(catching up)…. March 27 – trip to Chico, CA to visit K’s engaged daughter and take pix of her and fiancé for their use in wedding invitations.
One of the best parts of the weekend was the drive up there and back. Instead of taking Interstate-5, we drove back roads. Through Calistoga, over Mt. St. Helena (not Mt. St. Helens), up the lower east side of Clear Lake, then Route 20 eastward, crossing I-5 at Williams and then on to Colusa and up Route 45. Once you get out of the Oat Hills and into the Sacramento Valley it’s all nut orchards – mostly almonds (or “ammonds” as I’m told the locals call ’em). It’s a pretty drive – about 3.5 hours.
As part of the weekend’s adventures, we toured the Bidwell Mansion (a state historic park) that is abutted to the campus of Chico State (a CSU campus). There is a lot of connection between Mr. Bidwell and Chico and the school. In the confusion of the transfer of lands from Mexico to US just before the gold rush, Bidwell bought several thousand acres from some Mexican/Spanish guy who (in my reading of it) saw the writing on the wall and wanted to get what money he could out of the land before it was simply taken from him. Selling to US citizens was the only market for soon-to-be-repatriated lands, so Bidwell got a lot of land at a fire-sale price. Thus the town of Chico (short for Rancho Arroyo Chico – “small gulch” – the name of the place when Bidwell bought it) was born. He gave a bunch of land to start a “normal school” which eventually grew up to become the present day Chico State campus of CSU.
I can sort of quickly tire of viewing the leftover assets of dead white rich men. But I give credit to the docent who gave the tour that it’s an interesting place with some interesting history. It was a Presbyterian girls’ school at one time before it was turned over to the state to become a historic park. During that time, they remodeled the kitchen into a bathroom/showers.
The big park in Chico is Bidwell Park (surprised?) At 3,670+ acres, it’s one of the largest community parks in the US. We walked around the park and the campus and the mansion grounds taking pictures of the engaged couple on Saturday and Sunday. Out of about 200 photos taken, about a dozen or so turned out well. They’re going to use the photos for their invitations – ordering them from BasicInvite.com. (the wedding is September 18 in Santa Rosa.)