The Occupations of Vietnam: My Son

The My Son ruins, near Hoi An, are from the years 900-1300 AD. They are reminiscent of Angkor Wat because they were built by the same culture - Hindu. The Hindus from India were in Vietnam seeking spices.

The site was full of depictions of the god Shiva, lingams, yonis, elephants, and lots of seated meditation in limestone (grey) and local clay bricks (burnt orange).

Our guide pointed out these American shells found on the site. During the Vietnam War the Viet Cong used My Son as a base. The Americans bombed the site, doing much damage.

Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Two bomb craters between two of the largest temples at My Son

This temple was badly damaged by American bombs.
This dog led us around the entire site!

Bomb crater on the left

Lingam

Frida Kahlo's Mexico City

I have wanderlust. I've been caring for my baby in Santa Cruz for over a year, and I want to travel internationally so bad it hurts. Thats not going to happen, so I am revisiting an adventure I had years ago, imagining myself in Frida Kahlo's Mexico City. 

I was inspired to write this post by a New York Times Article here, about Frida's current popularity, 60 years after her death. What most caught my attention in the article is the show about Frida at the New York Botanical Garden. Oh how I wish I could go!

Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, which translates to: Museum House Studio. Juan O'Gorman designed and built the twin home studios for Frida and Diego, who lived and worked
"next door" to each other for 7 years here. Frida moved back to her parents' home in 1941, when her father passed away, but Diego stayed in the twin houses until his death in 1981.

Exhibits like this make me miss New York so much! The New York Botanical Garden opened the show "Frida Kahlo: Art, Garden, Life" on May 16th. The exhibit features Kahlo's art work, plus a reimagining of Frida's garden at her parent's home in Coyocan, Mexico City. Special events will feature dance, music, food and film inspired by Frida's artistic influences.

Point Lobos - Photo Essay

I took Wilder and Kimo to Point Lobos State Natural Reserve, just south of Carmel, for the first time this summer. Kimo fell head over heels and we ended up visiting the park three times in one month. 

The National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California

"We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” 

- John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Downtown Salinas, early 20th century, when Steinbeck lived there as a boy. Photo from National Steinbeck Center exhibits
Photo by Madeline Horn

I finally made it to the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, on an impromptu trip with my mother and my son. We were in Salinas dropping my sister off at the train station, after a quick weekend visit. It was a special day - my son Wilder’s first museum visit! It means a lot to our family since both myself and my mother have careers in museums.

As a Central Coast native, I especially enjoy Steinbeck’s stories that are set locally. However, I would love his work even if we didn’t share a stomping grounds. Like all my favorite authors, Steinbeck is a true philosopher, capturing the experience of being human with his words. 

The National Steinbeck Center is located at the foot of Main Street in downtown Salinas, anchoring a strip of historic art deco and victorian buildings, sports bars, coffee shops, florists, and banks. Salinas still has a Fox Theater, with a swirling gold and aluminum confection of a box office. Historic photos depict a bustling, crowded, thriving downtown Salinas, which just isn’t the case anymore. The strip was calm on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Many of the businesses were closed on Sundays.

Fox Theater, Salinas - the first of many historic theater box offices this boy will pose in front of 

Photo by Dorris Welch

Visitors enter the National Steinbeck Museum through a large airy atrium. The immersive exhibits bring Steinbeck’s writing to life through audio, text, artifacts, interactives and film. Exhibits are laid out chronologically. I enjoyed interactive elements, such as drawers and doors opened by visitors to further explore themes. Audio of text being read aloud in some sections made it nearly impossible for me to read the large amount of text on the walls. I didn’t represent your typical museum visitor - I had an infant strapped to my chest. That said, I found myself unable to get motivated to read all the quotes and interpretive text.  

The museum has preserved sea creature specimens from Ed Ricketts (“Doc” in Steinbeck’s book Cannery Row) on display, as well as Rocinante, the actual camper Steinbeck drove across the United States in his book Travels With Charley: In Search of America. I would have appreciated them so much more had they been labeled as the actual artifacts. Instead, I wasn’t sure, so I assumed that they were replicas. Later, I read on the museum website that they were the real thing. 

East of Eden exhibit, National Steinbeck Center
Photo by Madeline Horn

The museum gave me a sense of what the Salinas area was like in the early 20th century, when Steinbeck was born and raised there. Exhibits also include sections on Asian and Mexican immigrants to the area throughout history, important to represent in light of the current population of migrant and immigrant farmworkers.

Pillow quote - National Steinbeck Center
Photo by Madeline Horn

We ate lunch at Patria, a sprawling restaurant on Main Street with a full bar that made us feel like we were in the twilight zone. The restaurant is so spacious that we got our own dining room to sit in. Patria’s fanciness and old school European vibe felt out of place in Salinas. However, that wasn’t a bad thing at all. The crab cake was practically 100% crab, and the caramelized onion, goat cheese and bacon pizza was delightful. The prices were surprisingly reasonable for a restaurant whose waiters wore head to toe black uniforms.

I learned a lot about Salinas on our day trip. I was surprised at the wealth of historic information available to the public. I found a historic house at the train station and a sign with a phone number for an audio tour. I also picked up a brochure and map on Salinas’ art deco architecture. By happy accident we drove by Steinbeck’s childhood victorian home (now a restaurant) on our way out of town. Steinbeck’s work is an important legacy for the Central Coast. It was great to explore his world for an afternoon. 

Rocinante  - Steinbeck's home on the road in the book Travels with Charley: In Search of America
Photo by Madeline Horn

Interior of Rocinante trailer, complete with Courvoisier 
Photo by Madeline Horn

Museum Website - http://www.steinbeck.org

The Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies, San Jose State University - http://as.sjsu.edu/steinbeck/index.jsp

Where Pirates Meet Sorcerers at Wilder Ranch

On Old Landing Cove Trail, Wilder Ranch State Park
Photo by Kimo Elliott

We spent Cinco de Mayo at Wilder Ranch State Park, just north of Santa Cruz on Highway One. It was Wilder’s first trip to Wilder Ranch! We didn’t name him after the ranch, which is a California State Park, but we both love to spend time there, at living history events in the old dairy farm buildings and hiking the coastal and redwood trails. 

On a deserted Monday afternoon we took the scrub brush-lined Old Cove Landing Trail out to the coastal bluffs. Butterflies led our way down the path. We were thrilled when we came around a bend to a view of pristine Wilder Beach - completely off-limits to humans as a nature preserve. The water sparkled shades of aquamarine, and the sand was the smoothest buttery white I’d ever seen. It doesn’t get touched by human feet, so the mini dunes you see on most beaches are completely absent. When the ocean irons out the sand, it stays flat.

Around the windy corner (so windy we questioned our sanity at bringing a newborn on this hike), the ocean revealed two long thin juts of angular rock covered in green moss and white bird dung.

Poppies at Wilder Ranch
Photo by Madeline Horn

Our final destination was Fern Grotto Beach, easily accessible down a path with the baby strapped in his Moby Wrap. Two worlds meet on this beach - a pirates cove with rough surf and a fairytale sorcerers lair - the entrance to the cave dripping with ferns all shades of emerald. I worried about bringing Wilder too far in the cave entrance since I’ve heard that some cultures warn to keep babies away from caves. We couldn’t help posing for photos with the dramatic fern archway. Peeking in further, we saw a room that could only be accessed by crawling - not the kind of adventure we sought that day. 

Aside from the wind, the hike was lovely, flat, and easy. It was my first adventure out towards the ocean from the historic center of the park. I would encourage anyone in good health to walk towards the ocean to find magical Fern Grotto Beach. 

Kimo with Wilder - Old Landing Cove Trail
Photo by Madeline Horn

History of Wilder Ranch: 

Ohlone Indians built temporary camps near the ocean to hunt elk, collect shellfish, and harvest wild grain on the land that is now Wilder Ranch until around 1,000 B.C.  Once the Ohlones abandoned the site, humans did not return to settle it until 1769, when the Portola Expedition arrived.  Spanish settlers built the Santa Cruz Mission in 1791 and they used the nearby land at Wilder Ranch to graze cattle to provide supplies for the Mission.  In 1821, after Mexico’s liberation from Spain, land in the area was distributed to citizens through land grants.  The land that is now Wilder Ranch State Park was granted to a Russian fur trader named Bolcoff.  One building remains from this era, an adobe built in 1840.  Bolcoff farmed dairy on the land with his family until he went into debt to a man named Meder who foreclosed on Bolcoff in the 1850s.  Meder lived on the property with his family for about 20 years and built a home there.  Eventually he sold the ranch to D.D. Wilder and a partner.  When the partnership dissolved the Wilder family moved onto the ranch and stayed for five generations.  The Wilders operated a dairy farm on the property for many years.  Eventually they switched back to cattle ranching and leased out some agricultural land to farmers. 

In 1969 the Wilder family sold the land to Moroto Investment Company, who planned to develop the land with commercial, industrial, and residential properties.  Moroto abandoned their plans because of Coastal Commission restrictions and strong local opposition.  Concerned members of the public worked together to preserve the land as open public space and stop the development.  The issue was brought to the ballot and residents voted to put the land in public trust.  Wilder Ranch was classified as a California State Park in 1976. 

Wilder BeachPhoto by Madeline Horn

Wilder Ranch Today:

Modern day Wilder Ranch includes beaches, tide pools, oak woodlands, freshwater streams, and wetlands.  Some of the land is still used for agriculture, since it represents an important part of the area’s history.  The historic core of the park includes the Bolcoff Adobe, a victorian house, an old farm house, and a museum. Wilder Ranch hosts special events that are the perfect family outing with living history reenactments, music, and food. 

The coastal land north of Santa Cruz is dear to my heart - a mix of agriculture and remote beaches. A drive up Highway One always clears my mind. Thankfully, concerned citizens and organizations have worked hard to prevent commercial development of the area. 

Fern Grotto Beach
Photo by Kimo Elliott

In 2005 The Trust for Public Land purchased 154 acres of land located directly north of Wilder Ranch named Sand Hill Bluff for $12 million.  Sand Hill Bluff includes an Ohlone burial ground and a shell mound.  Sand Hill Bluff will be protected along with Wilder Ranch and 407 acres of property called Coast Dairies, located immediately above Sand Hill Bluff.  Together, Wilder Ranch, Sand Hill Bluff, and Coast Dairies form 13 miles of protected coastline, totaling 12,000 acres.  Half of the land at Sand Hill Bluff is cultivated agriculturally, growing brussels sprouts and artichokes. 

It puts my mind at ease, knowing that Highway One will look the same when my son is my age. As a Central Coast native, it's his heritage!

Fern Grotto Beach
Photo by Kimo Elliott

Madeline and Wilder with the barn, Wilder Ranch
Photo by Madeline Horn

Wilder Ranch State Park Website - http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=549

Wilder Ranch Brochure - http://www.parks.ca.gov/pages/549/files/WilderRanchWebBrochure2009.pdf

Hobo Queens and Surfing Princes

Santa Cruz's Main Beach and Boardwalk, where the San Lorenzo River enters
the Pacific Ocean.  Venetian Water Carnival floats ended their journey here.
Photo by Madeline Horn

Santa Cruz’s 1895 Venetian Water Carnival featured a mock battle by the Pacific Fleet, a Rose Regatta with flower-draped floats on San Lorenzo River, water sports olympics, a bicycle velodrome on West Cliff Drive, a masquerade ball, burlesque, a floral pavilion for costume balls, and the coronation of a carnival queen. Unforgettably, a male “Hobo Queen” in a dress paraded in the street, then floated down the river on a garbage barge, where he was pulled to his throne by ropes. The event occurred annually through 1912.

Norman Bates house from Psycho film - Alfred Hitchcock, Santa Cruz
 resident, in front.

The Venetian Water Carnival was funded by Victorian businessman James Phillip Smith, who lived in a mansion on Beach Hill called Sunshine Villa, where my 96 year old grandmother now resides, with a view of the ocean from her assisted living apartment. Sunshine Villa was dilapidated through the 1980s, before the assisted living company renovated the old mansion. The house is said to have served as inspiration for the Bates Motel in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Hitchcock was a Santa Cruz local. He had a home for over 30 years in Scotts Valley in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Scotts Valley redwood trees in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Photo by Madeline Horn

Santa Cruz is flanked by the Pacific Ocean and giant redwoods. While smelling the ocean, you can look up and see the tops of the redwoods just outside town, visible over the buildings. The cool ocean climate draws a flood of tourists from the hot surrounding valleys in the summer. The most popular tourist spots – the Boardwalk and Capitola Village both started as tourist tent camps. In the 1890s, a family could rent a tent on the main beach for a month for ten dollars, including four pillows, and three logs to use as backrests. Today tourism generates over $500 million per year for Santa Cruz. Agriculture and Education are the town’s two other primary industries in this city of 60,000.

Capitola Museum's historic beach cottage.
Photo by Madeline Horn

Life revolves around the ocean for many Santa Cruz residents, which has been the case for over 100 years. In fact, Santa Cruz was the first place that anyone surfed in the Americas! In 1885 three Hawaiian princes who were attending boarding school in nearby San Mateo surfed on the main beach on 100-pound 15-foot surf boards crafted from Redwood from the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was such a spectacle that it was reported on in the Santa Cruz Daily Surf newspaper. The great surf breaks on Cowell’s Beach, at Pleasure Point, and at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River soon inspired others to take up the sport. The Santa Cruz Surfing Club was established in 1936.

West Cliff Drive surf statue,
 dedicated to all surfers, past, present, and future.
Photo by Madeline Horn

Jack O’Neill opened a surf shop on Cowell’s Beach in 1959, offering his new invention – the wetsuit – allowing surfers to brave the chilly Pacific Ocean year round to catch waves. When surfing boomed in the 1960s, so did the O’Neill brand. Internationally-known O’Neill, still based in Santa Cruz, is the top selling wetsuit in the world.

O'Neill Coldwater Classic 2012, West Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz
Photo by Madeline Horn

As Jack O’Neill said, “The ocean has been very comforting to me through the years. When you get all screwed up, and you jump in the ocean, everything’s alright again.” I think Santa Cruz’s many visitors would agree about the regenerative power of both the ocean and the redwoods of Santa Cruz.

Photo Tour of Historic Monterey

Memory Garden: This beautiful garden behind the Pacific House Museum features white archways 

with red tile roofs, beautiful plants, and a fountain.

Photo by Madeline Horn

Monterey’s Spanish and Mexican past are palpable in its many Spanish and Mexican adobes. I think I saw the ghost of a Californio woman lingering in the garden of the Casa del Oro out of the corner of my eye. She wore a scarf over her head, pulled demurely across her face. 

Photo by Madeline Horn

I spent a couple of days wandering the streets of Historic Monterey, using a map I picked up from Monterey State Historic Park and my cell phone for a free audio tour called “Explore Monterey.” Historic buildings are everywhere in downtown Monterey and many of them are still in use, by lawyers, shops, and restaurants.

Photo by Madeline Horn

Colorful gardens in bloom double the sensory pleasures of touring around old Monterey – with the smell of lavender and rosemary and the sight of bright dahlias, lilies, and hibiscus.

Whale vertebrae sidewalk
Photo by Madeline Horn

Old Whaling Station: Outside the whaling station sits a sidewalk made of whale vertebrae! Whale vertebrae are diamond shaped. They bones have held up amazingly well for being placed in the ground in the mid-1800s.

Photo by Madeline Horn

Golden State Theatre
Photo by Madeline Horn

Hibiscus at Cooper Molera Adobe
Photo by Madeline Horn

Cooper Molera Adobe: A volunteer manned an old timey general store that led to the historic compound, with a garden of vegetables and fruit as well as colorful flowers. 

Wagon at Cooper Molera Adobe
Photo by Madeline Horn

Restaurant 1833, located in a historic 1833 adobe
Photo by Madeline Horn

1833 Restaurant: 1833 is a luxurious restaurant located in a historic adobe – the ideal way to wrap up a day in the adobes! If you can afford it that is… My mom and I opted for appetizers and cocktails at the bar, allowing us to try a few items and to chat up the bar tender, who gave us a sample of a lemon balm gin he’s been infusing behind the bar with fresh lemon balm from his friend's garden. 

Space Redwood!
Photo by Madeline Horn

Old Jail
Photo by Madeline Horn

Well
Photo by Madeline Horn

Monterey Harbor
Photo by Madeline Horn

Peinados Masculine
Photo by Madeline Horn

Links:
Monterey State Historic Park website
Restaurant 1833 website

Ruins in the Redwoods: Lime Kilns at Henry Cowell State Park

Scarborough Lumber, Boulder Creek, CA
Photo by JL Aronson

I warned Sonny before heading into the Santa Cruz Mountains that the area had always kind of scared me. I've spent enough time there to know that both darkness and light lurk in those hills. I am also old enough to remember the phrase "Murder Capital of the World" being slung around lightly about Santa Cruz County due to an unfortunate string of serial killers in the mountains in the late 70s and early 80s. Sonny was visiting from New York, a UCSC graduate back in Santa Cruz sixteen years later.

Madeline with Boulder Creek mural
Photo by JL Aronson

We drove about 30 minutes from Santa Cruz on a sunny day, up Highway 9, a curving forested road that leads through the town of Felton, past Henry Cowell State Park and the Bigfoot Discovery Museum, Ben Lomond, Brookdale Lodge, and on to Boulder Creek. Boulder Creek is nestled in the redwood forest, yet the main drag (on Highway 9) is sunny on clear days. The fresh mountain air exhilarated us. Green forest-covered mountains tower over Boulder Creek's wild west-style buildings. Detailed murals on downtown buildings tell of Boulder Creek's lumber industry origins. We visited Boulder Creek Antiques and Art, a rambling indoor/outdoor emporium with housewares, jewelry, signs, and plants on consignment from various vendors and New Leaf Community Market. We poked our heads in Boulder Creek Brewery and Cafe and I made a mental note to return to try their beer and food. Alas, the day's mission was a forest hike, so we reluctantly pushed on.

Boulder Creek Antiques and Art
Photo by Madeline Horn

The Fall Creek Unit of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park was our next stop. We hiked through redwoods and Douglas fir along a rushing creek, spotting bright yellow banana slugs and inhaling the scent of permanently moist soil, bark, ferns, and lichen. Although it was in the 70s in the sun that day - no sun reached the floor of the damp dark redwood forest - in fact, it was chilly inside the forest. An androgynous kid in his 20s with long red hair parted down the middle overtook us on the path. We heard him before seeing him, since he was loudly talking on his cell phone on speaker mode. He wore flip flops, shorts and a tank top, a nice beach outfit, but unsuitable for a hike in the damp shady redwoods. The redhead held a pet carrier with two cockatiels in it.

Lime Kilns, Henry Cowell State Park
Photo by JL Aronson

When we reached a clearing, the limekiln ruins emerged like storybook castles from the forest, moss-covered crumbling stone walls with arches leading to the kilns. Built in 1870 to extract lime from the forest, the kilns were used to fire lime to make cement to build San Francisco, and then rebuild it after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire. Portuguese and Italian men worked the kilns and lived in cottages in the forest. Sonny and I imagined these men with large mustaches working there, producing nearly a third of California's lime supply at this very spot. The surrounding forest was logged to be burned in the kilns and to make barrels to haul the lime, making the current trees second generation redwood.

Lime Kiln Archway
Photo by Madeline Horn

The redheaded cockatiel-whisperer had walked quickly past the lime kilns, completely ignoring them, up onto a trail that hovered above where we stood. His conversation bellowed out into the clearing. Soon, he turned around and approached the lime kilns again, where we still stood, transfixed by their ancient presence. "I shared the fuck out of that post!" he yelled about facebook emphatically to his friend on the other end of the line, then told them about the smartest bird he had ever met in his life, "He flies straight to me!" The two cockatiels still dangled from his hand in their carrier. Freaks freely enter the forest in Felton.

Neither the freak nor the Santa Cruz Mountains scared me that day. There were simply too many lovely discoveries to be made: antique emporiums, breweries, and ruins in the forest. I look forward to exploring more of the mountains in the coming months.

Inside the Lime Kiln
Photo by Madeline Horn

The Fall Creek Unit of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park is physically separate from the main area of Henry Cowell (where the visitor center is located). The trail head is on Felton Empire Road. Turn left onto Felton Empire Road from Highway 9 when coming from Santa Cruz. Parking and entrance are free.