THREE HOURS IN OREGON CITY, OREGON: Guest Post by Caroline Hatton at The Intrepid Tourist

The Willamette Falls in Oregon City, Oregon.

My friend Caroline Hatton, a children’s writer and frequent contributor to this blog, took these photos in Oregon City, Oregon, in November 2023.

Oregon City (red dot) and Portland (black dot), Oregon.

My husband’s French horn sounded stuffy and one of four valves clacked. So we took it to a respected French horn doctor, Kevin Blodget at Wally’s Music Shop in Oregon City. 

As a spot on the land, Oregon City is where the Willamette and Clackamas Rivers merge. As a spot in history, it was the end of the Oregon Trail, along which emigrants came in covered wagons from the Missouri River during the second half of the 1800s. On a map, Oregon City looks like an integral part of the urban amoeba stretching out from Portland.

Once the French horn was in Kevin’s expert hands for diagnosis, we went for a stroll along the nearby, paved, McLoughlin Promenade, on top of the volcanic basalt cliff that parallels the Willamette River. Soon we started seeing the horseshoe-shaped Willamette Falls (photo at the top of this post). They have long been a culturally important place for many Native American tribes. Today, both river banks downstream of the falls are crowded with huge, ugly, decrepit industrial buildings like I had only seen before in post-apocalyptic movies. This results from a history of hydroelectric power and paper production.

Back at the shop, Kevin reassured us that the horn’s rotors were aligned correctly and demonstrated how to use two different types of oil to lubricate the instrument’s plumbing. The horn sounded sufficiently decongested.

Mike's Drive-In, Oregon City, Oregon.

Before the afternoon drive home, I voted in favor of a quick, local-color lunch at Mike’s Drive-In, a couple of blocks away. Waiters no longer come to parked cars to take orders or serve food. Instead, scanning a QR code leads to ordering online and customers must go inside to pick up their food.

Mike's Drive-In, Oregon City, Oregon.

It was early for lunch and the restaurant was almost empty, so we decided to eat inside. No crowd meant no waiting for a table or food, no noise to interfere with quiet conversation, and a lower risk of assorted seasonal contagions. The menu included hamburgers and fried seafoods served in red plastic baskets, ice-cream, and 23 shake flavors. We asked what the most popular item was—fried pickles!—but couldn’t psych ourselves up to taste them. We had perfectly acceptable hamburgers and onion rings.

The Kaegi Pharmacy display at the Museum of the Oregon Territory.

After lunch, I wanted to see one more thing. It had to be the Museum of the OregonTerritory because it contains a historic pharmacy exhibit, something I can’t seem to pass up, due to some inexplicable fondness for old pharmacies. The display presents antiques from the Kaegi Pharmacy, founded in 1927 in nearby Wilsonville.

In the pharmacy display.

Of the hundreds of pharmaceutical jars, bottles, and vials, I took pictures of those that made me chuckle.

In the pharmacy display at the Museum of the Oregon Territory.

One bottle label identified the Kaegi Pharmacies, and a drawer was full of antique labels, similar to those in my parents’ 1960s pharmacy in Paris. Long before I was twelve, my mother had taught me how to apply the right amount of glue on the back of a label, how to center it between the two side seams of the glass bottles containing ethyl ether, or 70% ethyl alcohol, or glycerine, and how to make sure it was straight… if I didn’t want to have to soak it off and start over. She reluctantly approved my first batch despite the fact that no two labels were at the exact same height—but only after I argued that no customer would buy more than one bottle at a time, so why waste glue and labels? Later on, she showed me the preceding step: how to fill bottles, up to the (exact same) level (in all the bottles in every batch or else…).

In the pharmacy display at the Museum of the Oregon Territory.

My mother did know that nobody’s perfect and that it’s O.K. After all, when she was in Pharmacy School in 1940s French Indochina (now Vietnam), she famously could not detect the distinctive stench of Asafetida (also known as Devil’s Dung), the stinky gum from a plant’s roots and an herbal medicine used to treat asthma, cough, and, um… flatulence (farting). Yet my father fell in love with her anyway.

All text and photos, copyright Caroline Arnold. www.theintrepidtourist.blogspot.com

VALLEY FORGE NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK, PA: Honoring a Critical Moment in American History

Visitor Center, Valley Forge National Historical Park, PA. George Washington on his horse.

“On December 19, 1777, more than 12,000 soldiers and hundreds of civilians marched in Valley Forge. They began to build what would become the fourth largest city in America, with 1,500 log huts and two miles of fortifications. Lasting six months, the encampment was as diverse as any city. Residents were free and enslaved, wealthy and impoverished, speakers of several languages, and followers of several religions.”

Valley Forge, in the wooded hills and open fields a few miles west of the city of Philadelphia, is now a National Historical Park. On a beautiful fall day in October, I visited Valley Forge with my husband and daughter. I was reminded of what I had learned in school about the American War of Independence but discovered a lot more.

Map posted along trail.

We started at the Visitor Center where we got maps for our self-guided tour. The park comprises more than 400 acres and is crisscrossed by 35 miles of hiking and biking trails. One can also do an auto tour on the10-mile road through the park, with 9 stops along the way. Stop #5, on the opposite side of the park from the Visitor Center, is the house that was used as George Washington’s headquarters.

After looking at the displays in the Visitor Center, we climbed the stairs to the theater level where we watched an introductory film about the history of Valley Forge. In the film we saw re-enactors dramatizing the events of that cold, wet winter of 1777-1778 when the results of the war hung in the balance, as well as commentary about the events of that winter.

Replicas of log housing used by soldiers at Valley Forge.

Outside the theater we followed the Joseph Plumb Martin trail into the park to the site of Muhlenberg’s Brigade (Stop #2), where a series of log huts reproduced the living conditions the soldiers experienced that winter. Inside each hut were informational displays. 

A small fireplace was the only source of warmth inside the log shelters.

Our visit was on a pleasant fall day, but it is hard to imagine that the small huts would provide much comfort in the midst of winter.

Cannon mounted in redoubt, facing east toward Philadelphia.

Nearby a fortified defense called a redoubt was embedded at the top of a hill. Gaps in the earthen wall were provided for cannons. Sharp sticks protruding outward to deter attack. (Several other reconstructed redoubts are located throughout the park.)

Exterior of redoubt.

From the redoubt we followed a path back to our car parked near the Visitor Center and did the rest of our visit by road. 

Numerous markers along the road honored various military leaders and participants in the Revolutionary War.

National Historical Monument.

The largest monument in the park is the National Memorial Arch.

Fall leaves at Valley Forge.

In our morning’s visit to Valley Forge we did not have time to visit every monument or explore all the trails, but we got a good taste of the landscape that is the background for one of the most critical times in American history.

Valley Forge National Historical Park is located at 1400 North Outer Line Drive, King of Prussia, PA 19406. There is no entrance fee to visit the park.

For more information go to www.nps.gov/vafo

HAPPY NEW YEAR from THE INTREPID TOURIST

Doorway, Dublin, Ireland

January is named after Janus, the Roman god of doorways and symbol of the dualities of life--beginnings and endings, life and death, old and new. As we close the door of 2023 and open the door of 2024, I wish you all a very

HAPPY NEW YEAR

from THE INTREPID TOURIST 

And a healthy and productive year ahead!

Happy traveling in 2024!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS from THE INTREPID TOURIST

Holidays are a time for get-togethers with family and friends and for passing on family traditions. Every year when we get out the decorations for our tree we are reminded of the time that each one was added to the collection. The glass ornament above hung on Art's family tree when he was growing up and has now been passed on to our daughter Jennifer and her family. It is still being enjoyed three generations later!

With best wishes for a

 Happy Holiday

 from The Intrepid Tourist!

FOWLER MUSEUM, UCLA: Intersections

Intersections: World Arts/Local Lives. Fowler Museum of Cultural Arts.

One of my favorite museums in Los Angeles is the Fowler Museum of Cultural Arts, located on the UCLA campus just north of the Janss Steps. Housing more then 120,000 art and ethnographic objects and 600,000 archaeological objects it is a treasure house of ancient, traditional, and contemporary cultures of Africa, Native and Latin America, and Asia and the Pacific. It is also a space for a wide variety of wonderful temporary exhibits.

Cloth constructed from recycled metal tabs, from Africa. Intersections exhibit.

Inside the museum, surrounding a garden/atrium, are four galleries. Two are for temporary exhibits. In one of the other galleries is the permanent installation of the silver collection of the Fowler Family (after whom the museum is named.) Among my favorites in this room is the set of Apostle spoons and a painting depicting a royal banquet at which silver dishes like those in the collection were used. This blog post is devoted to a brief overview of some of the exhibits in the main gallery, Intersections, a sampling of objects from the Fowler collection..

Masks.

Intersections: World Arts/Local Lives, first opened to the public in 2006 and since then has showcased objects that inspire conversation and reflection. 

Wooden carvings.

The exhibits in the gallery explore how arts from Africa, Asia and the Pacific and the Americas conceptually intersect with each other. Major sections of the exhibition consider how these arts served as vehicles of action, knowledge, power and transformation.                                                      

Memories and Transcendence: Tree of Life and other objects.

An exceptional collection of more than 900 Mexican works was donated in 1997 by the Daniel Family and includes a magnificent ceramic Trees of Life, Day of the Dead figurines, and masks from Metepec, Oaxaca, Michoacan, Jalisco, Puebla, and Guanajuato.

Spirit's Walk, painting on bark from East Arnhem Land, Australia

Mexican Day of the Dead figures.

A small room within Intersections is for temporary exhibits. (See my earlier post on Armenian Lace.)

In addition to the two galleries for temporary exhibits, an exhibition space for photographs is on the walls of the hallway surrounding the atrium of the museum. (The most recent exhibit there was Remain in Light: Visions of Home and the Diaspora , striking black and white photos, often with dramatic skies, depicting contemporary life in Armenia.) I make regular trips to the Fowler as new exhibits are mounted, but I always return to the Intersections gallery. It is the heart of the museum.

PS And the Fowler Museum gift shop is a perfect place to find gifts for the holidays--or any other time of year!

ROAD TRIP: Alcantra, Spain, Guest Post by Susan Kean

My friend Susan Kean and her partner George recently went on a driving trip from Lisbon in Portugal, through Spain, to the Dordogne region in the South of France, where they visited friends and toured the countryside, including a visit to the famous painted caves of Lascaux (a replica). Susan has graciously agreed to share her photos with The Intrepid Tourist. The first three posts appeared several weeks ago. Here is a final post with Susan’s account of their visit to Alcantra, Spain. Susan writes:

Inside the beautiful Conventual de San Benito in Alcantra.

Conventual de San Benito, Alcantara

Here is one more post from our adventures last month. We took a two night trip to Alcantara, Spain… a short distance east of the Portuguese border. Our primary purpose was to see the beautiful Roman bridge that is built across the Tagus River, but as with much of Spain and Portugal, there is a lot more going on.

Hospederia Conventual de Alcantara. Hotel dining room with flour mills.

We stayed in a hotel that was a converted convent, with some time being a flour mill!

Four of the main Crusade groups.

This area was very involved with the Crusades and Order of the Alcantara still exists today. 

Rainy day view of Tagus Bridge

The Alcántara Bridge is a Roman bridge at Alcántara, in Extremadura, Spain. Alcántara is from the Arabic word al-Qantarah meaning "the arch". The stone arch bridge was built over the Tagus River between 104 and 106 AD by an order of the Roman emperor Trajan in 98.

The Tagus Bridge has had challenges during war times when armies would blow up an arch to prevent the enemy from crossing.

Alcantara Bridge

Road surface as it’s been for 2000 years. Maybe the Romans could teach us something. They are finally building another bridge nearby as heavy traffic is taking its toll.

View up the Tagus River, away from the bridge.

Hydro-electric plant near the bridge.

MEDITATION GARDEN, Encinitas, California: A Place to Immerse Yourself in the Beauty of Nature

Meditation Garden, Encinitas, CA

On a recent Sunday Art and I did a day trip from Los Angeles to visit the beautiful Meditation Garden in Encinitas, CA, at the top of a bluff overlooking the Pacific. As we walked up the steps from the entrance we found a network of paths—some through shaded bowers, one to the koi pond and waterfall, some to nooks with benches, another along the clifftop which leads past the former site of the Golden Lotus Temple and then on to a cactus lined walkway ending in an artistically arranged bed of cactus and succulents surrounded with black lava rocks.

Variety of cactus and succulents.

The garden is part of the Self-Realization Fellowship Encinitas Temple, located in Encinitas, California, a coastal community just north of San Diego. In 1938 the Golden Lotus Temple was built by Paramahansa Yogananda on a point of land at the top of the cliffs that is now part of the garden. 

Former site of the Golden Lotus Temple.

During the next four years, thousands attended the Thursday and Sunday services conducted by the Guru at this site. However, in 1942 the instability of the cliff required that the Temple be removed. A plaque now documents its location.

Bromeliads in a planter box, with variety of other plants.

The plants in the garden are all perfectly tended and vary from cactus and succulents to shade loving plants by the koi pond. For home gardeners, walking the garden paths is a place to get inspiration for new things to plant. For everyone, the garden is a place to appreciate the beauty of nature.

Sunny path through the garden, seen through agave plants.

It was a perfect California November day—sunny but not too hot and not a cloud in the sky. (Later in the week, rain was predicted.) In the ocean below, we watched surfers waiting for the next big wave. Although quite a few other people were also visiting the garden, it still felt peaceful and not too crowded.

Stairway to J Street viewpoint.

We had a picnic lunch afterward at J Street Viewpoint park nearby, climbing stairs from the street level to an overlook with several picnic tables and a spectacular view of the ocean.

Surfers on beach below the garden.

Entry to the Meditation Garden is free and near the entrance are restrooms and information about the Self-Realization Fellowship.
For more about the Self-Realization Fellowship and Paramahansa Yogananda, often referred to as the “Father of Yoga in the West”, go to the SRF website.
The Meditation Gardens are located at 215 W. K Street (between 2nd and 3rd Streets)
Open Tuesday – Saturday 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Closed Monday

Closure dates: 11/23, 12/16, 12/23, 12/25, 1/1, 1/5, 1/13

The Meditation Gardens are also closed when it rains.

Flowering Aloe, a succulent, overlooking the ocean.

For more information about visiting the Self-Realization Fellowship Encinitas Hermitage and Meditation Gardens: https://www.encinitastemple.org/visiting/

Quiet nook with seating, honoring St. Francis of Assisi.

For more photos of the Meditation  garden, taken on a previous visit, see my post from March 13, 2017, a report my first time in the garden.