Hearst Castle, near the central coast, is one of the most amazing spots in California. It was created by William Randolph Hearst and architect Julia Morgan and completed in the mid 1940s. One could wander the house and gardens almost endlessly and never tire of the experience. I’ve been lucky enough to visit twice, but it remains near the top of […]
Recently I met a wonderful lady at the Roseville auction who was working as a volunteer to benefit The Last Wild Place mustang refuge in Nevada. She was passionate about her love for these beautiful horses and the need to give them a safe place to live and run free. I was thinking of her when I chose this episode […]
According to Wikipedia, the city of Grapevine, Texas, has plenty of history behind it, including personages as diverse as General Sam Houston and Henry Methvin, an associate of Bonnie and Clyde. What I actually know about Grapevine is that there’s a Bass Pro Shops store there, and that Willhoite’s on Main Street is a really good place to eat lunch, […]
Japanese Garden inside The Butchart Gardens, Victoria B.C. On the Queen of Alberni, ferry to Vancouver, BC. My dad took the picture on the bottom right, below, to show how hard the wind was blowing — the Canadian flag was standing straight out. State capitol building in Olympia, Washington. (I apologize for the poor quality of the images — I […]
In September 2015, the new Bass Pro Shops store opened in Rocklin, California — only a short 15- to 20-minute drive from our house. Since the Big Guy is a serious bass fisherman, he had already been a customer; and one of the regular features of our December trips to Texas was always a Christmas Eve visit to Bass Pro […]
An exciting shipwreck story from the “Graveyard of the Pacific”; and members of the California Conservation Corps share their memories of helping restore one of the historic California Missions. Watch Huell as he embarks on a journey to the most dangerous spot on the California coast and find out why it is called “Devil’s Jaw”; then visit the jewel of […]
This week, due to a few technical difficulties, I’ve got only a few of the slides from our visit to The Butchart Gardens outside Victoria, B.C.; hopefully I’ll be able to share the rest of them next Monday The Butchart Gardens, B.C., first began in 1904 as a small garden near a quarry and cement plant. The property now extends […]
For the past month or so here in California, we can’t turn on the news without hearing people talking about water — water filling up reservoirs, overflowing rivers and creeks, covering roads and farmlands, and causing mudslides on the highways. It seems that water is one of those things we tend to take for granted, until we have too little […]
June 1978 — We spent two very full days in Victoria, and I’m certain we still missed a lot of great sights there. The Rolls Royce shown above was parked near the Royal London Wax Museum (which sadly, I just learned, was closed in September 2010); we didn’t pay to go inside, but I was entranced by the figure of […]