Monday, July 22, 2013

Glacier National Park Road Trip - Day 23 - The Adventure Ends

Ever wonder what Lumberjacks eat for breakfast? Lumberjack John had the senior lumberjack eggs, bacon, hash browns and a biscuit. Lumberjack Linda had oatmeal with blueberries and raisins.
There are seven, (soon to be eight) Lumberjack Restaurants in California and the buzzards were pleased with their first visit to one. After their hearty breakfasts, it was off to the Redding, California police station in a last ditch attempt to get that final photo item for the Mercury News Photo Scavenger Hunt. The clerk was very nice but explained that only one light duty police person was there and that he had no uniform or badge. She gave Buzzard #1 the address of a sheriff's office a couple of blocks away but that did not work out either. Oh, well, maybe the Buzzard Team will win a prize in one of the individual photo categories. And, just looking for the items added a lot of fun to the No Reservations Glacier Road Trip. The buzzards and their Fannie also conversed with many folks they wouldn't have otherwise met.

Departure from Redding was at 8:42am and it was a good time to get out of town before the temperature got into double digits again. It reached 107 degrees yesterday. Before too long, Wilma reached Interstate 5 and it was all systems go for having lunch in Morgan Hill where there was allegedly lunch and lodging available at a reasonable rate.

Linda unzipped her ukelele case,  pulled out her Accolade and turned to songs beginning with the letter “C” in her Daily Ukelele Leap Year Edition Songbook. There were 20 songs beginning with “C” so they were good for several miles on boring I-5. Quite a few started with the word “Can't”. How POSITIVE is that in a book described as 366 More Great Songs for Better Living?

By 9:49, John was getting droozy from either the monotonous interstate or the music so he pulled over and Linda drove. After a nap, John was ready to take the wheel back at 11:00.

Linda started sight reading her way through the 15 songs beginning with “D”. Just as she started on the seventh one, John began to see exit signs off Interstate 505 for Interstate 680 and  San Jose, California. Can you guess the seventh “C” song? Clue - it asks a question. That's right! “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” “That's got to be the SONG O' THE DAY” proclaimed John. “DYKTWTSJ” is by Hal David and Burt Bacharach (1967) and is found on page 88. Linda notes that she never knew where San Jose was until many years after the song became popular. The young buzzards were living in Texas and Georgia. The song story line is about going to Los Angeles in hopes of stardom, then failing and needing to get back to San Jose. Linda just assumed San Jose was part of the Southern California megalopolis. Little did she dream that the young buzzards and their two fledglings would end up living 30 miles south of San Jose within 12 years.

And so to home where Linda heated up the oven while John started unloading. Then they both relaxed and had leftover pizza for lunch and caught up on some of America's Got Talent.

During the last few days, Linda has been making a list of Road Trip Packing Reminders for the  next venture into the world of Buzzard Retirement Vacation Land. Here's some of the items that it would have been nice to have on this trip: binoculars, wildflower ID book, heating coil, dry skin lotion, low watt nightlight and a thermometer for the cooler.

There is no photo gallery for this day.

On the last day of a road trip the Two Old Buzzards usually spend some time talking about where to go on their next road trip. Because of extreme advanced planning the buzzards already have a destination pretty firmly in mind for 2014. Plans are to go to Big Bend National Park in the springtime. The Two Old Buzzards made a week long visit to Big Bend National Park in April of 1973 shortly after our son was born (in January). We are excited to return after a 41 year hiatus. Below is an image that John took in 1973. It was shot with a Minolta SRT101 on Kodak Ektachrome slide film, ASA 400 (that's right, ASA not ISO). He had to keep his film in a cooler because of the ambient heat. John had over 1,000 slides/negatives scanned at Scan CafĂ© and put on DVD. This image is one of those scans. Consequently, it's a bit noisy. The image is of Sierra Ponce which is near Santa Elena Canyon and is right on the Rio Grande River. It was taken in the early morning. Themesa is in Mexico.


We hope you will all join us next spring when we return to the Big Bend area of Texas and to the Big Bend National Park.

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