Travel Blog

Monday meanderings. June 25, 2007

Item one.  If you are baseball fan and especially if you are a Seattle Mariner’s fan, you had to love this last weekend.  Ken Griffey Jr.’s return to Seattle was nothing short of a love-fest.  Our boys were in grade school when Ken first came to Seattle as a 19 year old rookie and we had front row seats for dozens of games during those first few years.  We loved him and had great family time watching him dazzle us with his one of kind skills. 

But what to make of this weekend?  We were tuned into Friday night’s welcome home like most of the NW and I was even moved to tears by the proceedings.  I think for me it was more about Paul and memories of taking him to the Kingdome for Mariner games than it was KGJ.  However, are we so short of heroes in this country that we nearly deify someone who has been gone for 8 years and left here with not so much as a thank-you?  I can’t say I understand it but it does speak, at least something, to how important it is to have people to look up to these days and how few there are who are worthy of our adulation.  There certainly is no other human being in this area who would have evoked the kind of response KGJ received here in the NW.

Item two.  We probably have had more comments about our season of simplification then any other issue.  Selling everything and moving into a fifth wheel struck a cord with a several of you and with good reason.  As we get older we begin to realize that acquisition of stuff and taking care of stuff gets old and we want more out of our lives then we find we now have.  Baby boomers are making lifestyle changes in droves, seeking more fulfillment and less stress.  My friends at RV-Dreams have a large following, not just because they are nice people, which they are, but because they have struck a cord with the boomer crowd.  One of the blogs I read has a great quote on the subject of simplification and the more eternal purpose for it. It is short and would be worth your time to read it.

Item three. Linda is at the school today closing out her room and her career as a full time school teacher (at least for the foreseeable future).  Thanks to all who read my piece on her life as a school teacher, especially to those of you who wrote such great comments.  It isn’t too late to write a congratulatory comment to her, either on the site or at gregandlinda06@yahoo.com

Item four. We are leaving in the morning for one of my favorite destinations-the Yakima River.  We will relax together, I will float the river a few times hunting trout with a fly and Linda will get some rest and enjoy her quilting, reading, learning about her new computer and whatever else she chooses to do.  We will be gone for several days, then back to Mason County for a few more days, enjoying our kids and all the grandkids, then a few days in Idaho for our friends Colby and Jill’s wedding, then back here for a week at Belfair State Park, our favorite Washington State Park.  Finally we will be off to follow the sun for a year or so (actually the purpose is more than that but I will write more on that subject another time). 

We don’t officially leave the state until the end of July but we are officially not living here anymore–tomorrow.  I know some of you are smiling at that thought!  You can keep up with our travels regularly, if not daily, on this site.

Item five.  If you have made it this far, on a more serious note: Several years ago, a friend of mine, who is gay, told me he found the evangelical phrase “hate the sin and love the sinner” to be condescending.  He felt, since being homosexual was an integral part of who he was, hating the sin was the same as hating him. We who claim to be followers of Jesus are not as good at demonstrating our love for the “sinner” as we are our hatred of the sin so since that conversation I have tried to not even use or think the phrase.  All of that to say, another of my favorite blogs has the best writing on this subject I have ever read, and it would be very much worth your time to read it.  You can check it out here.

Linda found this great quote somewhere, with no author given.  Let us know if you know who said it.  Worry is the misuse of imagination. 

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so speaking of change

so this weekend was epic. we started with a wedding shower for my cousin kristy, but i had to punk out early and go to an actual wedding in indiana…

my friend tiago - who you can see in this post - was on his own fantastic voyage, he more or less hitched a ride with friends from baltimore to michigan, then took a train to chicago. hours and hours later, i took him to House of Blues for lunch. we got lost on the way to layfayette, unfortunately… combination of thunderstorms, bunk mapquest directions, and traffic… but even catching the last couple hours of the reception was worth the journey. the wedding was at the bride’s parent’s home, and the groom’s sisters decorated the garage and yard. upon arrival we were pulled into the dance party and any stress from the day vanished once we were basking in the glow of italian lights.

the groom’s family had all flown in from puerto rico, so my handful of spanish was put to the test and i am proud to say my accent and meager vocabulary had a few of them mistakenly thinking i’m fluent. not the case! it was one of those times where the language barrier is just not a big deal, we still laughed together. somehow politeness is language-free and i think that’s awesome. like, i’m getting a drink, do you want one? you can convey that with pointing. easier than one might think :)

it was also a nice time to see brad corrigan, it’s the first time in a long while where i saw him able to focus on just what was in front of him, instead of eighteen thousand events he’s got going on at any given time. the kid works so hard. we were talking and realized how long ago it was since we first met, and how awesome it’s been.

it’s fun to read through the archives from two years ago and think oh God, i was such a child then. the past two years have been an awakening, a transformation. more than college ever was. and now the changes in front of me are less about striking out and having a delayed rebellion - now that i’ve gone prodigal and returned, the changes might get more subtle, more personal. i’m working up to leaking the news that i’m getting a tattoo in august and trying to frame it as a spiritual choice and it is one, but i don’t really expect anyone to buy that. and for the first time, i don’t really care what anyone buys or doesn’t buy. that’s what it is, and it doesn’t need to be anything else.

back to the wedding - there’s one more adventure to last saturday and it’s crazy. the clock is rolling around to 1:30 am, we’re all starting to fade, brad suggests tiago and i spend the night at his hotel room and i’m liking that idea… so i ask tiago when his flight leaves from o’hare the next day. T gets on the phone with united, and apparently his flight is 6am. as in five hours from where we were.

i give tiago an ultimatium: change your flight or we leave in about two minutes. and two minutes later, we save tiago the money of changing his flight, grab a few cold water bottles each, and get back on the road…

1:30 am: leave the party
3:45am: arrive at o’hare
4:30am: drop off the car at my sisters’ apartment
4:45am: cab arrives at my place
5:00am: my head hits the pillow
2:00pm: wake up, watch cartoons, work on a logo.

AWESOME, awesome weekend.

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10 Tips For Virtual Teams

Virtual Teams — at best, project driven groups of very talented people pulled together from around the country and/or globe. At worst, vision lacking, communication hampered groups of talented people pulled together across disparaging timezones. When they work well - they are a thing of precision and beauty. When they fails, they are an unwanted nightmare.

Dr. Lynda Gratton has written a useful piece on creating, working with, and maintaining virtual teams. She covers 10 helpful tips for success in this unique environment. She covers such topics as finding team mates that know one another, breaking the team into regional work groups, encouraging frequent communication, and making sure that the project tasks are challenging and interesting.

Around the world, a wide range of corporate tasks are being performed by teams of employees who rarely if ever meet in person.

The rise of so-called virtual teams is hardly surprising, given the vast investments corporations are making in internal communications and networks. Technically, it’s no longer a challenge to work closely with colleagues in distant locations or to hold meetings with participants scattered around the globe.

In practical terms, however, plenty of hurdles remain. Among them: time-zone differences that make quick exchanges difficult, and cultural miscues that can cause misunderstandings. Teams that don’t meet in person are considered less likely to develop the kind of chemistry seen in teams that do — an element that’s often seen as a key factor in making teams productive.

read more…

For anyone working virtually, this is a must read. Pass this around for others on your team to read as well.

Finally, let me know what you have found useful (or dreadful) in a virtual team environment. Comment below!

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Sunset on blaukaus

At the time of a week end in Normandy, I visited the places of the second world war, Utah beach, American cemetery etc. I were on one of these places where the American army with climbing a whole cliff to arrive opposite the German army. Hole of the shells remains marked in the ground, traces of the blaukaus are visible. It is a place in charge of history, where the engagements are imagined very well. In the middle this footbridge is gone up on a blaukaus. From there, one can have a good sight, and think how German one reacted one indicator to arrive at far their enemies. The two characters in back light pointed out the sentinels to me German brought to watch for the least signal, the black clouds of the sky, the dark days which passed and the break with far the day better.

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3,000 hits and some of John’s favorite pics

Geez, why didn’t I put a site meter up when I started blogging three years ago? I don’t know why I even put one up last summer - because someone from Duncan, Oklahoma still looks at my blog multiple times a day, and doesn’t tell me who he/she is.

But speaking of Oklahoma, a friend of mine from high school, Adrienne Cash (nee Calhoun), tracked me down! How awesome is that? I haven’t seen her for years! Here’s a big shout out to you dear. You sound like you’re happy and doing well - so good to hear. And, I think it may have been Adrienne who asked me to put some pictures up, so with that, today is a “photoblog” of some of my favorite pics over the past few years. Enjoy…

The Quick and The Dirty. This is “Oozeball,” a grand A-Week tradition at ASU. I was the vice president of the Programming and Activities Board in ASU’s student government, and we formed the best team ever. We didn’t win, so I guess that’s not actually true, but you can’t deny the fact that mud volleyball is beyond fun.

Believe it or not, I was actually Homecoming Royalty at ASU. It’s not really that big of a deal (what? like I’m going to put it on my resume?) But, I must say that it was a LOT of fun.

And since I seem to mention ASU so much, I might as well show a graduation picture. Pictured with me is my dad. Like my serape? I’m about to do this again in May, but this time I’ll be wearing a peacock blue tassle and hood!

Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano — the best Arizona has ever had!

This is my wife’s family and I at Disneyland last Thanksgiving. It was a blast - but in case your wondering about the sad faces, I think this is when we learned that it cost $5 to decorate a dumb Christmas cookie. I think my mother-in-law’s face is the best.

Since my wife is from Nevada, I guess I have to pander to their politicians too. Just kidding. But here I am with Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) at a function in PHX. Since there are two of us, I guess it does prove that Mormon Democrats really do exist.

But honestly, the political fire in the belly I once had is dwindling.

Here’s a picture of me with some friends camping in Jal, Albania. Can you guess who is Albanian and who isn’t?

Here’s a mission picture - one of my favorite memories too. This is in Florence, Italy on the cupola at the top of the duomo there.

And I conclude this brief photo montage with another mission picture, this time at Cinque Terre. This was at the beginning of our hike, so clearly I’m all nice and happy. After we put the cameras away, the biggest torrential rain I’ve ever experienced hit us on our trek. You don’t want to see the pictures of us afterward.

Hopefully I can find some more pictures to post later - especially non-incriminating ones…although, they are a lot of fun.

Until then…

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Swan River Cruises

Although at opposite ends of the country, Sydney and Perth are united: Sydney has the harbour and Perth has the river. Unlike Brisbane and Melbourne, for example, where it’s a fair drive to a decent beach, Sydney and Perth are fortunate to have wonderful waterways. Since arriving in Perth, I’ve undertaken two different river cruises.

The one-hour cruise along the Swan River from Perth to Fremantle gives you a really great opportunity to have a look at the river, taking in sights of particularly large and sometimes tacky houses, owned by the likes of Rose Porteous and Kerry Stokes, amongst other.

The driver/commentator for the cruise that I went on was pretty funny, commenting that Lang Hancock had built a house for “his Fillipino housmaid” and in a particularly memorable moment declaring, “Oysters were farmed on this site… (pause)…until the outbreak of polio which was linked back to the oysters”. For just $11 one way, I thought it was an excellent value… and a great way to introduce my friend, Damien to Perth.

While here we also went on a full-day cruise up the Swan River to visit some Swan Valley wineries, with lunch and wine included. There are several companies that offer such tours, and we chose well by picking Captain Cook. The tour exceeded our best hopes in every way, and at just $109 for a seven hour cruise with bbq lunch, wines and lots of fun we thought it was outstanding value.

The other tourists (about 35) included a couple of groups of women who we thought might provide alcohol-fueled entertainment later in the afternoon - how right we were…

The fittings and condition of the barge itself was first class, and we scored a booth to ourselves with ample space to relax while staring out at the city shores. Commentary by the captain was brilliant with many interesting factoids, such as: much of Perth is built on reclaimed land; in many areas the average depth of the Swan River is only 1-1.5 metres; and there are about 18 dolphins who frequent the river for easy food. Four tasting wines were served during the two and a half hour trip upriver: Gnangara unwooded chardonnay, Jane Brook chenin chardonnay, Gnangara shiraz and Jane Brook Plain Jane shiraz. All were reasonable quality for cheap wines, and the chenin chardonnay was the best of the lot. Apart from the the very end, when Mix FM took control, cruisy jazz played gently in the background - all in all a very relaxed and relaxing couple of hours.

At 11.30am we tranferred to a bus for the short ride to our first winery, Sandalford. Despite being one of the largest wineries in WA it has a well-deserved reputation for quality, and the winery itself is attractively landscaped with a very professional cellar door. A staff member gave a quick description of the seven wines on offer for tasting, then left us to pour ourselves a drop (bucket) of each. All were at least very good, including the two cheapest examples from the Elements range, however the standouts were nicely oaked Margaret River semillon and the Mount Barker shiraz. There was also a liqueur port which was great, but one group of women had already drowned it before Damien could have a taste.

Next stop was Houghtons, the largest winery in the valley. Similar setup here, although both the winery and the wines weren’t up to the standard set by Sandalford. Good nevertheless, with the classic Houghtons White Burgundy performing well. Back in the bus to return to Mulberry on Swan, where the barge was moored and where we were to have lunch. The venue is a classy affair with good river views, and we had a private room to ourselves with two chefs on the grill and a man on a piano playing effortlessly. Given our plans for dinner we kept control of our appetites, but the food was excellent and generous and we could have happily gone back for more. The only negatives of the tour were the wines with lunch - both the red and white were awful, a shame given the quality of everything else sampled during the day. During lunch we got chatting to an IVF consultant from Newcastle with an ambitious plan to catalogue and rank wine reviews from around the world, but the most surreal moment was when one of the staff from the boat picked up the microphone and started singing. Totally unexpected and very good, he belted out some classics (think “New York, New York” for over half an hour.

Returning to the boat, most of those on the tour were quite tipsy and keen to slouch in the booth again. We saw quite a few of the Japanese tourists lying down for an afternoon nap. But we were all positively teetotal compared to the woman laid out on the seat of the booth opposite. Completely face down in the couch and comatose, we thought they were joking and merely being cautious when they put rubbish bags under her head. Nope. It took ten minutes to clean up the floor of the booth, and the poor soul barely moved during the entire trip except to make to some more contributions to the bag. The surreality of lunch continued with the other staffer from the boat (Kai, who I saw in a theatre production last week) taking over the mike and singing, getting into it so much that at one stage he got on the floor and crawled on his back down the aisle while still holding the tune. Excellent work, and it inspired several of the women to get up and dance. We got chatting to the other members of the alcohol victim’s group, who took a shine to us and invaded our booth for the rest of the cruise. They were workmates out for a fun day, and the sister-in-law of one was working that night at the restaurant we had booked for dinner. All in all it was an interesting, picturesque and very fun way to spend the day. Highly recommended.

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The busy life

(E & A’s swimming pool. Photo by Robin. June 2007)

M and I have been pretty busy over the past few days. We spent Friday shopping for the big reunion party on Saturday. A group of folks who used to work for/with M and E (the friend and collegue who brought M here for his sabbatical) all gathered at E’s home for food, fun, and the chance to see who aged well. In my opinion, we all aged well. :)

I paid my first visit to Costco on Friday. E and his wife A are members. We decided it would be a good place to stock up on some of the party food as well as beer and wine. I was impressed with Costco. I’ve decided M and I should join when we return to the Bogs. I don’t think M was quite so impressed and sees Costco as just another place to spend too much money. He’s probably right.

Because people were driving in from as far away as Huntington, West Virginia (about a 7 hour trip, I think), we decided we should have plenty of food and plan on feeding people two meals since the party started at noon. For lunch we had a variety of hoagies from PrimoHoagies. The variety included the ever-popular and delicious Italian style; turkey with American cheese; and a fantastic veggie sandwich made with eggplant, broccoli rabe, and roasted red peppers. For dinner we had hamburgers and bratwurst. In addition, there were all kinds of salads (potato salad, coleslaw, pepper slaw, pasta salad), a veggie tray, a cheese tray and crackers, chips and salsa, fruits (grapes and a watermelon we never cut into), and a yummy cheesecake for dessert.

If you’re throwing a party and have a PrimoHoagies near you, I highly recommend them. Their hoagies are fantastic. They use good quality luncheon meats, the provolone is always sharp, and the rolls are freshly baked each day. The PrimoHoagies location I’m most familiar with closes when they run out of rolls and that can sometimes be fairly early in the day if they’ve had a good run of business.

After all the shopping on Friday, E thought we should try out his margarita recipe, just to be sure it was good enough for the party. We’d had one margarita by the time A arrived home from work and from there it turned into the Margarita Evening with the Tequila Gang. It was fun, silly, and resulted in the four of us feeling a little rough the next morning. I’m not sure how many recipes we tried out, but they were all pretty tasty. E makes a good margarita, that’s for sure.

The reunion was a blast. The only thing we really overindulged in was food. We had WAY too much food. However, in our defense, we started with a head count of 22-24 and last minute cancellations resulted in an actual attendance of about 13 or 14. The good news is that neither E and A nor M and I will need to do any grocery shopping for a while.

It was wonderful spending time with old friends and coworkers again. For E, it had been about 20 years since he’s seen some of those people. M and I left West Virginia about 7 years ago so it hasn’t been quite so long for us. It was agreed that we have to do this again without waiting so long the next time.

On Sunday we took one of the party guests to the Philadelphia airport to catch her flight home. M and I decided that as long as we were in Philly we might as well do something in the city. We started with a late (noontime) breakfast at Little Pete’s.

(Little Pete’s. Photo by Robin. June 2007)

Little Pete’s, I’m told, is something of an institution in Philadelphia. It’s a great place for a fast and decent breakfast that’s apparently popular with the after-party crowd. M and I both had omelets which came with home fries and toast. The food was good and plentiful without going overboard, the service was speedy, and the price was cheap (about $14 for the two of us).

(Inside Little Pete’s. Photo by Robin. June 2007)

After breakfast we strolled around the neighborhood for a few minutes, making our way back to our car.

(Somewhere on 16th Street, near Locust, in Philadelphia. Photo by Robin. June 2007)

(Philadelphia sights. Photo by Robin. June 2007)

(Philadelphia neighborhood. Photo by Robin. June 2007)

After our stroll we went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for a culture-filled afternoon. I’ll post a few photos from that adventure sometime tomorrow. Right now I need to get off this computer and make myself at least semi-useful in life.

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Travel update

We got up at 8 a.m. this morning to a crystal morning, with a pine forest outside our coach, cool temperatures, and not a whisper of a breeze.  The wildflowers are pink, yellow, white and two shades of purple.  After weeks of trailer parks and taking care of parents and grandchildren (both of which we feel privileged to have done), we are remembering why we started this life in the first place. 

We are camped on Swan Mountain in a national forest, high above Lake Dillon, only a few miles from Breckenridge, where we spent the winter.  On Saturday, I rode my bicycle down the mountain (whee!!) and around the lake, and Roy picked me up in Frisco, so I didn’t have to struggle back up maybe a 1,000 foot grade.  My rationalization – if it’s okay to use ski lifts for downhill skiing . . . speaking of which, we took the lift up Keystone Ski Resort yesterday.  There are only a few mounds of snow remaining, and the ski slopes have been criss-crossed with mountain bike trails.  Like ski runs, these are graded – green, blue, black, and double-black — and have lots of jumps on the more advanced trails.  Looks entirely too bone-jarring for me — I can barely negotiate a pot-hole on pavement — but lots of people look like they are having lots of fun.  Our annual ski passes work in the summer, but they charge extra for bikes, which they hang on hooks they mount onto one side of each chair.  Roy and I walked down the mountain, which was a surprisingly strenuous and exhausting undertaking.  It was not difficult aerobically, but by the time we finally got down (about two hours), my knees were wobbly.  I stumbled at least ten times and fell three.  (Of course, I AM a clutz.)  The meadow grasses and rocks! are not as forgiving as snow, not to mention the fact that I have NEVER fallen three times on a ski run.  Today my thighs feel as sore as after the first day of skiing in a season.  Of course, this conditioning, whatever it is, will not hold until the snow begins to fly.  But the mountain vistas were beautiful and the breezes were warm.  Next time we will take the road, even if it IS three times as long.  If there is a next time.

Fabulous news for Roy.  His shoulder (which, if you will remember, he dislocated on a ski slope Feb. 11) and elbow have healed to the point where he will not require surgery.  The doctor was just incredulous that he has shown so much recovery in the 2-1/2 months since he last saw him.  He said he would have been happy with the condition of his elbow had he had surgery in March and wants to know what Roy has done to bring it about.  Truthful as he is, Roy said, “Not much”.  Roy chalks it up to his amazing body, which he’s been telling me about for years.  Who’s to argue?  We now have our summer free, as opposed to tethered to Colorado for physical therapy.  (Not that this is such a bad place . . . but hiking and biking and rafting are more fun than curls in the gym.)

We spent 8 days in the beginning of June babysitting for Ally (2) and Jake (4 months) while their parents (my daughter Erin and husband Ben) went off to Maui on vacation.  Ben is a police officer who works 5 days on / 4 days off, and Erin works normal Monday - Friday, so they have an irregular daycare schedule, which they were kind enough to leave in place while we were there.  So we had babysitting for three of the eight days.  Nevertheless, we had five days in a row on our own, and after two days, we were not certain we were going to make it.  (I was sick, too, which didn’t help.)  But now that it’s over, we would not have missed it for the world, and still miss the two little squirts.  Jake is an angel, and Ally is a fun-loving little dare-devil.  Ben and Erin came back tanned, relaxed, and smiling, but they really missed their little ones after so many days away.  And Ally kept saying Mamamamamama and bouncing from Mom’s lap to Dad’s and back again all evening.

The other two fun things we did on our trip from Atlanta back to Colorado were to visit the Jack Daniels’ Distillery in Lynchberg, TN, and the capital of country music in Nashville.  We learned the entire process of brewing, charcoal filtering and aging, how the whiskey gets its flavor and color, the history of the place, prohibition and the the 75!! warehouses in the area.  Also that Lynchberg is in a dry county!!  Defintely worth the side trip.  (We also toured the Coors plant in Golden, CO the day we flew out to Spokane, another excellent tour and interesting process.  Plus they are VERY generous with their samples.  (Coors makes Killians, Molson and Blue Moon, too, in case you didn’t know.)  Don’t forget the ABC’s of beer (Always Buy Coors).

Nashville was a neat town.  Not only music, music, everywhere, but good old fashioned country catfish, which we ALWAYS enjoy.  We went to the Grand Ole Opry on Tuesday night and saw some old legends of country music (little Jimmy Dickens (who stands about 5 feet tall and sings AND tells jokes) and Porter Wagoner (who was Dolly Parton’s partner when she was just getting going and was about to celebrate 50 years in the Country Music Hall of Fame)).  I had never heard of these guys, but you may have.  The show paused for a commercial every fifteen minutes, with a new sponsor every half hour.  It was clear that this was as much radio program as stage production.  We went to the Country Music Hall of Fame the next day, which was interesting and worthwhile also.

It was great to refresh friendships while we were in Atlanta.  I thought about not going by the old workplace but am definitely glad I did.  It was like a warm burst of sunshine (friends!) with just enough reality check (work! and politics!) to give me not the slightest inclination to want to go back.  It was certainly good to see things (finally!) moving in the right direction again.  Also, it was good to run into many friends that I had missed on my day-long visit in 2006., though sadly I missed others this go-round.  That’s how it goes.  Though we were unable to attend a tennis match, due to the regular ALTA season being over and our old teams not making the playoffs, we did spend several nice evenings with tennis and neighborhood friends.  I even drafted one of my favorite tennis partners (I have several!!) for an inflatable kayak trip down the very low-water Chattahoochee.  We arrived at the final take-out the same instant as Roy, my loyal tech support and equipment management guy.  We have thought about digging our boat back out for a paddle around Lake Dillon, but that water has had a recent previous life as snowflakes, so we’re not quite sure we feel like immersing our tushes in it.  We are still running a little bit of heat in the mornings here!

The plan from this point is to explore some other parts of this beautiful state and then return to the area in late July for a “Boomerang”.  The “Boomers” subgroup of the Escapees RV Club that we belong to gets together periodically just for fun, and they call these gatherings boomerangs.  Many (200+) like-minded and active friends with time to play.  So that’s what we’re up to! 

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The lake that gave Mission Dolores its name and location

thumbnail of old map; note: north is to the right.

Unlike many Spanish missions, Mission Dolores in San Francisco was not named after a saint or a Biblical figure. Apparently, it was named after a small lake (or a lagoon within the lake) upon whose shores it was built. Early Spanish explorers gave the lake the name Dolores because they saw Indians weeping on its bank. The mission was built there because it seemed to be a good place to obtain fresh water and grow crops, and took its name from the event/lake. The lake not only no longer exists, but is has been largely filled in and almost forgotten.

The best way to understand the lake is to go to the southwest corner of 17th and Mission and look up and down both streets. You will notice that you are actually in the center of a basin that has been somewhat filled in but is still about 20 feet deep, that extends several blocks in every direction.

The spot at the northwest corner of 17th and Mission is very near what was the deepest part of the lake. The lake extended about two blocks in all directions. If you look west on 17th street, you can see that the Mission Dolores is three blocks away, just a block beyond what was the shore of the lake. Now walk south a block on Mission and look west on 18th. This was a ravine in which was the creek that fed the lake, the water coming down from Twin Peaks.The Mission Dolores was built one city block north from the edge of the ravine and about the same distance west from the shore of the lake. Water exited the lake at about what is now 16th and Howard, going east down 16th, and then draining generally north east toward the bay through a tidal estuary.

Bayard Taylor who saw the Mission valley in 1849 says: “Three miles from San Francisco is the old mission of Dolores situated in a sheltered valley which is watered by a perpetual stream fed from the tall peaks towards the sea. * * * Several former miners in anticipation of a great influx of emigrants in the spring, pitched their tents on the best spots along Mission creek and began preparing the ground for gardens. The valley was surveyed and staked into lots almost to the summit of the mountains” (Eldorado pp. 64, 298-9).

As is implied in the passage above, eventually the lake was drained and filled in with dirt, and built over. In 1906, the loose fill dirt created havoc during the earthquake). One eyewitness describes a famous scene on Valencia:

link

Along Valencia Street from 21st to 17th, there was a hole big enough to bury at least 50 people, not to mention horses. The old Valencia Street Hotel, where I had played sliding over the banister, was lying flat on the ground and all the people in it had lost their lives, was the report.

Valencia Street was an old creekbed, [actually the creek ran through there, but it was perpendicular to Valencia, more or less under 18th Street] which had been filled in and then built on. The severe jolts of the quake caused the soft-packed fill to settle suddenly, leaving gaping holes in the street. The buildings on top of the fill reeled with the force of this settling, and houses for several blocks leaped off their foundations. The four-story Valencia Hotel [718 Valencia, almost at 18th Street] collapsed like a tower of cards. Its top floor landed intact in the middle of the street with the bottom three floors flattened underneath, crushing at least 15 people. [Here is my favorite image of the Valencia Hotel and surroundings.]

This scene found its way into the 1936 movie San Francisco. As Clark Gable searches desperately through the city’s rubble for Jeannette MacDonald, he comes upon the collapsed hotel. A policeman tells him, “Those on the top floor stepped right out their windows to the street. The others were out of luck.”

That this was literally true can be seen in this photo.
Another eyewitness recalled:

>I was curious to see the nearest fire at the corner of 22nd and Mission St. Our house was located at 931 Dolores Street in the block between the 22nd and 23rd Streets. >As I ran across Valencia St. going to the Mission St. fire, I noticed on my left down Valencia St. a small old three-story hotel. (Evidently it had been built over a subterranean faultline.) The first story had partly sank in the earth while the second and third had fallen out into the street. That was the first structural destruction I had witnessed.

Another image of the Valencia Hotel can be seen here.

The total devastation of Valencia in the area of 19th can be seen here, in the aftermath a month later. Partly because the Mission Dolores was built west of the lake and thus not in the later fill, it was undamaged in the 1906 quake.

Much of the Mission District was in ruins but, unlike many other areas of the city, it did not burn. The shifting soil apparently ruptured the water mains between Valencia and Mission, but the fire department was able to keep the Mission District from burning by using the Twin Peaks water coming out of the hydrants on Valencia.

>At the fire which destroyed the building at the northwest corner of Mission and 22nd streets immediately after the earthquake, there was no water to be had east of Valencia Street, but the double hydrant at the northwest corner of 22nd and Valencia and the southwest corner of Valencia and 21st St. furnished an abundant supply, which, with the aid of the cistern at 22nd and Shotwell St., extinguished the fire.

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Back in the USA June 24, 2007

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