Dateline: Mariposa, CA

 

The end of another day on this road trip

You may (or may not) have noticed that it's been a couple of days since this blog has been updated to reflect our current cross-country driving trip (now heading in a northerly direction after finishing up in southern California). On Wednesday we got back to our hotel in Anaheim around 2330 hours following the end of a night game at Dodger Stadium, so the last thing I wanted to do was stay up past midnight uploading photos. And last night was spent in Lebec, a speck of a community along Interstate 5 where Internet connectivity was an issue. Now ensconced at a B&B in the rugged Sierra Nevada mountains, but with reliable Wi-Fi, it's time to bring this blog up to date. To which...

We began Wednesday with a visit to Universal Studios Hollywood, arriving around the time the theme park was opening for the day at 0900 hours:

And a good thing it was that we got there early as we only had to wait five minutes in line to take the tram tour of the studio lots:

Five decades on, Bruce the shark is still attacking visitors:

It was also a relatively short wait in line (40 minutes) for the Jurassic World ride, and, yes, you do get wet:

The lines were longer for Transformers, but the three of us used the single rider track to significantly cut our waiting time. For lunch we briefly exited the park to eat at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, where I had the gumbo...:

…and jambalaya:

There was no escaping the lines in the afternoon, but we still managed to get on a roller coaster in Hogsmeade (60 minutes waiting for a ride that took only 66 seconds), and to experience the motion simulator Simpsons Ride. According to the app my daughter downloaded at the time of entry into the park, the waiting time for Jurassic World had broken the three hour barrier by this point, so overall we did pretty well for ourselves:

We left Universal around 1800 hours and battled LA's notorious rush hour freeway traffic to reach Dodger Stadium in time for that evening's contest against the Colorado Rockies. The view of downtown Los Angeles from Chavez Ravine's massive parking lot:

And the view from our seats:

My wife trying unsuccessfully to pretend she isn't with us:

It was my first time at Dodger Stadium since 1977, and the game was worth the wait as the Dodgers won 2-1 on a walk-off single by Mookie Betts:

One of my favorite players as a kid:

A couple of photos taken on Wednesday by Amber from the front passenger seat. My daughter hasn't seen too many movies in her life, so most of LA's iconic sights were unfamiliar to her (she at least recognized the Hollywood sign):

Yesterday we checked out of our hotel in Anaheim and drove north in the morning to visit the La Brea Tar Pits:

The tar pits are an active paleontological research site where the bones of trapped animals have been preserved over the centuries in the natural asphalt. Some of the discoveries are displayed in the museum:

From the tar pits, it was a short drive to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery to pay my respects at the grave of Johnny Ramone:

Dee Dee Ramone is buried nearby in the same cemetery, but Google Maps wouldn't give up the location:

At Amber's insistence, we backtracked to Anaheim to the GardenWalk shopping center to visit the Yiya Formosa gift shop. Apparently all this Americana the girl has been exposed to these past two weeks has instead left her feeling nostalgic for the other homeland:

The Dajia Jenn Lann Temple 大甲鎮瀾宮 is featured prominently on one wall:

The real reason our daughter wanted to visit was for the opportunity to play some night market games:

Eventually, though, it was time to head north to our next destination:

The tar pits, Johnny's grave and a taste of Taiwan were the reasons why we only got as far as Lebec, named in honor of a French trapper killed by a grizzly bear in the area in 1837. While we may have struggled with reliable Internet service, we didn't lack in rugged Castac Valley scenery:

The skies over Lebec were busy this morning:

Our designated rest stop for the day was the Kern County Museum in nearby Bakersfield. Having learned about the place on Wikitravel only the night before, expectations were low, but the interior exhibits were fairly interesting:

What really made the museum a worthwhile visit, however, was the extensive open-air area, exhibiting historical buildings from Bakersfield and Kern County like this 1891 Queen Anne-style Victorian home:

Or this simple log cabin built by an ex-Confederate soldier:

Bakersfield was the home of country music legends Merle Haggard and Buck Owens, and the presence of Dust Bowl refugees earned the city the nickname the "country music capital of the west coast":

Behind these old locomotives is an active railyard:

Kern County is still a significant producer of oil:

I particularly got a kick out of the 1936 gas station area:

Though not an original building, this recreation of a Taoist temple for Chinese workers was one of the most interesting structures at the museum:

This clocktower once stood in downtown Bakersfield before it was moved to its present location following a damaging earthquake in 1952:

A retro lunch following our visit to the museum:

We reached the community of Mariposa around 1700 hours today, and after checking into our accommodations, headed into town for a meal. A bowl of miso rāmen 味噌ラーメン washed down with a draft Hitachino Nest Beer 常陸野ネストビール at Little Shop of Ramen:

Tomorrow we hope to explore some of the Yosemite Valley, though there is an ominous-looking forest fire in the mountains not far away...