Yosemite July 2017 - Day 5/5

Thursday, July 13, 2017

7:30 AM homemade waffle at the Sunrise Inn.
I had previously made a map of the San Francisco-area museums, and had called ahead for both Mills College Museum of Art and the Oakland Museum of California:


Packed up and left just after 8 and got to Mills College Museum of Art at 9:58 for my 10 AM appointment:

Because I had emailed ahead, I was able to see some wonderful paintings back in the storage area:

Winslow Homer - Waiting for Dad (Longing), 1873 watercolor

Thomas Hill - Yosemite Valley From Glacier Point, 19th century

William Keith - Scene in the Swiss Alps, 19th century


I left Mills College around 10:40, and got up to the Oakland Museum of California at 11 - my Peabody/Essex membership got me in free! They have a great selection of Thomas Hill and William Keith paintings!

William Keith - Kings River Canyon, 1878:



Thomas Hill - Yosemite Valley (El Capitan & Bridal Veil Falls), no date:


Thomas Hill - Yosemite, Two Trout Fishermen, no date:


The two Thomas Hill paintings are in the "Yosemite Room":

along with a really cool model of Half Dome:




Traffic was so bad that it took me an hour-and-a-half to get to the airport (instead of 40 minutes). San Francisco has a VERY BIG infrastructure problem - TOO MANY PEOPLE in not-enough-space. Got to the airport in fine time, but my flight was delayed two hours - instead of landing at midnight, it was now going to land at 2 AM.

It was a great flight, and I worked on my new app ("Where's JMW Turner") and listened to iPod on Shuffle all the way back to Boston:


My Beautiful Bride picked me up at Logan at 2 AM (TONS OF PEOPLE there), and I drove home. THANK YOU GOD for this wonderful adventure!!

When I was at The Bishop's Ranch I finished Two Years Before The Mast by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., first published in 1840. The current (2001) edition contains an Appendix: "Twenty-Four Years After", in which he describes his return visit to California and San Francisco in 1859-1860. I love his description of late summer in California:

" The breeze freshened as we stood out to sea, and the wild waves rolled over the red sun, on the broad horizon of the Pacific; but it is summer, and in summer there can be no bad weather in California. Every day is pleasant. Nature forbids a drop of rain to fall by day or night, or a wind to excite itself beyond a fresh summer breeze."