Sunday, January 25th: John Wayne Ate Here

Frankie Valli - at 80+ he still puts on one heck of a concert.  Two hours of music memories.  He still has the voice, and you realize exactly how unique it was listening to him in person.  And yes, he can still do that falsetto, but maybe just a little more judicious in breaking into it.  It seemed effortless.

Started today making calls to airlines to see what we could do aboit changing our homeward bound flight.  We are scheduled to go home right in the middle of a potentially record breaking blizzard.  Can you spell c-a-n-c-e-l-l-a-t-I-o-n-s?  Wonder what it is going to take to get home?  The joys of winter travel!  As  of now all I can say is check back later - the airlines have not yet acknowledged there is a havoc wrecking winter storm bearing down on the area.  Oh well.  We may end up on vacation an extra couple of days.

But given we didn't have to rush to get on a plane right away, we continued with our plans and to drive west and north into the Santa Rosa mountains on the Palms to Pines Highway.  Along winding roads and many, many switch backs we rose from the valley floor and palm trees at about an 150 foot elevation to the mountain highs with the pinon pines, mountain meadows, and an elevation of over 6000 feet.  

Beautiful views and cowboy country.  You can almost imagine the old John Wayne movies and the cowboys riding horses along the dusty trails.  Indeed when we got to about a mile high we stopped at the little town of Idylwild.  A good place to stretch our legs and poke around the little shops and galleries.  ((Don't worry, I didn't buy any more "stuff.")  And we stopped into the Red Kettle Restaurant for a bite to eat.  

This is the oldest dining establishment in the area and John Wayne did indeed frequent this place when he was filming his movies.  Even Elvis is known to have stopped in for a bite to eat during the filming of Kid Galahad.

The Town of Idylwild under the landmark Tahquitz Rock

John Wayne Ate Here

On the downward journey we were treated to sweeping vistas of the valley below and the town of Hemet with Temecula beyond.  We also got a view of the back side of the snow capped Mount San Jacinto that we took the tram up earlier in the week.  

The valley below

San Jacinto

Doesn't this look like John Wayne Territory?

On the highway back we drove thru the middle of the massive windfarm at the edge of the valley.  One of our guides this week told us he believes this is the second largest windfarm in the US - the largest being somewhere in, where else, Texas.

Tiime to relax and enjoy the rest of the afternoon in the warmth on the patio.  This may be our last day of warm for a while.  Tomorrow temps are suppose to cool and we might even see some rain.  And we return home on Tuesday (?) to potentially 30" of snow!