over in 1992 as a Superfund site, and the effort to remove some 4.6 billion pounds of toxic waste is still underway.

The town is starting to return to normal, but I can see a time in the future when, the ground water once again clean, more life will come to this beautiful little valley.

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Southern Pacific Caboose

Superseded by advances in technology and railroad management, the noble caboose no longer rides the rails in the United States. Southern Pacific #1886, shown here, has not only been saved from the scrappers by the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum, who have spruced her up to like-new condition inside and out from the wheels to the chimney.

Riding past this, I added the museum to my bucket list.

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On the Trail Again

It’s fire season, so I am avoiding all back-country camping for a few months. That said, we have Scouts and Scouters who need to break in backpack gear and get used to our packs.

So we took some of our Scouts out on a shakedown hike to Sycamore Falls in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. It was warm, a couple of our number did not bring enough water, and it was more strenuous wearing masks, but it was a lot of fun and a real confidence-builder for a Troop that has made car camping a habit over the last few years.

I can’t wait to head into the back country in a few months…

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Urban Hiking

People say to me “urban hiking isn’t real hiking. After all, what is there to see aside from cars, lawns, office buildings, panhandlers, and pavement?”

The answer: everything great about a city is revealed when you approach it with the eyes of a hiker, a seeker, an explorer. 

The landscape is layered, and the eyes see the layers they seek. Look one way, and  you see a city of art. Look another, and you see a city of food. Peer at a city through the spectacles of the fourth dimension, and you see a city of history. Focus on the faces, and you see the souls that form the living contours of the city’s geography.

Walk a city, and you have the time to see all of those layers, individually and together. Hike a city, and you become a part of it all, and it invites you in to become a part of the story. 

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One Week In, Not On The Road Yet

I pulled out this picture of the northern approach to the old Ridge Route (looking south into Grapevine Canyon) as a sort of talisman, a charm if you will, in the hope that it would help me in my effort to get started on my list of road trips before age, global warming, or TEOTWAWKI make such trips either too expensive, too politically incorrect, or downright impossible.

A potent combination of consulting work, preparations for our Council Camporee, and an impressive honey-do list are all conspiring to keep this newly-minted retiree off the pavement and stuck to the 10 wheels of my Herman Miller Aeron chair. The road will need to wait a bit, so bear with me.

Meantime, there’s still lots going on and lots to share, so stay tuned. 

 

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