Just up the creek from my cabin is one of the remaining wooden trestles on the former South Pacific Coast Railroad (in 1887 the railroad became Southern Pacific). This is the Shady Gulch Trestle.
Not only does this trestle still exist but is still used for rail service on the Big Trees and Pacific Railway.
Shady Gulch Trestle with the Highway 9 concrete bridge (1930) in the foreground. The dirt road to the right is the former Eben Bennett toll road. The concrete highway bridge replaced the toll road.
The original trestle was built in 1875 to span Shady Gulch. At the time, the line was built for the narrow gauge South Pacific Coast Railroad. When Southern Pacific acquired the line they rebuilt the trestle in 1905 to accommodate standard gauge.
The trestle of today very much looks like the original narrow gauge trestle of the late 19th century, sans graffiti of course.
The afternoon Felton-bound Big Trees and Pacific crossing the Shady Gulch Trestle. This tourist train tends to stop traffic on Highway 9.
My father spend his childhood summers in the cabin in the 1930, 40s, and 50s. He would tell me of the time a freight would be climbing the grade on the trestle on their way to Felton on a foggy summer’s morning. The wet track would cause the locomotive’s driving wheels to slip. And after many slips and the hyperbolic “chuff-chuff-chuff” of the stream exhaust, the train would back down the grade, sanding the track as they reversed. The freight would make another attempt, this time slowly with the sanded rails helping the drivers grip the steel. And off they went to Felton.
There is a single one car pull off on the north side of the highway bridge. I made three attempts to sketch the trestle but was foiled by a camper van that was camped out in the spot.
Was this guy going to spend the night here? On my third attempt of the day, in late afternoon, the van was finally gone and I was able to park, set up my sketching chair, and start my sketch of the trestle.
I timed my sketching time with the Felton bound afternoon Big Trees and Pacific train.
One of the more interesting tunnels on the South Pacific Coast Railroad is Tunnel No. 5 in Zayante.
This is one only two tunnels on the former South Pacific Coast line that is still in use, although not by a railroad.
As the railroad climbed its way up Zayante Creek it came to a granite outcrop that the builders could not go around or over so they had to tunnel through it.
Granite is stable and solid and because of that they did not have to add any interior wooden supports. When completed Tunnel No. 5, at 250 feet, was the second shortest on the line.
The tunnel was active until the Southern Pacific’s abandonment in November of 1940.
The tunnel began it’s current use in 1952 when the Western States Atomic Vault Company bought the tunnel, sealed both ends and used Tunnel No. 5 as a fire-flood-nuclear-proof storage silo, housing records (mainly microfilm and microfiche) for many companies including Disney. The silo officially opened on May 2, 1954.
The eastern portal was made the entrance to the facility and a guard shack was built (featured sketch) where a guard was stationed 24/7. We did not see any signs of a guard so we could not ask for a tour. (The facility is currently owned by Iron Mountain).
In times past, the company would allow tours inside the facility and one visitor deemed it the “most interesting dull place in the world”.
One can only guess the nearly 70 year old “secret” files that now reside in the former railroad tunnel known as Tunnel No. 5.
Peeping through the fencing toward the eastern portal of Tunnel No. 5. One of the two windowed buildings appears to be the guard shack. The parking lot now looks like an odd junk sale with junk that no one wants to buy!The former rail bed (sans rails) looking towards Eccles and Felton and Santa Cruz.
On a historic rail sketching adventure, Grasshopper and I headed up into the Santa Cruz Mountains to sketch a portal of one of the longest rail tunnels on the former South Pacific Coast Railroad (later Southern Pacific) route.
This 28 mile route started at Vasona Junction in Los Gatos and climbed over the Santa Cruz Mountains to the beach town of Santa Cruz.
Part of this route still exists as the Big Trees and Pacific Railroad which operates a tourist train from Felton to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.
The tunnel we were looking for is the Glenwood Tunnel, also known as Tunnel No. 3. This 5,793 foot tunnel was active from 1879 to 1942. The original tunnel was built for narrow gauge but when Southern Pacific took over the line in 1887, they later converted the line to standard gauge (4 ft 8.5 in).
When the South Pacific Coast Railroad was first planned, then had to figure out how to get the road bed into the San Lorenzo Valley. To do this they had to built two one-mile long tunnels: Tunnel No. 2 (Summit Tunnel) and Tunnel No. 3 (Glenwood Tunnel).
From northbound Highway 17, we took the Laurel exit heading towards the former township of Laurel. We passed a few mountain homes and two bikers laboring up the hill as we headed down towards the former rail-bed.
We parked and headed out to a get a better look. The west portal of the Glenwood Tunnel was visible, but parts were obscured by trees and a power pole. The “private property” sign kept us at bay. Was this the best view we would get?
The not-so-great view.
I climbed up a side road, probably also private property, that parallels the rail bed, to get a better sketching vantage point. Even here, the portal was obscured by redwoods but I started a sketch anyway (which, like Tunnel No. 3, I abandoned).
Not being satisfied with the sketch I returned to where Grasshopper was sketching. His only company was a barking dog on the other side of a fence. There was a house just to our left.
A man peeked over the fence with his cup of coffee and said, “You can walk up to the tunnel if you want.”
This was the owner of the house (let’s call him “Bill”) and we had a nice conversation with him about living in the redwoods, winter storms, history, his spring-fed water system, and trains and tunnels.
We thanked Bill and walked around the chain that crossed the rail bed and headed towards the western portal of the Glenwood Tunnel. Now this was the way to sketch the tunnel (featured sketch).
Grasshopper sketching the western portal of Tunnel No. 3. Bill’s spring-fed water system can be seen on the right.Corvidsketcher in the western portal of Tunnel No. 3.
We walked into the 1909 concrete portal. The tunnel ended in about 50 feet.
In 1940, winter storms and landslides closed portions of the route permanently. Southern Pacific made the decision to abandon the line. The major tunnels were dynamited at both ends, closing the tunnels for good. The concrete portals are all that still remain.
Now that we firmly had tunnel fever, we had to find the other side of the tunnel, the eastern portal.
Tunnel No. 3 now passes under Highway 17 so you have to cross over the highway to find the other end.
The eastern portal of the Glenwood Tunnel at Glenwood Drive.
The eastern portal of the Glenwood Tunnel is much harder to get to than the western portal. To get a comparable view you would have to scrabble down a steep hillside or trespass through a stable to reach the rail bed which now seems to be a creek bed.
So we had to make due and sketch the portal from the side of Glenwood Drive, which the concrete portal now supports.
One joy of sketching is to return to a previous subject but sketch it from a different perspective. Such is the case with the whales of Long Marine Lab in Santa Cruz. (Former cetaceans, that is.)
Long Marine Lab is part of the University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) and is a research and educational facility for marine biology. The campus also features a small aquarium (the Seymour Marine Discovery Center) that is open to the public. The biggest draw for me is the biggest creature that ever lived on Planet Earth: the blue whale. The Discovery Center has an incredible blue whale skeleton on display flanking one side of the museum.
I had sketched the massive blue whale skeleton and the smaller gray whale skeleton before but I wanted to sketched them in a different way. For the blue, I stood directly in front and sketched it head on, as if the largest creature on Planet Earth was swimming towards me.
I have been lucky enough to see blue whales in the wild from pelagic boating trips. Most of these trips have been in Monterey Bay. I remember the first time I saw this massive cetacean on a trip out of Monterey Harbor with my father in the late 1980s. My high school biology teacher at the the time didn’t believe blue whales could be seen in Monterey Bay, until I showed him the photos.
Song sparrow using the vertebrae of the gray whale for a singing perch. Gray whale skeleton with the Seymour Marine Discovery Center on the left and Big Blue on the right.
On my first full day of summer I headed 50 minutes south of Santa Cruz to Pacific Grove on the Monterey Peninsula.
This is a return trip (it had been a while) to the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History.
I arrived early and sat in the park across the street to sketch the 1932 Spanish Mission Revival museum. To the right was a statue of a female gray whale named “Sandy”, built in 1982.
“Sandy” in the foreground and the museum in the background.
The museum opened at ten and after paying my $10 admission I walked into the gallery, greeted by a grizzly bear standing up on it’s hind legs. The grizzly is the extinct State Mammal of California. This specimen came from Alaska.
The Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History is full of animals: insects, amphibians, reptiles, fish, mammals, and birds, lots of birds. But all of them are dead. This is a mount museum where the visitor are surrounded by taxidermy. Some very lifelike but others a little comical.
This taxidermy golden eagle looks like someone squeezed it a little too hard.
This is a sketchers paradise because it provides lots of subjects, none of which are moving anytime soon. After sketching the exterior of the museum, I added a California condor from the bird hall. These magnificent and rare birds can be seen a short distance from PG on the coast of Big Sur.
My spread in progress from the Monterey Native Plant Garden in the back of the museum. The black-footed albatross can be seen in the Monterey Bay, usually on a pelagic boat trip. A Northern California coast pelagic trip is not the same without a sighting of this iconic species.
One avian mount that I was looking forward to sketching was the extinct passenger pigeon. In Washington I had seen “Martha”, the last passenger pigeon at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History so I was looking forward to sketching PG’s pigeon.
I looked and looked but I could not find the passenger pigeon. I thought it might be in the pigeon cabinet between band-tailed pigeon and rock dove. Nope. I even asked the lady at the desk and I got a blank stare. You think such a noteworthy mount would be well known to museum staff. Nope. None of the docents knew where it was nor what it was.
A consolidation was the mount of the Carolina parakeet, long extinct. The last individual died in 1918 at the Cincinnati Zoo.
The story of the Steven and Cary Stayner is a story of abduction and return, of the loss of innocence and the loss of life. About the temporal limelight and the deep dark shadows and about the best and the worst in humanity.
The setting of this story is the small to mid-sized Central Valley city of Merced, California (the population in the 1970s was 22, 670). The city is named “Gateway to Yosemite” and our story spans over three decades.
The kidnapping of seven year old Steven Stayner and his return, seven years later, became a huge international news story, propelling the young 14 year old into the limelight. Steven’s story became a popular book and a two part television miniseries called I Know My First Name is Steven (1989). More about Steven’s story in other posts.
A map of that fateful afternoon journey on December 4, 1972 of Steven Stayner. Blue is good, red is life-altering.
It is almost beyond imagination the impact that Steven’s kidnapping and seven year absence had on the Stayner family. The family grappling with the unknown; would they ever see there son/brother again? Would be every return to the small home on Bette Street?
Well on March 2, 1980 the answer was yes. Steven returned home for the first time in seven years.
Looking back on the news footage of Steven’s return on the front lawn of the Stayner house on Bette Street, there were many hugs and tears, the unbound joy as Steven returned home, holding his dog “Queenie”. There is one face, in the background, that does not seem to show joy or happiness. That is the face of Steven’s older brother Cary.
Cary shared a room with Steven and while he wished on a star, on clear evenings, for seven years, for return of his brother. He also felt ignored by his parents. They were focused on the missing boy and on his return, Steven became a media superstar. Cary stepped into the limelight twenty years later, for much different reasons.
Meanwhile, Steven settled back into life in Merced. He returned to high school and later got married and had two children. On September 16, 1989, Steven was struck and killed by a motorist as he was riding his motorcycle home from work at a pizza parlor. He was only 24 years old.
By the late 1990s, Cary was working as a handyman at the Cedar Lodge. This hotel is on Highway 140 in El Portal, a short drive to Yosemite National Park.
Three events shaped the arc of Cary Stayner’s life: his brother’s kidnapping and return, his brother’s death, and the unsolved murder of his uncle Jesse (who he was living with at the time). Cary had some sort of break and it a mystery what drives a man to kill another human being. What causes a man to become a serial killer?
Cary’s first victims were a mother, her daughter, and a family friend staying at the Cedar Lodge. Later in July 1999, Stayner murdered a naturalist near Yosemite. This murder was his undoing as he left physical evidence that led authorities arrest him at a nudist resort just east of Sacramento.
To tell the story of the Brothers Stayner, I created a series of thumbnail sketches linked to two maps (featured sketch). The two maps are of Merced and Yosemite. The thumbnail sketches are (from left to right): the Stayner family home on Bette Street, Charles Wright Elementary School (where Steven walking home from), the Red Ball Gas Station (where Steven was kidnapped), the 2010 Steven Stayner and Timothy White Statue in Applegate Park, Steven’s grave maker at Merced Cemetery, the green cabin where Joie Armstong lived in Foresta, the Cedar Lodge, and Cary Stayner’s current home: Death Row at San Quentin State Prison.
I recently heard a rebroadcast on NPR of a This American Life episode titled “My Undesirable Talent” that reminded me of the 2002 crime spree in my neighborhood.
The part of the episode is called Climb Spree and is about a burglar in western San Francisco that climbed up buildings and enter through a skylights, ventilation shafts, or attics to rob local businesses to support his gambling habit.
I wanted to do a spread about the “Spider-man” crime spree. I decided to visit and sketch a few of the businesses where the burglar dropped in and connect these thumbnail sketches with a map of western San Francisco.
He was dubbed the ‘Spider-man Burglar” by the SF Police but his real name is Kristain Marine. He was adopted from Korea by Midwestern parents. People at his church, (The Church of Latter Day Saints), knew him as the guy with Italian shoes who was respectful and soft spoken.
He first stole $200 from the gym where he was working and then proceeded to gamble it all away. He needed money to replace what he had stolen and lost so he committed his first “Spider-man” robbery: a concession stand at City College of San Francisco. He climbed up on the roof and lowered himself down through a skylight. He didn’t even have gloves to conceal his fingerprints so he had to use snowboard mittens.
The concession stand at City College. This is where the crime spree all began.
This was the start of 63 burglaries in San Francisco. My thumbnail sketches are of the Church of Latter Day Saints in the Sunset (where he might have attended) and the The Lunch Box concession stand at City College of San Francisco, the location of his first robbery.
Noriega Produce is now closed. The market has moved up the street and is now called Gus’s, in honor of the Greek immigrant who founded the market.
The next thumbnail is of Noriega Produce, on the western fridge of the continental United States. I once lived a five minute walk away and this was my local market. This market is owned by a Greek immigrant and run by his oldest son. Spider-man robbed this market and had time to have an ice cream bar at the owner’s expense. This was an assault on my neighborhood and the family businesses I patronized. Gus Vardakastanis, the owner, was killed by a hit and run driver in 2017.
The next thumbnail is of a Japanese noodle house called Hotei on 9th Avenue, near Golden Gate Park (this excellent restaurant is now closed). Marine lowered himself down into the restaurant but fell and injured himself. Outside the picture window he noticed a police car. He was trapped, his crime spree was about to end. There was only one way out and that was through the front door.
He walked out the door, said hello to the officer, and pulled his keys out and pretended to lock the door and got away.
The last thumbnail is of Clancey’s Market on the 3900 block of Irving, near Ocean Beach. Most of Marine’s burglaries where starting to show a pattern: early in the mornings on certain days and in certain neighborhoods. The police presence in the Sunset Neighborhood was increased at these times.
Marine was trying to break into this corner market but he became trapped in the attic. After a neighbor heard glass breaking the police where called and they were on the scene in minutes. Marine’s 63 robberies where now over.
Clancey’s Market and Deli, where “Spiderman’s” crime spree ended.
Marine was a first time offender and he admitted to all his burglaries, even taking investigators to his crime scenes. He was sentenced to six years in prison.
I think the main problem with tone of the This American Life piece and with other media stories is that Marine is portrayed as some sort of comic book super hero. What he did was not super nor heroic. As I visited and sketched some of the 63 local businesses he robbed, I thought mostly about the people who owned these shops, markets, and restaurants. Many of these businesses where and are “ma and pop” family businesses, not big box corporations.
If Marine’s crimes reminded me of any literary “hero” it would be as a kind of corrupt Robin Hood.The Spider-man robber was stealing from the poor and giving it to the casinos.
I really wanted to sketch more of the very sketchible town of Mendocino but I was off non-whale watching and sketching lighthouses and orca bones.
I did head up north on a short drive to Russian Gulch State Park to sketch the 1940 bridge over Russian Gulch Creek.
I set up my sketching chair on the sandy beach looking west under the arches of the bridge.
Behind me, a group of kids gathered around to offer an assessment of my sketching progress. (They where heading out on a spearfishing expedition with their father.) This tends to happen when sketching in the field and children tend to lack a filter when it comes to their artistic opinions.
One piped in, “That’s really good!”
Another echoed, “Yeah, that’s really good!”
Phew! I passed the test! I chatted with the kids about how cool the bridge looked and they agreed. They then wandered off to get into their wetsuits.
On my last morning in Mendocino, I wasn’t going to spend time looking for whales, besides, there was a long line of fog on the horizon. Instead I set out with my sketching chair and bag, to sketch some structures in town.
My first sketch was the Temple of Kwan Tai on Albion Street, which is one of the oldest Chinese Taoist Temples in California. It was built in the mid-19th century and is dedicated to the Chinese God of War. The temple has been restored and is now a California Registered Historic Landmark No. 927.
After my temple sketch, I headed down Albion about half a block and sketched a converted water tower.
Mendocino has a really big water problem, as in, the lack of it. Wooden water towers rise in the town like trees. Some of these towers have been converted into rental units. The first time I stayed in Mendocino, I stayed in a three story converted water tower at the MacCallum House. It was a very unique experience.
I started my whale watch just down the street from my digs at the Mendocino Art Center at the Mendocino Headlands State Park.
I set up my scope at 7:45 AM and looked for blows just below the horizon.
I looked and I looked. I looked at gulls and I looked at oystercatchers and I looked at the constant stream of common murres heading south.
But no blows.
I looked at a bottling harbor seal and I looked at the lone snow goose on a bluff to the north, and I even turned around to look at the perched white-tail kite and harrier.
Where were the migrating gray whales? Perhaps I was too early.
Perhaps there was a gap in the southern stream of pregnant females on their journey to the birthing lagoons of Baja California. Or maybe they were farther off, just on the other side of the curvature of the earth. But whatever it was, after two mornings of whale watching, I saw zero whales.
The plus of being a sketcher is that you are never bored, and if you have a pen and sketchbook handy, you can pass the time with a sketch (featured sketch).
This sign at Point Carrillo Light Station was one of my better “whale” sightings. This gray whale mural in a back alley in Fort Bragg was probably the “best” whale sighting of the trip!
Curses for not checking the rare bird alert before leaving work on Friday! A rare California bird, and a lifer, was seen in Half Moon Bay, just about 20 minutes from work. I would have loved a after work lifer, but alas it was not meant to be.
I eventually saw the post when I returned home and the northern visitor was last seen at 4:30 PM before the early winter’s eve turned out the lights. This was a good sign because it meant that the bird might overnight and be re-found on Saturday morning.
Wit this in mind I got up early on Saturday and drove down to Half Moon Bay and walked out to Venice Beach and the Pilarcitos Creek mouth and hoped the snow bunting has overnighted.
Oddly enough there was a snow bunting that was being seen in the Noyo Headlands in Fort Bragg a few weeks ago but had disappeared, presumably flying south. I wondered if this could possibly be the same bird, although it’s very tough to tell.
I arrived at the creek mouth just after 7 AM, and I was the first birder in the area. Below me, on the creek bottoms, were many mallards, killdeer, and Wilson’s snipes. But no bunting.
I continued looking for the next hour, at which point about 15 other birders were scouring the dunes and the beach for the rare visitor. With all these eyes looking for the bird, I figured it was a matter of time before someone would relocate the bird, if it was still in the area.
I decided to head north on Highway 1 to Pillar Point Harbor to look for the northern gannet that had been recently roosting on the breakwater. This is presumedly the same gannet that has been in the area for about eight years. I had first seen it on Alcatraz and it is often seen on the Farallon Islands. In also is seen in Pillar Point,
The snow bunting had not been reported on any birder lists so I headed over the hill to San Mateo to have lunch with my friend. After lunch I checked Sialia and saw a post that the snow bunting had been re-found so I headed back over Highway 92 to the same location I had spent looking for the bird a few hours earlier. But this time I was a lot more successful!
I arrived near the closed down parking lot and restroom and headed down towards the creek. The bunting shown like a white diamond amongst the dark sands.
The snow bunting about to take a bath in the creek.
It also helps that there where three birders already on the bird. I took a seat on the dunes and watched the bunting as it foraged in the creek bottom and then took a bath in the creek.
The bunting did not seem fazed by the attention and was within about ten yards of birders. This was in stark contrast to the Wilson’s snipe that where so skittish that they burst into flight at any provocative.
The shining white diamond was a much sought after lifer. It save me a trip to Alaska!
I took some reference photos which was a challenge because the bunting was in constant motion but after it’s bath, the bunting paused so I could capture the bird’s unblurred likeness.
Corvid Sketcher 