The City of Trees

Sacramento, CA

If you ever want to feel the difference trees can make on a hot day, visit Sacramento.

In the summer, temperatures break the triple digits. Even now, in April, the temperature hovered around ninety in the sun. But it was a perfect day in the shade.

Sacramento sits at the end of the great bowl that is California’s Central Valley. This means that all of the pollution, pollen, particulates, and other P-words from Sacramento stick in the air, and are fed by San Francisco from one direction, and the Central Valley farms from the other.

It wouldn’t seem like the best place to go for a walk to get a breath of fresh air.

Except for the trees. Downtown Sacramento is an Urban Forest. Most blocks have trees planted every five yards; trees which are anywhere from five to a hundred years old. In fact, Sacramento claims to have more trees per capita than any other city in the world.

You can feel the temperature difference – ten to twenty degrees – from a block without many trees (they're rare, but do exist around construction areas) to blocks with fully grown trees. The tree canopy helps to make Sacramento a walkable city. It also assists in keeping the city from existing under water, as part of Sacramento's flood management program.

The Sacramento Tree Foundation is now looking to expand this tree canopy, with a goal to plant five million trees over the next 40 years. Their three-part, staged plan will include working with twenty-six jurisdictions around Sacramento. The goal is to plant trees in urban areas while educating businesses and residents in the planting, care, and appreciation of trees, to help ensure the long life of the urban forest.

I can’t argue with that, but it does make the Million Trees LA initiative seem a bit lacking.

Walking Merced

Merced, CA

Most people visit Merced on their way to Yosemite. It’s a place to stop and grab a bus to Yosemite Valley on YARTS (highly recommended), or to fill up on gas and snacks for people just driving through.

But you can also walk through Merced to see a small town with a lot of history. Most of the towns in this area are filled with great little places to stumble upon, since most of them were built during the gold rush era.

Merced even provides you with a helpful walking map of famous and historical buildings, which you can pick up in the California Visitor Center located next to the old Santa Fe rail station.

Highlights included:
- The old Courthouse, built in 1875 (it’s the one with Lady Liberty on top).

- The 1888 cottage built by William McElroy which was also home at one point to “Rusty” Doane, "a reputed underworld boss of Merced's earlier shady days" (it's the picture of house with the flag out front).

- The Greenbrier House, which is not only beautiful, but has served the city well; first as a sanitarium then as a boarding house for bachelors. You can even still tie up your horses out front on one of the handy hitching posts. While it's Merced's pride and joy, there is some doubt about when Greenbrier was built, since the early records refer to properties more than they refer to structures atop them (it's the picture with the green house to the left).

Most recently Merced has become home to one of the newer UC campuses, UC Merced (opened in 2005 alongside Lake Yosemite, it is also one of the prettier UC locations).

If you want to get around Merced (or visit neighboring cities) and you get tired of walking, you can grab The Bus from 7am – 6pm at any corner along any of its routes. Just wave down the driver, and hop on.

These Boots Were Made for Walkin’ (Country Remix)

Clovis, NM

There’s no substitute for a good pair of boots. And if you’re looking for Cowboy, the southwest is the place to be.

In Clovis, I found 16,000 pairs at Joe’s Boot Shop.

You can pick your color and style (Blue Alligator!). Snakeskin, Ostrich, leather, it’s all here. Row by row you can find any type of cowboy boot you can imagine, and even some that are beyond what you'd think anyone would dream up.

In the back of the store, you can buy tack or learn to rope. If you’re there on the right day, you can participate in special contests, from calf roping to the Clovis first chuck wagon cook-off.

They also have 12,000 belts, 10,000 hats, 5,000 candles, and a trailer parked out front.

It happened to be a bit breezy that day (60 mph winds), which meant blue skies and clouds of dust. If you’d rather not walk against the wind, you can always call in and request delivery (the online store is a bit lacking).

Oo-oo I look just like Buddy Holly

Clovis, NM

The home of the Clovis Man, the Clovis culture, and the Clovis sound: Clovis, NM is a little big town with people who enjoy naming things after their city.

If you go a few miles west, you’ll be in Texas. A few miles south, and you’ll reach Roswell. In between are miles and miles of desert.

While you might not be able to travel through space, you can certainly take a trip through time in Clovis. At Blackwater Draw you can view the famous (and recently controversial) evidence of what is generally accepted as the earliest culture in North America. If you aren’t ready to travel that far back, take a look at the 7th street studios, where Buddy Holly recorded “Peggy Sue” to take a trip through Rock ‘n Roll history.

If you’re traveling, you might want to take the bus. The Clovis Area Transit System (CATS) where you can pay 50¢ to have a bus pick you up and drop you off (curb to curb). Kids can even buy a $25 summer pass to travel to and from any location while school is out.

That’s right, the stops are where you make them. Their new transit home will eventually become the center of a standard fixed route service. But for now, it is quite convenient to be shuttled door to door when you need it.

Just make sure you make your reservations at least a day in advance.

Texas Beef and Town Squares

Canyon, TX - Hereford, TX

Sometimes I travel to distant, exotic locations (small towns in the middle of nowhere).

Along the way, I get to have little driving adventures. Outrunning tornadoes in the Texas panhandle, for instance.

And I get to see a lot of the United States – big or small.

On my way through Texas I missed a turn, and found myself in Canyon, TX.

Among stories about cattle ranchers, Canyon was also home of Georgia O' Keefe from 1916-1918 while she was teaching at what is West Texas State Normal College (now known as West Texas A&M university).

Honestly, I was a bit puzzled by the name. There were any canyons visible from downtown (Palo Duro Canyon, the grand canyon of Texas, is to the Northwest).

But there was the town square.

In fact, Canyon is part of Texas’ Main Street City program, and was revitalized in 2002.

The time and the weather (see previous note about tornadoes, which also explains the quality of these pictures) meant there weren’t many people walking around Canyon’s main street while I was there, but the town square had its own little walk through time.

The Rock’n’Roll Soda Shoppe had I ♥ Lucy lunchboxes inside, a soda fountain, and pink flamingos out front.

It was hard to resist.

More classic stores lined the main street block, with the architecture ranging from turn of the century to 50’s chic.

Although I’m not sure that I believe that the cleaners is as modern as they want you to believe.

Also, I saw Hereford, TX in Deaf Smith County. Beef capital of the world.

This too was flat.

But there were many statues of cows. Like this one.