The Winchester Mystery House is a mansion in San Jose, California, which was once the personal residence of Sarah Winchester, the widow of gun magnate William Wirt Winchester. Located at 525 South Winchester Blvd. in San Jose, the Queen Anne StyleVictorian mansion is renowned for its size, its architectural curiosities, and its lack of any master building plan. It is a designated California historical landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is privately owned and serves as a tourist attraction.

Ever since the construction commenced in 1884, the property and mansion were claimed by many, including Winchester herself, to be haunted by the ghosts of those killed with Winchester rifles. Under Winchester’s day-to-day guidance, its “from-the-ground-up” construction proceeded around the clock, by some accounts, without interruption, until her death on September 5, 1922, at which time work immediately ceased. Sarah Winchester’s biographer, however, claims that Winchester “routinely dismissed workers for months at a time ‘to take such rest as I might'” and notes that “this flies in the face of claims by today’s Mystery House proprietors that work at the ranch was ceaseless for thirty-eight years.”

Mission San Juan Bautista is a Spanish mission in San Juan Bautista, San Benito County, California.

Fermín Lasuén of the Franciscan order, the mission was the fifteenth of the Spanish missions established in present-day California. Named for Saint John the Baptist, the mission is the namesake of the city of San Juan Bautista.

Barracks for the soldiers, a nunnery, the Jose Castro House, and other buildings were constructed around a large grassy plaza in front of the church and can be seen today in their original form. The Ohlone, the original residents of the valley, were brought to live at the mission and baptized, followed by Yokuts from the Central Valley. Mission San Juan Bautista has served mass daily since 1797, and today functions as a parish church of the Diocese of Monterey.

Following its creation in 1797, San Juan’s population grew quickly. By 1803, there were 1,036 Native Americans living at the mission. Ranching and farming activity had moved apace, with 1,036 cattle, 4,600 sheep, 22 swine, 540 horses and 8 mules counted that year. At the same time, the harvest of wheat, barley and corn was estimated at 2,018 fanegas, each of about 220 pounds.

Kiteboarding along the coast of southern California. We topped a hill and saw a kite over the horizon and remembered when we saw the same thing on a lake in Oregon on a previous trip. Just a few hundred feet more and I could see the Kiteboarders.

Balboa Park is one of those places Val visited when she was in the Navy. I have heard all the wild stories of those years gone by and now we get to relive them together.

Balboa Park is a 1,200-acre  urban cultural park in San Diego, California, United States. In addition to open space areas, natural vegetation zones, green belts, gardens, and walking paths, it contains museums, several theaters, and the world-famous San Diego Zoo. There are also many recreational facilities and several gift shops and restaurants within the boundaries of the park. Placed in reserve in 1835, the park’s site is one of the oldest in the United States dedicated to public recreational use. Balboa Park is managed and maintained by the Parks and Recreation Department of the City of San Diego.

Preparations for the 1915 Panama–California Exposition created much of the park’s present-day look-and-feel and designed amenities.

Beginning in 1909, San Diego Chamber of Commerce president G. Aubrey Davidson suggested that the park hold an expo to coincide with the 1915 opening of the Panama Canal. Davidson believed an expo would help improve commerce (it would advertise that San Diego was the first U.S. port of call vessels encountered after passing through the canal and sailing north), build the city’s population, and expand the infrastructure of the park. He later explained the significance of holding the expo in San Diego: “I felt something must be done to get our city on the map and advertise it to the rest of the world. I knew we had something here that no other city had, and that all that was necessary was for the people to know about it.” San Diego would be the smallest city to ever hold a World’s Fair; its population at the time was less than 40,000. The expo was organized by a group of San Diego business leaders, including Ulysses S. Grant, Jr., and was funded at an initial cost of $5 million (including $1 million from voter-approved bonds for landscaping). Developer and civic leader D. C. Collier was chosen as General Director of the expo; he made major decisions such as locating the expo on the park’s central mesa, using California Mission Revival Style architecture for the buildings, and featuring “human progress” as the theme. A similar fair, the 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition, was also planned in “far to the north” San Francisco to celebrate the canal opening. Although $5,000,000 had been set aside by Congress for celebrations of the Panama Canal opening, the majority of the funds went to the San Francisco expo. After a 1910 contest to rename City Park, the park was named afterVasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to cross Central America and see the Pacific Ocean.

I haven’t figured out what Val is doing in this one.

How many languages can you pronounce Beer in?

A view from the Balboa Bridge leading to the park.

We have enjoyed visiting family in Vegas but it is time to roll on down the road. We are headed to Zion National Park, a place we have not visited for a long time, so we thought it was time for a return visit. Stay tuned for more photos. I know I am behind on the blog but we went three day without any cell signal or internet so I am playing catch up.

One of the reasons we decided to stay another day in San Diego was to tour the USS Midway.

The USS Midway Museum is a maritime museum located in downtown San Diego, California at Navy Pier. The museum consists of the aircraft carrier Midway. The ship houses an extensive collection of aircraft, many of which were built in Southern California.

The USS Midway was America’s longest-serving aircraft carrier of the 20th century, from 1945 to 1992. Approximately 200,000 sailors served aboard the carrier, known for several naval aviation breakthroughs as well as several humanitarian missions. It was the only carrier to serve the entire length of the Cold War and beyond. It is now berthed in San Diego, the original home of the Navy’s TOPGUN fighter school.

Where do you stop when see all this beauty and the shutter button keeps pressing, it’s almost like the camera has a mind of its own. I hope you don’t get bored viewing these photos of the most beautiful home I’ve had the privilege to visit.

Hearst Castle is a National Historic Landmark and California Historical Landmark mansion located on the Central Coast of California, United States. It was designed by architect Julia Morgan, between 1919 and 1947,^[3] for newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, who died in 1951.

Hearst formally named the estate “La Cuesta Encantada” (“The Enchanted Hill”), but usually called it “the ranch”. Hearst Castle and grounds are also sometimes referred to as “San Simeon” without distinguishing between the Hearst property and the adjacentunincorporated area of the same name.

Invitations to Hearst Castle were highly coveted during its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s. The Hollywood and political elite often visited, usually flying into the estate’s airfield or taking a private Hearst-owned train car from Los Angeles. Among Hearst’s guests wereCharlie Chaplin, Cary Grant, the Marx Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, James Stewart, Bob Hope, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, Dolores del Río, and Winston Churchill. While guests were expected to attend the formal dinners each evening, they were normally left to their own dwellings during the day while Hearst directed his business affairs. Since “the Ranch” had so many facilities, guests were rarely at a loss for things to do. The estate’s theater usually screened films from Hearst’s own movie studio, Cosmopolitan Productions.

The swimming pool is under complete restoration.

A Golden Godess

This is the oldest artifact at the mansion

These are the simple things that Hearst enjoyed.

A ceiling panel.

Another ceiling panes

I think this was pink jade.

Another ceiling panel.

NO WATER!

Check out these beauties.The Star of India was built in 1863 at Ramsey in the Isle of Man as Euterpe, a full-rigged iron windjammer ship. After a full career sailing from Great Britain to India and New Zealand, she became a salmon hauler on the Alaska to California route. The HMS Surprise is a modern tall ship, built at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada as Rose in 1970 to a Phil Bolger design based on the original 18th-century British Admiralty drawings. She is based on HMS Rose, a 20 gun sixth-rate frigate built in 1757. And last but not least the B-39 a Project 641 (Foxtrot-class) diesel-electric attack submarine of the Soviet Navy. The “B” (actually “Б”) in her designation stands for большая (bolshaya, “large”) — Foxtrots were the Soviet Navy’s largest non-nuclear submarines.

Valerie and I are always looking for National Parks and monuments to explore. While in San Diego California we decided to visit this great place. The monument is located on the peninsula with the Naval Base at Point Loma. There are some photos of the Naval and Marine cemetery.

Cabrillo National Monument is located at the southern tip of the Point Loma Peninsula in San Diego, California. It commemorates the landing of Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo at San Diego Bay on September 28, 1542. This event marked the first time that a European expedition had set foot on what later became the West Coast of the United States. The site was designated as California Historical Landmark #56 in 1932

I have been hearing about the San Diego Zoo since Val and I got married. She was stationed in San Diego when she was in the Navy and visited the zoo regularly. She always said it was one of the finest in the USA and I think she may be right. We spent most of the day touring as much of the zoo as we could, however there was too much to see in one day. We must have taken hundreds of photos but as to not bore you we only present these as an appetizer.

Okapi The okapi /oʊˈkɑːpiː/ (Okapia johnstoni), is a giraffid artiodactyl mammal native to the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in Central Africa. Although the okapi bears striped markings reminiscent of zebras, it is most closely related to the giraffe.