Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for california
Art, History and Anthropology
By Linda Tancs
The Grace Hudson Museum and Sun House in Ukiah, California, is an art, history and anthropology museum focusing on the life and works of artist Grace Carpenter Hudson and her ethnologist husband, Dr. John W. Hudson. The result is a treasure trove of cultural and educational resources on Western American art, California Indian cultures and the history of California’s North Coast region. Their legacy is further highlighted by their Craftsman-style home, the Sun House. In addition to their personal touches, the home sports such classic Craftsman elements as a sloping gabled roof with overhang, the sleeping porch, the use of natural redwood and stone, board-and-batten walls, burlap and monks cloth wall coverings and exposed timbers.
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The Golden Age of American Gardens
By Linda Tancs
Draped by the northern Santa Cruz mountains in Woodside, California, Filoli is a country estate with enviable grounds beckoning the Golden Age of private estate gardens. Designed between 1917 and 1929 for prominent San Franciscans Mr. and Mrs. William Bowers Bourn, its grounds are remarkably preserved as one of the few surviving and best examples of an English Renaissance style garden. Its many charms also include the Sunken Garden and clock tower, a 6.8-acre orchard and a trail system highlighting five different ecosystems. No less elegant, the gracious country house adorning the estate boasts 36,000 square feet, resplendent in an extensive collection of 17th and 18th century English antiques among its 43 rooms.
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World’s Largest Tree
By Linda Tancs
A giant among giants, the General Sherman in the Giant Forest in California’s Sequoia National Park is not only the largest living tree in the world, but the largest living organism, by volume, on the planet. A giant sequoia (sequoiadendron giganteum), General Sherman is over 100 feet at its trunk, nearly 3 million pounds in weight and 275 feet in height. Needless to say, it draws quite a crowd, which is why the park runs free summer shuttle buses to two separate stops, one above and one below this amazing tree.
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The Birthplace of Los Angeles
By Linda Tancs
The oldest section in Los Angeles is the plaza area known as Olvera Street. Also known as El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, Calle Olvera and La Placita Olvera, it’s located two blocks from Los Angeles City Hall. A popular attraction for both tourists and locals, it’s home to the oldest house (now a museum and visitors’ center), Avila Adobe, saved from demolition in the 1920s by Christine Sterling. She later realized her dream of creating a market plaza that would celebrate the area’s Spanish and Mexican heritage. Today, Olvera Street remains a bustling marketplace with music, food, crafts and folklore celebrations. Free guided tours of El Pueblo are conducted by volunteer docents, Las Angelitas del Pueblo, Tuesday through Saturday at 10:00 a.m., 11:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. The tours start at the Las Angelitas del Pueblo office, located next to the Old Plaza Firehouse.
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Where California Began
By Linda Tancs
One of the most familiar landmarks in San Diego, California, the Junípero Serra Museum stands atop the hill recognized as the site where California began. Indeed, at that site in 1769 a Spanish Franciscan missionary, Father Junípero Serra, with a group of soldiers led by Gaspar de Portolá, established Alta California’s first mission and presidio (fort). Alta (Upper) California was a region comprising California and other states that was ceded to the United States at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848. The missions of Alta California were founded for the purpose of Christianizing the American Indian population in those vicinities. Using Spanish Revival architecture, the museum was built to resemble the early missions that once dominated the landscape of Southern California.
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A Gamble in California
By Linda Tancs
Designed for David and Mary Gamble of the Procter & Gamble Company, The Gamble House in Pasadena, California, is an outstanding example of American Arts and Crafts style architecture. Designated a National Historic Landmark in 1978, it is the most complete and best-preserved work of American Arts and Crafts architects Charles and Henry Greene. Every Tuesday enjoy a picnic on the terrace for Brown-Bag Tuesday and a docent-led, 20-minute tour.
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Ranch of the Little Cottonwoods
By Linda Tancs
Rancho Los Alamitos (Ranch of the Little Cottonwoods) in Long Beach, California, traces its history from the time of ancestral Povuu’ngna (the sacred birthplace of the native Tongva people of the Los Angeles Basin) through the Spanish-Mexican era of land concessions and grants to generations of the Bixby family, the ranch’s last private owners. Along with the ranch, the still sacred and historic land includes stunning gardens created by Florence Bixby between 1920 and 1936 with the assistance of such notable designers as the Olmsted brothers, Florence Yoch and Paul Howard. Admission is free, and educational programs and events for all ages throughout the year feature topics as diverse as agricultural and domestic skills, Native American, Japanese and Hispanic culture, the history of landscape design and an annual ranch-style Christmas program.
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Hooray for Hollywood
By Linda Tancs
At the Hollywood Museum, you’ll find 100 years of entertainment history under one roof. Boasting the largest collection of Hollywood memorabilia in the world, its sprawling four floors are a treasure trove of one-of-a-kind costumes, props, photographs, scripts, stars’ car collections and personal artifacts, posters and vintage memorabilia from favorite films and TV shows. The museum is housed in the historic Max Factor Building, named for makeup king Max Factor. You won’t want to miss his world famous makeup rooms where Hollywood’s biggest stars got ready for their close-ups.
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A Pan-Pacific Centennial
By Linda Tancs
There’s a celebration afoot as San Francisco’s Conservatory of Flowers remembers the centennial of the city’s 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition. The exhibition depicts the old fairgrounds, graced with model trains wending their way through graceful garden landscapes dotted with the fair’s most prized monuments such as the Tower of Jewels and Palace of Fine Arts. The historic world’s fair signaled the triumphant recovery of the city from the devastating 1906 earthquake. The special exhibit runs through April 10.
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A Maze in San Jose
By Linda Tancs
The Winchester Mystery House is undoubtedly one of the world’s oddest mansions. Located in San Jose, California, it sports miles of twisting hallways and secret passageways in the walls. Once the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester, the house grew–literally–out of her belief that the spirits of those killed by a Winchester rifle were summoning her to build a haven for them to roam as a sort of penance for the damage wrought by the family business. The story goes that so long as construction of the house never ceased, Mrs. Winchester could rest assured that the spirits would not exact revenge on her. The unrelenting construction over 38 years resulted in a sprawling Victorian mansion containing 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 stairways, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms and six kitchens. A 65-minute tour through 110 of the 160 rooms will expose its bizarre attributes, such as a window built into the floor, staircases leading to nowhere, a chimney that rises four floors, doors that open onto blank walls and upside down posts.
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