Repeating History

moving day

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 00:54:00 +0000

Because of changes at Blogger that are really not working for me, I am moving my blog to http://mmjustus.wordpress.com/. I hope you'll change your links and come visit me there!

blog touring some more

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 04:29:00 +0000

Kathleen Ernst, who writes historical fiction (including some of the American Girl books) and who used to do living history performances for a living, is hosting me on her blog:

http://sitesandstories.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/meet-meg-justus/

This one's about the Job Carr Cabin Museum and quilting in public [g].

A terrific review

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:21:00 +0000

This author business is still new enough to me that when I get a new review I have a tendency to jump up and down just a little.

http://ndrosen.livejournal.com/416090.html

Anyway, it was lovely.

a new cover

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:59:00 +0000

I have a confession to make. When I first published Repeating History last summer, I really had no idea of how to make a cover, very rudimentary knowledge of Adobe InDesign, and not much else. Since then I've learned just a little more, and this is the result:

The pocketwatch is a public domain image. The geyser is a photo of Grand Geyser that I took the day I had the inspiration for the book in question (it's the same photo that's on the old cover, but I lightened the photo for the old cover to make the title stand out). The banner is because the colors in the geyser photo run the gamut from almost black to almost white, and make it impossible (at least with the skills I have at my disposal) to keep it from washing out almost any letter color or pattern I chose. The banner colors are chosen from the photo.

The lettering is two variations of woodgrain, via Photoshop. The font is akaPosse, from dafont.com.

I would love to know what you think of it. Please tell me.

and on to another stop

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 17:45:00 +0000

On the blog tour.

http://romancingthewest.blogspot.com/2012/03/mm-justus-repeating-history.html

Jacquie was a very good interviewer, and on Thursday she will also be posting an article I wrote with some photos I took.

another blog interview!

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 18:04:00 +0000

The Dames of Dialogue are graciously hosting me, with an interview about how Repeating History came to be.

and the new exhibit opens!

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 05:52:00 +0000

The introductory panel

The first large panel and one of the timelines.
I designed and created all of the graphics myself this time.

No one had kept a yard sign stowed away for seventeen years
(the election was in 1995), so I created one.

Another large vinyl panel with wood in the background.
The water tower photo is one I took.

The first display case. I had very few artifacts to work with.
These are documents used during the cityhood campaign.

The large panel is an artifact.
The smaller text panels are quotations from the interviews I did
with the people who were involved in the cityhood campaign.

The second exhibit case, which is a bit more interesting,
with a couple of T-shirts and campaign buttons,
and the insert about the celebration that was
in the local paper,and a copy of the voter's pamphlet.

The third vinyl panel, and one of the six timelines.
The timelines were designed with Lakewood symbolism
in mind -- water and bark and acorns -- and the
city colors as a stripe down the middle.

The only photos I had to work with
were of the cityhood celebration, and so
were heavily weighted towards the end of the exhibit.

The exhibit was controversial enough that I had a very
difficult time finding people who were both anti-incorporation
and willing to be interviewed (one fellow even hung up
on me). So presenting an unbiased viewpoint was almost
impossible. This was our compromise, which hangs above a
corkboard with a supply of pushpins and index cards.
You can see the bark I used as a background for some
of the text panels more clearly here, too.

I wish I could show you more of what the exhibit was actually about, but the size of the photos makes that very difficult.

I have to say that this was my very first attempt at designing graphics from scratch (the museum used a graphic designer for the first exhibit), and I'm pretty proud of them. I used InDesign, mostly, but the introductory panel was adapted from the one for the first exhibit, for continuity's sake, and used Illustrator because that's what my predecessor had used. The rest of it's all me, though [g].

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 00:51:00 +0000

And now I am welcoming Meg Mims to my blog, in return for her gracious hosting of me. She has written a terrific little essay on the importance of research in historical fiction. I found it a hoot, but then I was a librarian for sixteen years...

Getting the Research Details Right

How easy is it to research? If you’re a diehard librarian or bookworm, it’s easy. Trawl the shelves, pore over bibliographies for even more sources—especially original sources such as diaries, letters, or books written in the past century. As a last resort, do a Google search for any details you may have missed.

What if the idea of research is a four-letter word to you? What if you hate all that extra hard work? What if you think your readers won’t know the difference?

Think again.

Readers nowadays (and in the past, for that matter) are savvy. They’ve watched PBS series such as Sherlock Holmes, Downton Abby and Upstairs, Downstairs, Ken Burns’ Civil War series and other documentaries, plus they’ve read an extensive amount. They also have an uncanny ability to “sense” when something’s ‘hinky’ – and that will throw them out of the story in two seconds flat. Sorry about the cliché, but it’s true. And the truth sometimes hurts.

It hurts authors in reviews, for one thing. Call me crazy, but I would rather have a reader or review criticize me on wanting more romance than mystery than some minor detail like “they didn’t have modern plumbing on trains back in 1869.” And no, they didn’t. Trust me on that—I researched that before I started writing my western-set historical. Travelers lifted the commode lid and saw the train tracks flashing beneath, so no wonder railroad tracks were so unhygienic after a few decades! Ugh.

Me? I love research. Give me a stack of books or photo-studded websites and I’m there with bells on! I can’t explain that wonderful “Aha!” feeling when I stumble over a really fabulous and authentic detail I can utilize in my books. Call me crazy. Call me an old-fashioned library hound. But I can usually make a call on spotting a research detail problem in a book—from a modern phrase to an inaccurate setting or the wrong costume for a character. Why? Because I’ve made those mistakes too. And learned from it.

And learned from them. That’s the key, to know better and take the time to do the hard work rather than take the easy way out. The devil is in the details, after all.

Ms. Mims's new books are

and

They are available for purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Astraea Press.
Her website is http://www.megmims.com/.

Thank you for visiting, my fellow Meg!

another stop on the blog tour

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:29:00 +0000

Just a note to say that I am visiting another blog today -- the inimitable Meg Mims has asked me some interesting questions, and I have endeavored to answer them:

http://www.megmims.com/blog/author-spotlight/wednesday-spotlight-meg-justus

I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed working with her.

it occurred to me today

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 03:29:00 +0000

That a curator update might be called for, since I haven't written one in a while.

Some of the more unusual items I have cataloged recently in my textile cataloging gig:

1) A B-17 bomber pilot outfit, consisting of what made me think of nothing so much as a pair of ski bibs and jacket. Except, of course, for being made of leather lined with sheepskin and weighing what seemed like 500 pounds.

2) A pennant from the U.S.S. Arizona, dated 1924, commemorating a cruise to the Caribbean and through the Panama Canal.

3) An assortment of souvenir hankies from the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle in 1909.

4) And today, a 1940 leather football helmet from the local high school, and the jersey that went with it -- both obviously well-worn and used. The blue paint? dye? was peeling and cracking on the helmet, and the jersey was, among other things, missing a chunk at the back hem I estimate at about 5x7 inches. Or a good handful [g].

I love this job.

Oh, and my other gig, the Lakewood Cityhood exhibit, will be opening in two weeks. I have been creating graphics all week (well, taking the templates I created earlier and filling in the photos and text), and I'm just about ready to go to the printer tomorrow. Hallelujah.

If you happen to be in Pierce County, Washington, on on Saturday, February 25th (or thereafter, until next February), come take a gander! It's at the Lakewood History Museum.

Montana museums

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:30:00 +0000

On my next stop on my blog tour, Velda Brotherton has hosted my article about visiting museums and archives in Montana and in Yellowstone while researching Repeating History.

I have to say that museums are one of the best idea founts on the planet. I hope you enjoy the article.

my first blog interview!

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:35:00 +0000

Over the weekend, I was interviewed by L. Lee Scott, a fellow author I met through Women Writing the West, an organization I belong to. It was a fascinating experience, and she asked me a number of good questions that really made me think about Repeating History and about the writing process.

If you would like to read it, the interview is here. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed being interviewed.

The Mt. Rainier shooting, national parks, and sacred space

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 21:44:00 +0000

Yesterday, on New Years Day 2012, Park Ranger Margaret Anderson was shot and killed in Mt. Rainier National Park during a routine traffic stop, by a man headed to the wilderness to hide after having shot four people in Seattle at a New Years Eve party the night before. Which makes one wonder why, if he was trying to hide, he chose one of the few parts of the thousands of square miles of wilderness in this part of the world that is as well patrolled and protected as Mt. Rainier is to hide in, but that's another question altogether.

For me, as I suspect it is for many other people, the question right now is, how safe should we feel in a national park?

It's not that we don't expect danger in national parks. Heck, I know of at least two books on the subject -- Death in Yellowstone, and Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite. We expect natural danger, like wildlife and cliffs and boiling springs. But we do not expect to need to be wary of our fellow man there, especially since this is the first time something like this has happened at Mt. Rainier in its entire history.

I find myself in the odd position of suddenly understanding why people resent the knowledge that the public library is not a safe place to leave one's children alone for an hour or two. As a reference librarian for sixteen years, I was often confronted with parents who refused to believe that the public library is not the safest place to let their children roam unescorted. It isn't, unfortunately. Anyone can enter the library, from flashers to kidnappers. Things can and do happen there, admittedly not often, that should not from any rational point of view, no matter what the library staff does to try to keep them from happening.

But libraries are sacred. Therefore they must be safe. I often watched people struggle to figure out a way to make that argument even as they sadly realized they could not.

And that's how I feel about national parks. Yes, I expect to have to be careful when I visit them, to not overestimate my abilities, to watch my step, to stay a safe distance from grizzly bears and geysers and the edges of cliffs. To carry an emergency kit. To not drive in weather conditions my car and I cannot handle.

But I do not expect to need to protect myself from deranged gunmen at Mt. Rainier or, for that matter, in any other national park.

Perhaps that makes me naïve. Perhaps that makes me like those parents who want to feel safe dropping their children off at the library for an hour or two while the parent goes shopping or to a dentist's appointment. But while I don't think this is going to change my habit of visiting Mt. Rainier or other national parks on my own, or of taking short solo hikes as I've been doing for decades, I do think it will make me even more careful when I do so, and maybe that's a good thing.

National parks are sacred. Only the kind of people who appreciate our natural wonders, who want to see them and share them with others, who want to learn about nature and science and history, to explore and climb and wander, visit our national parks. Right?

Yesterday, a great many of us learned that this is not the case. And now, like it or not, I understand why those parents resented me disillusioning them about libraries. Because I feel exactly the same way.

ETA: The body of the shooter was found today (1.2.12) in deep snow not far from the site of the shooting. He was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and one shoe. He apparently died from exposure.

A time to reckon, I guess

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:57:00 +0000

These were my goals this time last year

1) Complete my first two freelance museum gigs.

I did. Both well enough to get rehired [g].

2) Find more potential clients and land more gigs.

I found one more new client, which I've been working steadily for since April, plus, as I said, rehired by both my old clients, although one has since gone dormant till spring for lack of funds.

3) Go to more museum workshops and a conference, and continue Heritage League committee work.

I've been to two workshops and taken two classes, but I didn't make it to any conferences. The HL committee I was on finished its work in September, but I've been asked to be on the board, and probably will.

4) Write the mystery house rough draft.

Well, no. I've been working on the Yellowstone trilogy, though, and I will get back to it after I'm done with it.

5) Revise Sojourn, last year's NaNo book.

Again, no, because of the Yellowstone trilogy. It's in the pipeline, though.

6) Figure out what I'm going to do about the rest of the Yellowstone trilogy (which may end up as a duology), and get back to work on it.

I did figure it out, and what I did was do one more edit on Repeating History, create a cover, and format it for Amazon and Smashwords. I self-published it in early August, and it's been selling a steady trickle of copies ever since.
And, no, the Yellowstone trilogy is not going to be a duology. True Gold, the second book, has an almost complete rough draft, and I have begun revisions.

7) Finish piecing the Imbolc Flame quilt, and finish quilting the Yule Log Cabin quilt. Maybe start a nice, simple throw of animal fabrics and the animal cross-stitch patterns I did last summer.

The Imbolc Flame quilt is pieced. I haven't layered it yet, but I'll get there. The Yule Log Cabin, well... It's the disaster I finally ended up giving away partly quilted. First time I've ever done that with a quilt. The throw has just started to materialize (sorry, bad pun). I started piecing on it last week. I've also created several quilted pillows and am almost finished quilting a baby quilt for the great-nibling due in April.

8) Find some good 6" square flower cross-stitch patterns for my Beltane quilt and begin stitching them.

I've stitched half a dozen of them, but I got sidetracked with some other projects, including a cross-stitched pillow. The Beltane quilt will happen. Eventually.

9) Go to Crater Lake, Yosemite, and WorldCon in Reno in August with my friend M.

We went, we had a great time [g].

10) Do more research on Washington history -- find some more good stuff for my writing.

I did some, but I got kind of sidetracked researching True Gold.

11) Blog regularly.

Weell... Regularly, but not nearly as often as I would have liked.

And now this year's goals

1) Complete the new museum exhibit by the end of February, and keep getting rehired to continue the textile collection work.

2) Pursue more collections work as opposed to exhibits work. Only sign with the dormant client if they have sufficient funds to finish what they hire me to do and a concrete objective for that work. Sign a contract with at least one new client.

3) Join the Heritage League board. Take a Photoshop class. Pursue other career educational opportunities including the Washington Museum Association conference, in Seattle this year.

4) Finish True Gold and self publish it by the first of June.

5) Write Finding Home (the third book in the Yellowstone trilogy) and self-publish it, hopefully by the end of the year.

6) Learn better book marketing skills and put them into practice.

7) Redecorate the living room. My living room has had a lighthouse theme for the last twenty years, and it's time for a change. I have picked out some cross-stitch patterns and quilt fabrics with North American wild animals on them, so it's a start.

8) Finish the baby quilt. Finish the animal sofa throw. Make a new table runner for the sofa table. Layer the Imbolc Flame quilt and start quilting it.

9) Make new cross-stitch pictures for the living room. I have eight picked out. We'll see how many I can finish this year.

10) Make my first long car trip alone in five years [sigh]. The plan is to take off for two or three weeks in June and drive east. Maybe a night or two in Yellowstone to scatter bookmarks, but I want to go farther east than that, maybe as far as Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota. I also want to visit some of the historic sites like Fort Benton.

11) Get the garden cleaned up.

12) Blog more frequently.

So, what are your goals for 2012?

Twas the night before...

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 06:29:00 +0000

Or two nights after, or in the middle of eight nights of, or maybe just Saturday night, depending on your persuasion.

But I do wish everyone a wonderful midwinter season.

And a fruitful new year.

For me, I've gone as far with the draft as I can, and I am just beginning extensive revisions. I'll have to post about goals next week.

Happy Yuletide!

Success, success, I did it, I did it!

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 05:16:00 +0000

By the skin of my teeth. It is 9:08 pm on Wednesday, November 30th, and I just wrote:

Ta-da! I'd rather have wine, but the little guy can have his beer. He's been working hard, too [g].

2404 words on Monday the 28th.
2242 words yesterday, Tuesday the 29th, and
a whopping 2950 words today!

So I have won NaNoWriMo for the second year in a row.

I only have what I think is half to two-thirds of a rough draft at this point, but I will have a completed rough draft by the end of the year if it's the last thing I do [g].

And now I am going to bed. Phew!

progress, and an interesting Yellowstone link

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 03:32:00 +0000

I've been head down in NaNoWriMo, so haven't been blogging properly, but I do want to report that I'm up to over 23,000 words on True Gold, the sequel to Repeating History.

And here's an interesting link to a series of photos made by NASA about the recovery from the 1988 fires in Yellowstone. I hope you find them as fascinating as I did.

I love the Internet

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 03:34:00 +0000

Actually, what I love is the Open Library, which very politely digitized one of the early "no, we've never been there, but there's a big market for it" guides to the Klondike gold fields, published in 1897. And made it free on the web.

There's something just so incredibly civilized about being able to access an otherwise almost impossible to get hold of book by clicking a mouse a few times.

Also, I have written over 8000 words since November 1st. We're still on the decrepit steamship, less than a day out of Skagway, and Our Heroine has already had more adventures (well, she is a long time ago and a fair distance away) than is good for her.

And it is officially Day 1

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:13:00 +0000

Of NaNoWriMo, that is. 2043 words on True Gold, the sequel of sorts to Repeating History, which is about a young woman caught up in the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1890s. I will be posting word counts, commentary, and occasional snippets at my NaNo LiveJournal account (sojourn_town). These posts will be friendslocked, which means that if you wish to read those entries, you will need to have either an OpenID account or a LiveJournal account, and you will need to "friend" me at LiveJournal, at which point I will happily friend you back as long as I know who you are (comment here as well, with your ID, so that I do).

I'm sorry to make it so difficult, but I don't want to be posting even just snippets of the draft out where anyone can find them.

That said, if you are interested, and you do jump the hoops, I hope to make it worth your while...

plotting

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 00:10:00 +0000

I have finally restarted work on True Gold, a sequel of sorts to Repeating History (one of the main characters is the son of the hero of RH, and the book takes place twenty years later). Things sort of came to a grinding halt earlier this year, but I'm trying something new to me. Plotting has always been my bête noire. I love character development, world-building (or, in my case, historical research), writing dialog and description and all the other goodies that go with writing fiction, but unfortunately none of them are any good whatsoever without a plot.

In the past I've used the process outlined in John Vorhaus's wonderful but grossly-misnamed book, The Comic Toolbox, and it's been a great help, but it just wasn't working this time around. I had run across Holly Lisle's website a couple of years ago and had read some of her articles on writing. So when I was casting about for something to help me get past the plotting beast this time, I ran across Holly's website in my lengthy list of links to writing websites, and discovered her Create a Plot Clinic ebook. What the heck, I thought, it's only $10. So I downloaded it and read it.

I appear to be getting somewhere now, so it was obviously a case of Right Book Right Time. I've never outlined a book before -- I've always been a write-by-the-seat-of-my-pants person (what the romance writing community affectionately calls a "pantser"). But since that wasn't working this time, well, heck, I'm always open to trying something new.

I'm beginning to hope to have the outline finished by Halloween, just in time to take advantage of the worldwide cheerleading gang that is NaNoWriMo. And to have the entire draft finished by the end of the year.

Eep. Did I just say that? Granted, I've got large chunks of manuscript from the failed drafts that I can use (just because it failed as a whole does not mean there aren't some -- or many -- individual scenes that will work just fine), but still. I think I just heard myself committing to getting the whole thing straightened out by the end of the year. Publicly (for whatever values of publicly the couple of dozen readers of this blog consists of [g]).

Oh, well. As a college friend of mine used to say many years ago, "'S good for you. Builds character." I certainly hope it does...

Oh. My.

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 18:10:00 +0000

Today Repeating History received its first reader review on Amazon. It's by Janet Chapple, who wrote the definitive guide to Yellowstone, Yellowstone Treasures.

And, not that I'm trying to pull a Sally Field here or anything, but -- she liked it! She really liked it!

Five stars.

Wow.

Go check it out: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005E8S8UM

home again, home again

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 15:30:00 +0000

Jiggety-jog, as my mother used to say.

Our last day on the road mostly consisted of beautiful fog-swept beaches and one disappointment before we cut back over to I-5 and booked the rest of the way.

The disappointment was the fact that Heceta Head lighthouse's entire park was closed. We did get a picture of it from the pullout on 101, but I was really hoping to take the hike up to the keeper's cottage and the actual lighthouse in order to get some good digital photos of it. The last time I'd been through here I was still shooting film.

The lighthouse is that white dot on the cliff, and if you look just below the second hump, down in the fog, you can barely see the keeper's cottage.

But the rest of the morning, when we stopped at the Cape Perpetua visitor center and also at several pullouts along the highway to admire the beaches and seastacks, was wonderful.

I think that's Cape Perpetua in the background, but I wouldn't swear to it.

Somewhere between Yachats and Newport.

Ditto.

With added pelicans.

At Newport we cut east to Corvallis and I-5, where we ate lunch, then headed up the highway, just beating the rush hour traffic in Portland, and on home.

It was a good trip, all in all, but I think we were both glad to be back.

more redwoods and plenty of ocean

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 03:30:00 +0000

Our second-to-last day on the road began with a view of the ocean, because Eureka is where U.S. 101 first reaches the Pacific.

Beach just north of Arcata

After a few miles of this sort of gorgeousness, we ducked back into the wooded sort.

Things have changed north of Eureka since the last time I was there ten years ago. They've built another new section of U.S. 101, and done another Avenue of the Giants thing with the old section, only the entire old section is within Redwood National Park, so there aren't any little towns along the way. There is, however, a very nice visitor center. And an elk refuge (we didn't see any, but after Yellowstone I'm kind of blasé about elk, anyway), and several nice walking trails.

The elk refuge with redwoods in the background

Due to Mary's leg, we only walked one short trail, but we both enjoyed the drive very much. And the visitor center, which had a very nice bookstore where I bought a history of the redwood region, both natural and cultural.

The "Big Tree," from a distance because that's the only way to get anywhere near most of it into a photo.

And the sign on the fence that surrounds it. Yeah, that's a pretty big tree, even if it isn't very creatively named.

After we got back up on 101, we drove past the Trees of Mystery, a tourist trap which basically consists of a bunch of warped trees and a very large gift shop (my ex insisted on visiting it when we'd been here on our honeymoon), and over the Klamath River bridge, decorated with two California golden bears on each end:

I love those bears, and I had completely forgotten about them.

Then it was on to Crescent City.

That's the Crescent City harbor.

Mary said that she kept doubletaking at the name of the town, because to her New Orleans is the crescent city. We stopped at a park in town to take a photo or two of the town's lighthouse:

I don't know the real name of the lighthouse. I know it isn't St. George Reef, which is near here but on a rock out in the ocean.

Then it was across the border into Oregon and up one of the most beautiful coastlines in the world, which is not just my humble opinion. We stopped in Brookings for a quilt shop and lunch, and then enjoyed our way north.

Somewhere between the Oregon/California border and Coos Bay.

Ditto.

We finally stopped for the night in Coos Bay, Oregon, about halfway up the coast, first at a Fred Meyer for a few various and sundry things, then at two motels, the second of which met our criteria of a ventilation system that did not involve leaving our windows open onto a busy highway all night.

And that was our second-to-last day on the road.

into the redwoods

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:13:00 +0000

This is a month ago yesterday's post, which didn't get made on time.

We left Williams fairly early in the morning, although it was already almost 80dF outside. About 10 miles west of town we spied another fruit stand, where we stopped and stocked up again, then headed west around Clear Lake to U.S. 101, which is the coastal counterpart to I-5. We stopped for gas in the town of Willits (home of the Skunk -- a short railroad built back in the days when they were still lumbering old growth redwoods, but now a tourist trip), then headed up into the redwoods.

This is where we picnicked, after purchasing delicious sandwiches in a hippy dippy general store along 101

This is the Eel River, where my ex-husband almost drowned on our wedding night, but that's another story.

We drove up past the Benbow Inn (where I spent part of my first honeymoon 30+ years ago) and Garberville, and turned off onto the Avenue of the Giants.

Just one of lots and lots of enormous trees.

I love everything about the Avenue of the Giants. I love the quaint little towns draped along it at intervals, and the way it forces drivers to be leisurely and enjoy the drive (it really should be a National Parkway like the Blue Ridge and the Natchez Trace, in my humble opinion), and then, of course, there are the trees. I'm not going to get all clichéd on you and talk about how small and young they can make you feel, because to me that's not the point. The point is that they've watched everything happen in their long lifetimes, and they're still there. There's something comforting about that.

It is difficult to get decent pictures of them, though. I did try...

I like the light in this one.

This is how shallow-rooted those enormous trees really are.

Both of these photos were taken in the Founder's Grove, at the north end of the Avenue of the Giants, which is also the home of one of the tallest living things on the earth, the Founder's Tree:

346 feet tall, actually

A great many of the groves are named after people or events, since the remaining old-growth redwoods were originally saved by charitable donations back in the middle of the 20th century.

This one was named after a military veteran.

There are stones with metal plaques like this scattered all through the groves.

We also stopped at a visitor center along the Avenue, where, of all things, we overheard a young man talking to the woman behind the counter about how he was thinking about going to Yellowstone. He seemed to be under the impression that it would be just a short jaunt. I couldn't help but jump in and try to explain things -- like how Yellowstone is about 1000 miles from the redwoods. I was glad to see the distance didn't daunt him, but I do wonder if he ever made it.

We eventually got back on 101 again and drove through Eureka to the college (Humboldt State University) town of Arcata, where we found a motel. We'd gone from 80 degrees at 8 am to 60 degrees at 5 pm. After over a week of 90s and single digit humidity, 60s and fog were absolutely a balm to our parched souls.

On our way home again

noreply@blogger.com (M. M. Justus) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:30:00 +0000

Sunday morning we packed up and checked out of our lovely hotel room and went back to the con for one last morning of panels. Mine were mostly on self-publishing and how to market one's books. We met back at the car at one in the afternoon, then went to get lunch and do a little laundry and shopping (for things like ice for the cooler and milk) before we headed west out of Reno towards Lake Tahoe.

Lake Tahoe was gorgeous, but you'll just have to take my word for it. There wasn't really any place to stop and take photos, and the one place I'd counted on to stop and walk along the lakeshore was crowded with a street fair, so we couldn't even find a place to park. We drove on to somewhere I'd wanted to visit for a long time instead.

When I was a teenager, I had a rather morbid fascination with the Donner Party. I read enough books about that horrible incident in California's history to give myself nightmares. Even though that was thirty-five years ago, when I realized I was going to have the chance to stop by Donner Memorial State Park and visit its museum, well, I couldn't resist. Mary politely went along for the ride.

It was an interesting stop, I thought, even though the park was in the process of being renovated and there wasn't as much to see as I'd hoped. We did see the monument itself.

The base of the monument is how deep the snow got the winter the Donner Party was marooned here.

The museum was a bit antiquated (part of the renovation is that they're getting a new museum), but still interesting. Here's an example of one of the exhibits, a wagon like the one the Donners and company would have traveled in:

Boy, am I glad I live here and now

After we left the memorial, we headed west, first down I-80, then on U.S. 20. We stopped at a viewpoint on U.S. 20, out over the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas. We were back in the gold country.

Beautiful, rolling countryside. It seemed as if we could see forever.

We also saw some gilia at the viewpoint. We saw a lot of this particular flower on our trip.

We gradually made our way down into the Central Valley again, but since we were headed for the coast we did not head up I-5 when we crossed it. We spent the night in a little town called Williams, which was on I-5, though. And when I say little, I mean little. Three motels, a couple of gas stations, a few fast food places, and probably a grocery store somewhere. And that was it.