Headed Home

 Now that we're at LAX waiting for our 7:20 pm non-stop back to Anchorage, we had the most beautiful day since we got here. Thanks to my mom's neighbor who drove us to the airport!   I did get in a bike-ride to the beach (stopping to duplicate some keys on the way).  

Not only was it warmer than it's been (low 70s) but clear too.  Though to the south you could see fog/clouds/haze.  This is looking north toward the Santa Monica mountains (really hills.)  I've been to a lot of places and I'm only now truly appreciating the great beaches of LA.  Not that I didn't always love the beach growing up, but I never appreciated the huge expanse of sand between the water and the buildings.  There's a lot of sand.  No rocks.  In the picture the water is to the left.  You can see a thin band of water between the sand and the sky.  

This African iris was sticking out from the wall of green between my mom's house and the neighbor's.  The plant itself was way inside, but the flower found the light.  It wasn't there yesterday.

These oranges were weighing down a tree in front of an apartment building in Beverly Hills. If people had more edibles in their gardens here they could feed a lot of people 

An oak tree across the street from friends we visited Sunday.

It's been a different, pandemic trip.  We've gotten take out, but haven't dined in any restaurants like we normally would.  

And the ceiling at our gate at LAX this evening.

This has been, until this week, a pretty chilly visit, for LA.  But it's been chilly for Anchorage too while we were gone.  Our house sitter reported that our kitchen sink pipes froze, but he was able to get that taken care of.  

Looking forward to being home for a bit.  

Overwhelmed - Here Are Some Pictures From Buenos Aires

Sorry, between being busy and doing homework and my iPad’s bad relations with Blogger, this will just be a few pictures.  We went to the Rosadel - a park with a rose garden - across a huge Avenida from where we are staying.

Then through other park areas to the Japanese Garden.

Apartments along Avenida Liberdad.

People eating out at coffee shops on the first day of winter.

It took me a while to figure out that this was a gas station.  I should mention that today was the second holiday this week, so no school.

Stopover In Talkeetna

It was sunny and warm, though windy when we left Anchorage.  The workers already had plastic on the floor, a couple of daffodils were close to opening,  buds on the birch trees were greening.  After reading about yesterday's "heavy snow" in Denali, along with the road being open only to mile 3, and temperatures dipping to the low 20s, I booked a room in Talkeetna for the night.








We got here and napped - catching up on some sleep we needed - then walked on the back streets which got us this view of a creek that I'm assuming empties into the Susitna nearby.

There's still a lot more winter here than in Anchorage.







We wandered back and took the trail through the woods into town.

Our first glimpse of downtown:

There's one main street, several blocks long.  Talkeetna's about 110 miles north of Anchorage.  Denali National Park is about 235 miles north so this seemed a good stop and we haven't really been here for quite a while.  It's about ten miles off the main road, so we tend to pass it by.  It's the jumping off point for Denali climbers.  In summer climbers from around the world are here (well they're here already) to fly to a Denali base camp in hopes of getting to the peak.  We were told that people had been stuck on the mountain due to the recent storms and a plane was able to get folks back yesterday.

We stayed a night in the Fairview Inn one winter many, many years ago.  It was a long noisy night as the bar is downstairs and they have frequent concerts.

The Fairview Inn was built in 1923 and soon after President Harding, on a long visit to Alaska, was there for lunch.  He died shortly after, though I don't think there's a cause and effect relationship.  It's registered as an historical monument.

If you're paying attention, you'll see it has a for sale sign.  An ADN article from 2014 said that attorney Phillip Wiedener had it up for sale at that time for $1.8 million.  I checked today and the price is only $1.2 million.   For people seeing prices like that for little homes in California, it might seem a steal.





We passed the cannabis shop, but it wasn't open.









And then on down to the Susitna River.

Further north, the Nenena Ice Classic ended yesterday when the tripod on the ice moved the required distance down the river giving someone a $225,000 jackpot for being the closest to the exact time the tripod was tripped.   And some ice passed by while I was watching.



Looking up the river, we could see the Alaska range, at least the foothills below Denali which would have been off the picture to the right if the clouds were gone.

We had pizza for dinner at the Wildflower Cafe,which was surprisingly good and not very expensive.  But the highlight was the amazingly illustrated bathroom.  (A bit distorted as I tried to photoshop two pictures together)


Denali's supposed to have a high of 37˚ F tomorrow, with a partly cloudy forecast for the morning and early afternoon, and then the days get warmer through the weekend (into the 40˚s) with some chance of rain and snow each day.   But the park is a large area and the entrance is fairly low elevation, so I think we'll take our chances.  Being outside walking around today was great, and we've been in the campgrounds with snow before.  Though the Park's website has conflicting info - the Alert says the road is open to mile 3 but the map (now) shows it open to mile 30.

Here's a webcam of the Alaska RR depot in the Park.  There's plenty of snow.  And this one from Mt. Healy suggests the Alert is more accurate than the map.  I guess we'll explore near the park entrance.  Or we'll cuddle up in the van and read a lot.

1. Bird House 2. Northern Lights Inn Is Out

1.  I didn't realize that the bird was INSIDE the window until J pointed that out.

It was a black capped chickadee and it was trying to figure out how to get out to those trees.  I did wonder how it was sitting on the glass like that.  But it wasn't.  We have shades that you can pull up from the bottom or down from the top.  If down from the top, there are cords which I can't even see in the photo.  It was holding on to that.  

It didn't panic when I went toward the window.  It just flew to a nearby lamp.  I closed the shades and we opened the sliding glass door to the deck and it found it's way out quickly.

2.  I had a chance last night to take a picture of the lot that used to house the old Northern Lights Inn. It's totally gone now.

The four or five story structure has stood there empty since 2002 according to this ADN story from last October. (It has pictures too)  It went down sometime last month.   It seems like the building has been empty for much longer than 15 years.  Builders complain about no available land in the Anchorage bowl.  But places like this remind us it's there.  But the owners aren't ready to do anything with it.

Where Are The Oldest Buildings In Anchorage?

According to the Crow Creek Mine brochure, they're at Crow Creek Mine.

The sign says, "Commissary 1898."  Of course, there was no Anchorage at the time and I'm pretty sure that Crow Creek Mine didn't become part of the Municipality of Anchorage until the Borough and the City merged to become the Municipality of Anchorage in 1975.

So, we could argue that the oldest building in Anchorage ought to be the oldest one put up inside the city limits of Anchorage at the time it was built.  Or that the oldest buildings that are within the boundaries of the present Anchorage qualify, as Crow Creek Mine has.

Here's another of those buildings at Crow Creek Mine.  Took visiting relatives there Saturday because one of them wanted to pan for gold.

For $20, you get a gold pan, a shovel, a bucket, gold panning lesson, and a little seeded gravel so everyone goes home a winner.  I decided to be the observer.  But our family got some gold.

More importantly, they had fun.

Here's a bit of old pipe that was lying on the river bank.  

We also did the hike in to the tram afterward and checked out the Winner Creek gorge before heading home.

YELP Lives In Old ATT Building And Other San Francisco Short Stories

View of San Francisco from the bus on a rainy morning.

The waterfall is in Yerba Buena Gardens, on the way to the children's museum.  Yerba Buena, it turns out, was the name of the Mexican town in Alta California where San Francisco sits now.


The building in the center, with the flag on top, is the old Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Building, and now houses YELP.


From Marketwatch:

Unlike the sanitized office parks that Silicon Valley is famous for, Yelp’s new offices are in one of San Francisco’s earliest skyscrapers, a relic of the building boom of the Roaring ’20s. The 26-story Art Deco building was once owned by Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co., or PT&T, one of the Baby Bell subsidiaries of AT&T Inc. The building, now named for its address, 140 New Montgomery, was designed by the well-regarded local architect Timothy Pflueger. Like an early version of Google Inc.’s /quotes/zigman/59527964/composite GOOG -0.21% Googleplex, Pacific Telephone developed ways to keep its employees inside the building, with a cafeteria for employees — most of whom were women — and an auditorium for special events, lectures, parties, bridal showers and exercise classes.
The Bell system logo remains above the front entrance to 140 New Montgomery, a reminder that Yelp’s headquarters was once home to Pacific Telephone & Telegraph. “We are kind of the new Pac Bell or AT&T,” said John Lieu, director of real estate and facilities for Yelp.
Today, the business-review site, which has been growing steadily but losing money since it was founded in 2004, occupies nine floors in the recently reopened building. The high-rise had been unoccupied since AT&T /quotes/zigman/398198/composite T -0.16% , which ended up merging with SBC and the vestiges of Pacific Bell/Telesis), moved out in 2007. The current owners, developers Wilson Meany and Stockbridge Capital Partners, bought the iconic building in 2008 for $118 million, with that price including a nearby parking garage. Initially, the developers planned to convert the building to a residential condominium, but the recession and financial crisis put those plans on ice.

The contrast between the very wealthy and the very poor is particularly visible in San Francisco.  Right near high end stores, you see homeless folks.

And not far from this Prada window was this wedding dress window.

I ran into Brian when he was yelling into a doorway that he had a 2004 BA as we walked passed.  He saw me and explained something about a a college sweatshirt and a woman.  He offered me his pipe and posed for this picture.

The Women's Athletic Club:

Despite the overwhelming role of women in the organization of the club (only outside consultants, lawyers and its architects were men) the members were almost always referred to in the press and in other records by their husband's names, i.e., Elizabeth Pillsbury was Mrs. Horace D. Pillsbury. Mrs. Pillsbury became the first president of the Women's Athletic Club. The core of the membership of the club was expected to come from the Social Register, but efforts were made to reach artistically trained women and working-class women. The aim of the club, as stated in 1914 in a letter sent to prospective members, was "educational first and recreation and pleasure afterwards." Elizabeth Pillsbury reached out to working women and girls by creating another athletic club, the Recreation Club for Girls Who Work, located at 507 Harrison Street, which was located in the heart of the industrial section of the city.

The site also gives some history of women and athletics in the US.

"Socially, physical education for women in America began as early as the 1820s in girls' schools, but it wasn't until the mid-19th century that widespread concerns began that the health of American women was in decline, perhaps because of the effects of urbanization and industrialization. In the 1860s and 1870s, several women's colleges including Mills College in Oakland were established incorporating programs for physical training in their curriculums, including calisthenics, dancing and gymnastics. The first gymnasium for women outside of women's colleges was Miss Allen's Gymnasium for Ladies, established in Boston in 1879. In the 1890s, it became fashionable for wealthy women to engage in certain sports--golf, tennis, yachting and horseback riding. It was not until 1900 that public attitudes about athletics for women began to change, but there were still voices of opposition present. In 1905, The Women Citizen reported that former President Grover Cleveland "gravely pointed out the menace of the women's clubs" but by 1925, the social venue had changed and such statements by high politicians were rare or non-existent. While California women obtained the right to vote in 1911 in State elections, it wasn't until 1919 that women could vote in national elections."

Don't park under a mock orange tree when the flowers are about to drop off.  But the flowers smell so sweet.

It appears these steps aren't used often.