Good Morning, my Baby,
I am home from Pearl's and have no more errands for the day, she has no church meetings or other appointments, so I will be around. I am thinking about you, as always, and hope you are having a good day. I think it's gonna be a good day all around, so I am sending you good thoughts and energy. You are my everything and I Love You So Much! Here's to a great day. :):)
7pm : I am just getting home, so I am gonna do the usual - walk about eight 'clock, etc. I just saw your chicken wing post, so I've gotta ask (out of curiosity and excitement), have you gotten the master of "Storm" yet? It's gotta be any day now, right? Well, you can surprise me. Now I am gonna eat something too, and I will be back later, probably after my walk. Right now I am home till 8. I Love You. xoxoxoxo
10:30pm - Wow. I have to say right away, that Eric Whitacre song is incredibly beautiful. The melodies, the lyrics, everything. It blew me away just now, so thanks for posting it. I will be back in a few minutes.
10:55pm - Today I was reading a book called "Life After Death" by Damien Echols of West Memphis Three notoriety. I got it from the library, so I put other books I own on hold due to the library time limit. You may have noticed I read a lot, and I have ever since I learned how. I like the way the words go straight from the page into your mind, and that in itself is another interesting topic, ala linguistics : reading information versus hearing information or stories, and how each method of input, one aural and spoken, one visual and written, differs in the way it affects the reception in the brain. But I have always loved books, and my job affords me a lot of short breaks which are great for picking up a book. So today I was reading Damien Echols' book, and I couldn't put it down. I won't get into the details of the West Memphis Three case, you may know them, or not, but they are too grisly and not what the book is about anyway. It's about his life, and it's quite a story. I will finish it in another day or two, and then get back to The Hard Stuff, like Farrell, etc. If I am reading a biography, I can read very fast, but if I am reading something written in professorial language, I have to go a lot slower. But I love, love, love, my stories and my studies.
I was gonna tell you about the parks I visited yesterday. It really was a great morning, because I saw so much in such a short time. At first, I wanted to take a road called The Old Road, just to see where it might lead me. We have a major boulevard in the Valley that runs all the way from the mountains in the north to the mountains in the south. It is called Balboa Boulevard, and it is the only street that does that. It is two miles east of me, so I drove there, then went up Balboa to the top (north), where it goes into the mountains. There you can see the Mulholland Aqueduct, where all the water for the city of L.A. comes over the mountainside. Without that aqueduct, there would be no Los Angeles. It was completed in 1912, and L.A. exploded after that. We had water!
But right in that same area are roads that were in place before the freeways took over. One of them is the Sierra Highway, which I used a couple weeks ago to get to Placerita Canyon. The other is called The Old Road, and it's really just a two lane, old time, ground level version of what the enormous I-5 Freeway became. The Road runs parallel to the freeway. Because it is called The Old Road (i.e. "the highway before the freeway"), I thought it might offer picturesque sights for photographic opportunities, but no such luck. All it did was run alongside the I-5 for several miles. I knew it was time to turn around when I reached a stretch of The Old Road that was newly re-paved.
Wait a minute, I thought. This is The Old Road. How dare you re-pave it!
So, I turned around at that point and headed back to the junction near the aqueduct, where The Road meets the Sierra Highway, and then I headed north again, for just a few miles, and wound up at The Hart Ranch. You probably saw my photo of his house on FB yesterday. I wanted to go there because it was yet another place that, though somewhat close, I hadn't been to in years. The Hart Ranch is about 14 miles from my apartment, but I hadn't been there since 1972. My Dad used to take us regularly. You can dig red clay out of the ground there, which I did as a kid. They also have a barnyard full of animals, and I saw a cow, roosters and pheseants, and a few wild boars and potbellied pigs. Los Angeles, both the county and city, have a wonderful park system, and The Hart Ranch became part of it when William S. Hart, a cowboy movie star (one of the first big stars in the movie business) bequeathed his large ranch property to the county upon his death many decades ago. The mansion/museum was closed when I got there, so I didn't take a tour, but it was awesome once again to see a place, so local but so seemingly far away because it's just beyond the mountains, that I had not visited in 41 years. On the way back, I still had an hour to kill, so I stopped at Los Angeles' biggest city park, O'Melveny Park in Granada Hills, just six miles south of The Hart Ranch. O'Melveny is on the Valley side of the mountains, and I have been there many times, even in recent years. It is interesting how the mountains can hem a Valleyite in. One park on the Valley side, you visit. The other park, not so much.
But I am having an absolute blast on these recent road trips, even if The Old Road turned out to be a bit of a gyp.
I will keep exploring the area. One day, I hope to have a chance to find the Airplane Graveyard waaaaay out in the desert, which I was taken to when I was nine years old. Dozens of old planes, some ancient, some from WW2, sit rusting out in the middle of the Mojave, with no one watching over them. As I remember it, you just drive out there, and there they are, sitting haunted and alone. So that's another trip I wanna take, but now we are gonna be getting into the longer excursions, out on The Pearblossom Highway. That was where we found the obsidian fields, on the same day we drove to the airplane graveyard.
When I have a chance, and a trusty vehicle, I will really explore the desert.
I want you to come with me.
I would love, love, love, to travel the country with you. Just to drive, mainly on back roads, and see what we could see.
I Love You, Elizabeth, and am grateful every day for you, from the moment you came into my life.
You are my co-Spirit.
Sweet Dreams. xoxoxoxoxo :):)
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