Crater Lake, OR

In June, we spent an afternoon at Crater Lake, a national park with the distinction of being the deepest lake in the US.  Crater Lake is a caldera, or a large volcanic crater.  On our visit, snow was still sprinkled atop the slumbering volcano and the East Rim Drive was (sadly) still closed due to snow, but the view was immense, breathtaking.  Even amid the slight early afternoon haze.  How to describe the place?  Imagine the most vivid deep blue hue you've ever seen, multiply that by 100, and you got Crater Lake.  I've heard that this natural wonder is temperamental: one day foggy, the next hazy, the next clear.  We were lucky to catch it on a good day so early on in the season.  My camera could not capture the entire lake in one shot, but you get the picture.

What you don't see though are the tourists, which were numerous.

I'd like to say this was a fun trip, but the mosquitos and the hoards of people, plus the sheer number of not-so-careful Oregonian drivers, made our trip precarious, anxiety ridden.  Southern Oregon is a different place, definitely small-town sleepy and a little edgy.  Contrasting with this is the abundance of natural scenery--billowing areas of forest, meadow, and lake--and statuesque cows grazing on huge tracts of lush green farmland.  Our brief trip was worth it for this and a glimpse of the caldera itself (see the webcam here).

May Road Trip Part I: US Route 50/Sand Mountain, NV

Sand Mountain, NV

Apologies for the sporadic blog posts as of late.  We've been so busy these past few weeks that I haven't had the chance to post much.  Although I've recently posted more on my Instagram account than on here, it was done mainly out of convenience (there: a photo and a few sentences; here: connecting thoughts to a photo = takes more time and work).  Still, I prefer blogging to document my zany long-winded ideas and thoughts.

Speaking of zany, we took a short break last weekend and drove on a long, lonely stretch of US Route 50 in Nevada to Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park.  The drive was a surprisingly picturesque, two-lane highway with few drivers on the road and the occasional tiny middle-of-nowhere town thrown in.  Sure beat urban city congestion!  Right before we zipped into the mountains to the state park, the road ran through a wide swath of white sand called Sand Mountain.  Turns out the sand is from ancient Lake Lahontan, which dried up nearly 9,000 years ago.  (I had first thought it was an expansive salt flat.)  Dotting the edge of the sand were dark pellets--they were everywhere.  However, the pellets were not animal droppings like I had initially thought.  Upon closer inspection from out the car window, we saw that these pellets methodically spelled out words.  Most phrases were of the lovey-dovey variety (i.e.: "A <3 G"), but once in awhile there read some humorous, bordering on concerning, words like, "POO" and "LSD."  But when you're driving 75 mph down the two-lane highway, you have better things to look out for--namely oncoming traffic and maintaining the speed limit--and the words blur into indistinguishable dots of jet black on soft, almost blinding white sand.  Funny thing, there wasn't an ATV or a soul in sight.  It was as if the words had magically appeared on the rolling sand dune.  Above us, the thick fast-floating clouds added to the mystique of the drive, casting moody shadows on the road and sand and then, just as quickly, shrouding them in intense sunlight.  Rain was predicted for the next day at the state park, so perhaps these quick-morphing clouds were thunderheads hovering just a day away.

Intrigued by the sight, I snapped countless photos of the white sand, the clouds, and the sky--dizzying myself in the process as my husband drove us onward to our destination: Berlin-Ichthyosaur State
Park.

* * * * * * *

Part II of this road trip can be found here.

Nevada Trip: Fort Churchill State Park

In September, we visited the Civil War-era Fort Churchill in the unforgiving Eastern Nevada desert.  The once-bustling adobe military base, which is over 30 miles east of Carson City, was built in 1861 to aid the territorial fight against the Paiute Indians.  Historic Fort Churchill was also a Pony Express stopping point.  The remnants of the fifteen-or-so original buildings, built completely surrounding a central training ground, can be accessed by foot or by car.  A line of green trees is seen beyond the fort's ruins--this is the Carson River.

History:
The self-contained fort was built using local adobe, with lumber and other materials trucked in from San Francisco and other areas.  It was a costly endeavor, since Fort Churchill was only active for a period of eight years.  Abandoned in 1869, the adobe buildings were eventually auctioned off for a measly $750.  The buildings were stripped of usable lumber and other materials, leaving the delicate adobe walls vulnerable to the harsh elements--slowly, the adobe eroded over time.  A few changes of ownership later, the Nevada State Parks system acquired Fort Churchill in 1957.  Like the ghost town of Bodie, CA, the fort is left in a state of arrested decay.

Exploring the ruins:
When we visited in September, the temperature was over 90 degrees.  Despite the debilitating heat, we chose to walk and were rewarded with the park's uniqueness.

By foot, the trail is easy to follow and leads you around the adobe buildings.  Interpretative signs guide your way, although some were unreadable, faded from the heat.  Extremely fragile, the buildings should be not touched or walked into.  The building above was once a two-story dwelling; walls are still visible, as is the entryway and windows.

The textures of this adobe-building wall fascinated me: the shape of each adobe brick is easily distinguishable over 150 years later.

When exploring the many Fort Churchill buildings, it is easy to forget that this is rattlesnake country.  We steered clear of dry brush and other desert plants just in case.  The rattlesnake sign was an obvious reminder that rattlesnakes call the fort home...and that we are just paying visitors.

Despite being in the high desert, some adobe building walls--which were situated in shadowed areas--were fairly well preserved.  At least more so than walls that were in direct sunlight.  The above image shows the preservation of one such area.

I believe this structure was either the mess hall or soldiers' barracks (note the thin, wooden window frame panel left behind).  Most of the fort's buildings were in direct sun and a similar state of natural decay, while others were completely gone, with just a mound of earth--and in some cases, an interpretative sign--to inform the visitor of its significance.

Due to the heat, and the possibility of heatstroke, we did not walk by the hospital ruins.


Afterthoughts:
We researched Fort Churchill online before visiting, and were pleasantly surprised with reality vs. its Internet representation.  All the images found online showed the remains of just one building, or a few buildings, so our assumptions of the place were based on this.  Little did we know that because of the desert climate, adobe composition, and lack of roofs, the structures greatly resembled one another!

Additionally, this state park is set up in an accessible easy-to-understand way.  Near the parking lot are: a small museum (a must-see), bathrooms, a rangers' station, and a map of the fort's layout.  Beyond this are the ruins.  Driving the two-lane road around the fort's perimeter allows for a nice general view of the ruins; the simple, level walking trail allows for close-up views and leisurely photo taking.  Remember to bring water if you walk the trail, as it is the desert.  The park also has a primitive camp ground and picnic areas.

Bottom line:
Highly recommended!  Two hours should be enough time to explore the park.  There is an Indian reservation an hour away, which, after we got home, made me connect the dots: the Indian reservation was Pauite; Fort Churchill was built to dominate the Pauites.  This realization left a lump in my throat.  Despite this conflicted historical legacy, we would visit again.

Wild Horses

 A band of wild horses, or mustangs, off of Six-Mile Canyon 

(side road from Virginia City, NV)

It was quite a sight to see these wild beauties.  Prior to this most recent late-summer visit, we've only passed by the "wild horse crossing" signs throughout Nevada State Route 341 (that leads to Virginia City, NV) without actually seeing any of these horses.  However, besides the numerous horse-crossing signs, their tell-tale poop is visible on Virginia City's side streets, which indicates that their population is plentiful and thriving.  This means that it was only a matter of time before we too would see wild horses in person.

And see them, we did.

As you can likely tell from this photo, the horses did not fear us one bit, except for the skinny colt or foal on the left, who appeared skittish and wary.  What you don't see is the lone horse to the left of us, across the two-lane road that is Six-Mile Canyon, who kept a watchful eye on this band of horses.  I assume that this one is the dominant male, and that the band is made up of females and the young.  On our way out of Virginia City, we saw another band of wild horses--lucky, lucky us.

1860s Oroville Chinese Temple

Oroville Chinese Temple (1863)
 in Oroville, CA (located at the Sierra foothills)--
image from NoeHill.

Earlier this summer, we visited the historic Oroville Chinese Temple.  The information provided in this post is from my own experience coupled with information found in the Oroville Temple brochure.  All photos are my own except for the one above.

Temple History:

The Oroville Chinese Temple originally served as place of worship for the sizable mid-19th-to-early-20th-century Chinese American population (estimated at 3,000 to 10,000 people) in Oroville.  This largely immigrant population was comprised mainly of laborers, but also included merchants and their families (some of whom were born in the US), thus creating a Chinese American community, or Chinatown, in Oroville.  

In 1907, an Oroville flood badly damaged the once-thriving Chinatown that surrounded the temple.  As a result, the Chinese American population began a mass exodus to metropolitan areas, such as San Francisco and Sacramento, where there were established Chinese American communities and work was more plentiful.  The Chinese Temple in Oroville was eventually deeded to the city of Oroville in 1937.  It was only in 1949, after restoration work was started by the Oroville Women's Community Club, that the Chinese temple was again open to the public.  

Now, the historical temple functions mainly as a comprehensive museum, which boasts an impressive collection of of historical relics with vast relevance for Chinese American, Gold Rush, and California-specific history.  Beyond the temple/museum, two other buildings, and a few plaque markers and outdoor artifacts, Oroville's Chinatown is now long gone.  

Plaque marker noting the site's
historical significance.

The Anti-Chinese Movement:
During this time period, vehement racism against the Chinese in America culminated in the passage of two historic anti-Chinese laws that severely restricted the legal entry of this racial group to the United States: Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943) and its predecessor the Page Law of 1875 (the latter of which excluded the immigration of Asian women to the US, but was aimed primarily at Chinese women).  Historically speaking, these two laws are notable in that they were the first-ever US laws whose specific target was a racial group as a whole.  As a result, the Page Law and the Chinese Exclusion Act set a historical precedent for race-based immigration to the US, whose legacy is the immigration quotas we know today.  The anti-Chinese movement, which was dubbed the Yellow Peril, or the irrational fear of an Asian invasion and takeover of white America, fueled the renewals (and the subsequent permanency) of the Chinese Exclusion Act until the law's eventual repeal in 1943.  These race-based laws were enacted on a local as well as national level through both legislation and anti-Chinese sentiment, which collectively affected all Chinese (both immigrant and American born) residing in the US.

The Temple Grounds:
Rather unassuming, the Oroville Chinese Temple is actually comprised of four original rooms (three for worship), plus a large tapestry and clothing/artifact display hall that itself spans three rooms, as well as a replica of an 1860s Chinese worker's hut, a courtyard garden, and the Fong Lee Room (the newest addition, which was built in 2008 as a gift from the descendants of the founding Chin/Chan family).  

The Chan Room 

Initial Thoughts:
Unaware of the once-booming Chinese presence in Oroville, I was amazed at how comprehensive the temple grounds were, including the sheer number of cultural relics displayed and the large size of the complex, itself.  Additionally, the structural upkeep by the city of Oroville is commendable.

The museum docent was a middle-aged woman who gave off a hippie-meets-New-Age vibe.  She eyed us a little warily at first, presumably because I wore a large backpack and we touted cameras.  She soon did warm up to my presence while I waited in the gift shop/museum entrance for my husband, who kindly went to stow my backpack in the car.  Note: Security cameras are installed in every room of the complex, as well as in the courtyard, and are religiously monitored by the museum docent in the gift shop room.  If you take photos, flash is prohibited in order to preserve the artifacts.

The Self-guided Tour:

Beyond the gift shop, the first room that we toured was the main chapel (not shown here).  The main chapel was built in 1863 after burning down twice before, which makes it the oldest surviving room in the temple.  Relatively untouched over the years, beyond some odd hippie-ish decorations that were added to the altars, in the room sits numerous 19th-century religious cultural artifacts that are very dusty and paper-thin delicate with age.  In this room, one can perceive and feel its extensive historical significance by merely walking into it.

The Chan Room, the second room of worship, can be accessed without having to enter the temple complex.  To visit the Chan Room, enter to the open door to the left of the museum entrance.

Chan Room relic from the mid-to-late 1800s.

In the middle of the museum/temple sits the courtyard, which is filled with Chinese plants and a small fish pond.  A small garden in a traditional layout remains, and guests can sit on benches that hold plaques with donors' names on them.  This courtyard separates the tapestry room from the four original rooms.

Garden inside the complex walls with Chinese plants,
as seen from the second story.

The staircase can be accessed from the courtyard to view the Moon Temple (not shown), which showcases a unique moon-shaped brick doorway entrance to the temple room.  Structural issues can be seen here, and the ground is a little unstable underfoot--we tread lightly here, and didn't linger for too long.

Staircase to the upper level where the Moon Temple
(not shown) is housed.

View from the upper level,
where a modern security camera can be seen. 

Directly below the Moon Temple, on the first floor, is the Council Room, which held the most varied historical items: marble-seated chairs, pagoda-style altars, tables, and books that displayed handwritten documentation.  Just as the name states, the Council Room served as a civic center for Oroville's Chinese American community.

The Council Room downstairs,
below the Moon Temple.

In the Council Room, Chinese workers could have letters written and sent to family back in China, disputes could be settled, banking carried out, and advice given.  

The Council Room

Tall, thick bamboo in the garden.

Plaque in front of the Fong Lee Room,
 which was a gift of the Chin (Chan) Shew Ting Family trust
in 2008 to honor their ancestors who helped
shape Oroville's once-large Chinatown.  

Inside the Fong Lee Room is a genealogy chart which indicates that descendants of this prominent 19th-century immigrant Chinese family are now in their 5th and later generations.  This was an interesting item to see because most people view Chinese as immigrants, but this genealogy chart counters that assumption.

Afterthoughts:
A great self-guided tour that we took at our own pace, I was pleasantly astounded by the time and care put into the preservation and presentation of the museum's many artifacts.  There was an abundance of glass cases and dehumidifiers in certain display rooms, as well as informative signs that did not visually overwhelm the displayed objects.  As I've mentioned here, the sheer amount of artifacts was extremely fascinating.  

What We Did Not Do: 
We did not visit the mannequin room because it was creepy and dark.  The room showcased Chinese and Western attire on life-size mannequins, some of which were physically altered to "appear Asian."  Additionally, the Asian music playing in the tapestry room was rather too Orientalized for my discerning palate as well, although the collection was extensive and well displayed.

Conclusion:

However hippie-Orientalized-camera-ized the temple complex was in certain areas, I found the place to be an extremely well-curated and interesting post-Gold Rush-era museum, actually rivaling the amazing Downieville museum that I blogged about here.  Although there was so much to see at the Oroville Chinese Temple, I was not visually overwhelmed--nor did I feel rushed to take it all in.  I credit this to the layout of the original four rooms, which were kept as they were over the years.  This unique set up gave the complex more of an old-time temple feel--with each room providing its own historic ambience and mood--rather than that of a traditional museum.

Interestingly, upon our conclusion of the self-guided tour, the hippie-New-Age museum docent told us that the reason why the Oroville Temple has retained so many artifacts is because the complex was used as storage space for Chinese items!

One of the other Oroville Chinatown buildings left

I highly recommend visiting this historic Oroville Chinese temple for its wealth of artifacts, and its well-documented history of what is now a long-gone American Chinatown.  For more information: UC Berkeley's The Bancroft Library houses a comprehensive online collection of photographs from Oroville's Chinatown.  This collection can be found here.

* * *

Our road-trip travels also took us to see Mendocino's historic Temple of Kwan Tai, which I happily blogged about here.

Road Trip: Downieville, CA

Continuing from my last post, we also visited historic Downieville, CA, a vibrant, history-laden Gold Rush town in Sierra County this past week.  I took few photos worth publishing, but what is truly worth noting is the town's museum--it's small but well curated, and gives one a true sense of 19th century life in a rough miner's town.  Housed in a building initially occupied by a Gold Rush-era Chinese business, the museum contains various mining equipment, 19th century women's clothing, a stuffed mountain lion, a small-scale model of the town in its heyday, American Indian artifacts, a two-shelf Chinese exhibit, and numerous other artifacts of interest.  Its historic eclecticism amazed us both.

According to the museum docent--a middle-aged woman who grew up in Downieville, went to college elsewhere, and later returned--the mountains surrounding the town had a Chinese population estimated around 3,000 people.  The population was not only composed of miners, but also entrepreneurs, cooks, and hard laborers, the latter of which were integral in building many of the stone structures still visible in the town.  

Downieville (like most Gold Rush towns) is a destination whose very existence--one may argue--relies on its marketing as a colorful tourist spot, but it is a thriving community, as well.  On that note, I was secretly relieved that there were not any residents dressed in 19th century garb when we stopped by, but I can see why this theatrical, rough-and-ready nostalgia appeals to a particular demographic: it is the ultimate form of escapism for the city-drained population.  Visiting tourism-driven old towns is the closest we can get to the oftentimes romanticized past, literally, without having to directly experience it.  Beyond the tourism facade lies a so very American past that has immensely shaped its history. 

Week in Photos

We took a short trip to the mountains earlier this week.  Although it was a quick jaunt there and back--the entire trip lasting no more than three full days--its brevity was fully reconciled by its quality.  Here are some images that I took during a few of our hikes/walks in the High Sierras:

Eureka Lake
(located in Plumas-Eureka State Park)

Ladybug with unique eye spots
(edge of Eureka Lake)

View of Eureka Lake from trail to Eureka Peak
(Entire hike is close to 2,000 feet in elevation gain in under 2 miles;
hike loops around the peak; we did not know about the loop, so we didn't "finish" the hike.
Instead of following the trail around the peak, we retraced our steps back after reaching the summit.)

Gold Lake
(Lakes Basin area)

Eye-catching growth
(Jamison City area)