My Grandparents sometime around 1970
My third report on my Grandfather’s 1935 Cross Country Expedition. This week, the travelers spent four days in California driving sightseeing in Yosemite and Los Angeles, before arriving in San Diego. When reading this post, Grandpa’s words appear in plain text, while my comments are in italics.
This week, I’m sharing a picture from much later in Grandpa’s life, but as you can see from the RV trailer in the background, both he and Grandma enjoyed travel and camping throughout their life together. It’s nice to know this report from early in their marriage describes activities they would enjoy for the next fifty years. D/S
August 9th
A short drive into Yosemite, then a relaxing day catching up on chores
We entered the park about the middle of the forenoon and drove up a steep pass through fine large timber and close to the top of the divide we saw some enormous redwoods. We were obliged to wait for an even hour to go down into the canyon as it is a one way road, up traffic odd and down traffic even hours. We waited in a forest camp and drank cool but not very tasty water out of a stream.
Yosemite as captured by Ansel Adams 1937. The mountains remain much the same
I’ve been to Yosemite twice in my life, and recommend everyone find the time to visit at least once. Even in black and white, this Ansel Adams photograph helps capture the magic. It’s widely accepted that Yosemite’s awesome beauty was instrumental in establishing the US National Parks System. Reading Grandpa’s description, I think he agrees. D/S
We drove to the gates shortly before it was time to go down. Most of the cars that came up were boiling and had to stop for water and we decided we had a steep descent ahead of us. At the hour we started down in second gear and held the brakes most of the way down. We descended so rapidly that our ears about popped out. We came down a steep canyon wall and had a sweeping view of the entire Yosemite Valley and a very good view of the Falls. Yosemite Valley is really awe inspiring with its sheer, tremendous cliffs over three thousand feet high. We soon located a camping place and the girls went to work washing our clothes. Here I started this letter but did not find time to finish.
August 10th
A rough, hot drive with more trailer issues
In the morning we drove to the various points of interest. The falls are not as beautiful at this time of year as they are in the spring. Since there is not much water coming over in the summer. This park appealed to me more than any we had seen because everything was so vast, the cliffs dwarf the trees and buildings.
After looking over the park we left through a tunnel of slightly less than a mile, for Fresno Calif. We began to realize that we would not be able to see all that we had originally planned because of lack of time and money so we decided not to go to Sequoia National Park as we had seen Redwoods in Yosemite. We took the wrong road to Fresno and hit a very rough road. About five miles out of Coarsegold an axle and wheel parted company with the trailer. We had nothing to repair it with so we unhooked the trailer and went back to Coarsegold and were fortunate enough to find the parts we wanted.
Coarsegold around the time of Grandpa’s search for trailer repair parts
The girls prepared dinner while Donald and I repaired the trailer and Oh Boy, was it hot out there in the sun.
Just after we left the rough road we had a flat tire on the trailer and ruined the tire. We brought a new one at Fresno and about passed out because of the heat getting it on. We had supper in Fresno at a terrible restaurant where they displayed a sign saying “Truck drivers eat here.” Don said “Truck drivers sure don’t care what they eat.”
Given their location on Highway 99, this could have been the restaurant of note
The heat had been so bad that day that we decided to travel that evening till we hit Los Angeles. We got in Los Angeles about two in the morning and camped in the sage brush.
August 11th
Typical tourist day in LA
We were routed out early in the morning by the sun and drove to a park where we cleaned up, then had breakfast. We then drove around to the business section of town. Before noon we went out to Exposition Park and had dinner.
Gardens at Exposition Park
Nowadays, Exposition Park is the place LA residents go to for the museums or to watch USC play football, but in 1935 it was quite a different place. Built in 1876 and originally named Agricultural Park, the 160-acre site served as an agricultural and horticultural fairground until around 1910, at which point it was re-named Exposition Park. It became the home to a state Exposition Building and the county Museum of History, Science and Art. The seven and a half acre Rose Garden, seen above, was completed in 1928. D/S
At two the museum and Art Gallery opened and we went to a show at Grauman’s Chinese Theater.
On August 11th, these movies were the double feature at Grauman’s
After the show we drove around in Hollywood. Then followed Sunset Boulevard out to Santa Monica and the sea. We next drove along the coast on what is incorrectly known as the speedway to Venice where they have a pleasure pier; a miniature Coney Island. We had supper there and watched the pleasure seekers.
The Boardwalk at Venice Beach, now long gone
August 12th
Since he had served at March Field, Grandpa made a long detour over to Riverside before turning south towards San Diego
We camped that night north of Hollywood and got up against a tree alive with ants. The car, Donald and Marjorie were full of ants in the morning. We cleaned off ants for half an hour and drove back to Hollywood for breakfast.
Long Beach was our next destination. We drove to Long Beach thru Los Angeles and Wilmington and drove south of Long Beach along the coast. We saw a good many people enjoying themselves on the beaches. It was cool on the beach, but we headed inland to Riverside where Zoe received a letter.
The Riverside Post Office- I’m not sure how the system worked, but my Grandfolks checked for mail at several locations during their trip
From Riverside we drove to March Field where I was stationed in 1928. Very little was familiar there as the old buildings were all gone, also the old faces. We didn’t stop long at the Field but started for San Diego.
A line of planes at March Field, sometime in the late thirties
We were in San Diego that evening and thanks to a lady filling station proprietor we found a fine place to camp.
Additional Posts:
Post 1- Kiester to Yellowstone
Post 2- Yellowstone to San Francisco
Post 4- Los Angeles to Home
Aircraft are Boeing P26s (peashooter). It was one of those transitional airframes which contained elements both old and new, the first all-metal US fighter produced in volume and the last to feature both an open cockpit and a fixed undercarriage. Withdrawn from service by the USAAF in 1942, it remained the front-line fighter of the Guatemalan military as late as 1955.
The are many cars in this genre; antiquated styling with modern mechanicals (eg Mercedes 300d Adenauer; Daimler Majestic Major) or avant-garde design with an ancient engine (Citroen DS).
I am loving the trip. Although I don’t think I would love waking up to an ant infestation.
I love the last bit, getting good advice from “a lady filling station proprietor”. I remember early in my career working with an elderly attorney who would always refer to “a lady lawyer”. Times have changed as nobody thinks anything about it now. But I guess it was a rarity once upon a time.
And I like how the ant infestation is mentioned casually — not a big deal, just spend a half-hour cleaning ants out of the car and that’s it. Of course, that pales in comparison to casually mentioning that the trailer lost a wheel and axle. All in a day’s work. What passes for a big deal today has been adjusted to a much lower bar!
Exactly.
And in addition to today’s bar being lower for big deals, it’s also required that they be posted (with photos or video) to social media, which further attempts to inflate their importance…
Reminds me a bit of our first trip in the ’77 Dodge Chinook, in 2003. I had not had the time to check its mechanical condition properly. I had to pull over on the shoulder of I5 and adjust the timing twice (by trial and error), replace a fan clutch at the curb in San Mateo, replace front wheel bearings in San Diego, wire up a failing exhaust system, and try to plug a leak in the black water tank. I probably missed something.
Just remembered: the brake booster had a leak, so I had to be very careful about leaving space in front of me, as its assist would invariably peter out shortly before I came to a full stop. Fun, in LA stop and go traffic.
Wow, sounds like it needed an in depth mechanical check. Pretty gutsy going out on the road not knowing what may transpire.
More like pretty stupid. 🙂
I was working like a maniac fixing the fiberglass body and the interior, and just ran out of time. I drove it once a bit out of town, and it ran ok. All these issues arose on the trip (to Baja). Except for the timing, it would have been hard to predict them. The exhaust was the result of wicked roads in Baja. Mammoth potholes.
It’s the reality of taking an older vehicle that’s been sitting for several years on a long trip. The shake-down trip!
Having lived in San Diego from 1968-1981 I have been down into Baja several times both on the ocean side and the bay side by car and VW van. At that time the bay side was far more primitive as we drove down to San Felipe for an over-the-line tournament. Hot, no shade, one bar right out of from Dusk to Dawn, and nights spent in a two man tent. In hindsight that was stupid. Ensenada was nicer on our surfing trips.
I have to ask because I’m totally mystified how on Earth they picked up mail a multiple Post Offices around the country in realtime. For readers not familiar with the states. Minnesota (homebase) to California is roughly 1,500 miles or 2,400 kilometers. Anyone reading know how the mail system worked back then???? Did they possibly have mail forwarded from one Post Office to another based on the planned travel route? I can’t imagine the logistics to perform this at that time. Finally. Mann’s Chinese theater in Hollywood is the most beautiful movie theater I have ever had the pleasure to watch a movie at. I highly recommend it if your ever in Hollywood.
Not to be flip or anything but the mail system worked then pretty much like it works now, you address the mail to where you want it to go and the Post Office sends it there. Even today you can request that the PO forward your mail to a specified location as of a certain date and it will be held until you come in and collect it. You just have your mail forwarded to “General Delivery” (Poste Restante for our European friends) at whatever post office you want to collect it from. My brother and his wife routinely take trips of 4-6 weeks in their motor home and this is what they do; the only time the system doesn’t work is when you don’t know your itinerary or decide to deviate from it. Most campers today stay at organized camp grounds and you can easily have your mail forwarded there if you wish.
Joe – thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I was thinking the grand folks took advantage of some post office forwarding program, but your explanation is much simpler.
I’d be curious to know how many people use the Post Office hold box nowadays versus 1935. Preparing this series put many of these kind of questions in my mind, but a path to the answers is not always readily available.
Railroads carried the mail then since nearly every town large and small was on or near a rail line with daily trains. They had an apparatus that tied the filled mailbag and it was caught on the fly while the mailbag for the town was thrown off by the station. That was for paper, non-fragile items. Parcels went by Railway Express Agency, would be picked up by a train that made daily stops.
Railway Post Offices (RPO) were baggage cars with a sorting office set up in one end. Long distance mail was sorted in route by clerks who had to learn post offices plus branching post office routes off the main stem route. The zip code took its place when they mechanized/ They took exams frequently to keep the assignment. The RPO was a prestigious assignment and paid the best of any position. My friend’s dad worked the RPO in the 1940’s, remained his proudest position and best memories until the day he passed on.
I keep trying to imagine what all these familiar places looked like in 1935. Of course they all look different now compared to 1976, when I first arrived in CA.
Good luck camping in the sage brush in LA now. Actually, you’d probably have a lot of company. 🙂
I’m surprised your grandfather took the long way down to San Diego from Los Angeles as 101 would have been shorter and far more scenic. US 5 was not there as shown in this map. Also while the map shows he took US 15 down, back in 1968 it was called US 395 from downtown San Diego and then heading north to San Bernadino. We used in it the 70s going from SD to Palm Springs. The map shows it after the truncation.
The Google map paths are estimates based on the locations mentioned in the journal, so they may have chosen a different path down from Riverside. Also,they may have traveled further down the Orange County coast before heading East.
This has been an issue for all these posts, but they didn’t cover all that much territory in this post, and the LA basin road network opens up all sorts of possible variations, so take it all with a grain of salt.
Interesting account, thanks for sharing. The large touring car parked in front of the Hotel Coarse Gold is a 1919-1921 Cole Aero Eight, were mid-level luxury ($2,600-$3,200), during some of Coles last good years building a little over 3K cars in those years before their downturn came.
Ooo, I wondered what that car was, but did not expend the effort to try to narrow it down. Cole was another Indianapolis-manufactured luxury car, an early adopter of the V8 engine.