MONTEREY AND THE GEYSERS.
My trip to Monterey, which was mentioned in the last chapter, was
made in connection with an excursion arranged as a part of the Grand
Army of the Republic programme. I was very glad the ride was taken
on the cars, for the last fifty miles was over a section of country
that strongly resembles in appearance the sage bush and sandy deserts
of Wyoming and Nevada. The prospect of traveling over such roads on
a wheel does not stir up in me such an enthusiastic determination
to undertake their passage as it did two months ago, and the chance
of meeting Eastern people on the train was quite an inducement to
go by cars; but a bicycle is just the thing with which to visit the
Geysers. The knapsack on this trip was left behind, not because of any
inconvenience that it causes, for the longer it is used the better I
like it for carrying the amount of baggage necessary on long tours,
but the knapsack is the occasion of so many questions, it is such an
advertisement, that whenever it is possible on these side excursions
it is left behind. But although I started out wearing trousers and
dressed otherwise in ordinary clothes, and entertaining the idea that
I should not be so publicly bored as usual on this journey because
of my ordinary appearance, this impression proved to be a false one
as soon as I took the ferry for Oakland.
Every one on the boat seemed to know the machine and rider, and on
a boat or train it is the same everywhere. Why they knew the machine
will be explained shortly, but a few words first about being bored by
so many questions. It is not because of any reserve I feel in regard to
imparting information about this mode of traveling across the country,
to any one interested in such touring, for four or five years ago I
asked just such questions of Professor Williams of Brown University,
on his return from his European bicycling tour, and whenever any one
on the road or at a private house asks questions I feel only glad to
answer them; but let any one on a ferry boat, at a station, hotel,
or any public place commence the usual string of questions--and this
string never varies from one end of the country to the other--then a
crowd of listeners quickly gathers around, each one in the audience
eager to ask the same or some question the others have not thought of,
and it becomes disagreeable in the extreme.
The machine became known in this manner. The enterprising agent of
the Columbia machine here, with a manner that he must have imbibed
from Chinatown, it was so child-like and bland, and with an eye to
business which I did not see him open, asked permission to "fix up
the machine a little, cement the tire on good," or something, and the
next morning the machine was covered with Grand Army of the Republic
decorations, a big placard citing its history hung upon it, and the
whole affair placed on the sidewalk in front of the agent's place of
business, opposite the Palace Hotel, to be viewed by the thousands
of people not only from California, but here from all parts of the
country during encampment week. So that is the reason why machine
and rider are so well-known in this vicinity, better known perhaps
than in any other part of the country outside of New England.
The ride of three hours to Napa was a delightful one, across the
bay to Oakland, then a few miles on the cars to Vallejo Junction,
across the bay again, and a few miles farther by train to Napa. After
stopping over night there with a new-made friend, I started out up
the Napa valley in the cool of a pleasant Sunday morning. The roads
were excellent and the country pretty thickly settled for California,
but very few persons were stirring about, and the quiet and peaceful
appearance of everything was in pleasant contrast with the noise and
excitement of the past week in the city. Calistoga, ambitiously named
the "Saratoga of the Pacific," on account of a few mineral springs,
and a hotel that wants custom, was reached by noon, and it was twelve
or fifteen miles farther before any hill climbing to speak of was
necessary. Then it all came together, about seven miles of it.
It seems strange, in passing through as much unsettled or newly
settled country as I have, not once being obliged to go without food
for more than six or seven hours during the day, that now, in this
old inhabited part of California, I should not be able to procure a
mouthful of food for eleven hours, but so it was. It was partly my
fault though, for I had ridden thirty-five or forty miles, and it
was two o'clock in the afternoon before I thought of being hungry,
and then the hill-climbing commenced, and the farm-houses were minus.
It was nearly six o'clock before Pine Flat, five miles up the mountain,
was reached, and during the last two or three miles I could not walk
without staggering sometimes, and often stopping to rest, I was so
faint. But a good meal of eggs and venison fixed me all right, and the
next morning the summit was reached without much trouble, and only
six miles of coasting remained. But such coasting! The grade is not
as steep as in some parts of the Yosemite route, Priest's Hill, for
instance, on the Big Oak Flat route, but the road is much narrower and
decidedly more crooked. It twists around the sides of the mountain and
runs so close to the edge of precipices two or three hundred feet high,
that it must make one's head swim to ride round these turns in a stage.
Clark Foss, the celebrated driver, who owned this route, and was
one of the twenty-five different men in different places who drove
Horace Greeley on the ride when he promised "to get him there in time"
(every one who ever came to California has heard the story; it is
the worst chestnut ever perpetrated, but they still retail it),
died about a year ago, and his son, Charlie Foss, now drives the
six-horse open wagon. For three or four miles I was in constant dread
of meeting the stage coming up, and had I done so on some of those
oxbow shaped curves in the road, where there is not a foot of space
on either side of the hubs, between a ledge of rocks and a precipice,
the result can well be imagined. The stage suddenly appeared around
one of these very curves, when but a few seconds before, I had been
thrown off upon my feet by a rock in the road and was walking, but
although I was told I should hear the stage coming, I did not till the
leaders' heads appeared around the ledge of rocks, not ten feet ahead
of me. But for striking the rock in the road, I should surely have
been coasting, and the result would have been, in all probability,
I should have gone over the edge, or the horses and stage would
have done so. Then what a volley of questions was fired at me by the
dozen passengers aboard. The driver stopped, and for five minutes it
seemed as if everyone in the stage was talking and asking questions,
all at the same time. Some of the passengers had seen me before and
knew of the trip, and as the stage disappeared around the curve with
the gentlemen waving their hats and the ladies their handkerchiefs,
and all wishing me good luck, the pleasant impression left with me
will long be remembered, not only for the good feeling shown towards
me, but because our meeting on that sharp curve at one of the most
dangerous points of this dangerous mountain road might have terminated
so differently and perhaps disastrously.
Only once did I come near having any trouble with the wheel. In
crossing the numerous dry creeks that run down the steep sides of
the mountain, the road makes horse-shoe curves, descending rapidly
down to the creek and then rising as sharply on the other side. In
coasting down into these curved gullies, one has to get his feet
back upon the pedals pretty lively in order to climb up the grade
on the other side without dismounting, but once the wheel slowed up
quicker than I expected, and before my feet were back on the pedals,
the wheel turned straight across the road and rolled slowly to the
edge of the precipice. I took one look down, my heart leaped into my
mouth, and I sprang out of that saddle backwards quicker than I ever
did before in my life. It was undecided for a few seconds whether
the machine would go over the edge with or without me, but after
balancing there for a year and a half, as I remember it, I got the
best of gravity and finished the ride down to the geysers in safety.
The distance from Napa, fifty-five miles, could easily have been
made in a day, had I had a good meal in the middle of the day to work
on; but as it was, I saw all there was to see in an hour, and after
resting another hour was ready to start on before noon.
Those who have visited the geysers lately, and also saw them a dozen
or fifteen years ago, tell me the springs are not nearly as active
now as they were then. I certainly was disappointed. It is surely a
queer place up that narrow little cañon, with the different colored
rocks--red, green, blue, yellow, and white ones--all crumbling down in
one confused mass into the little stream of scalding hot water that
runs down through the cañon. The sides of the cañon were sizzling
and bubbling over with little hot springs, and the steam that escapes
from the holes was sickening. It smelled like eggs that have passed
their prime. Once I poked some of the crumbling stuff down into one
of these little vent holes, and the creeping steam spitefully blew the
hot sand-stones in my face and eyes. I pushed a stone a little larger
than my fist into the most noisy hole, but the escaping steam barely
moved it. Years ago, they tell me, a rock as large as a man could lift,
would be thrown out of this hole with considerable force. The witches'
caldron, a boiling pool of lead-colored water, not now over five or six
feet in diameter, is the most active of any of the springs, but there
is nothing that can be called a spouting geyser in the whole cañon.
The ride down to Cloverdale, seventeen miles, was greatly enjoyed, for
the grade was just steep enough to coast, but not to make dangerous
riding, and there certainly was something very novel about gliding
safely along in the wheel track close to a ledge of rocks, with a
yawning precipice within a foot of the other wheel track, and the road
winding around projecting points of rocks, and in and out along the
side of the mountain, and yet with a grade so gentle that the wheel
kept on quietly without the use of a brake. The mountains were so
bare of trees that the fine views were unobstructed, and one could
look down the winding valley and see points in the road that he would
eventually reach in that quiet, easy manner, always without the use of
any power either to accelerate or retard the speed of the wheel. Yes,
a trip to the geysers on a bicycle is well worth taking, but it is the
riding and sight-seeing on the way that pays, and not the geysers. With
a barrel of water, a few barrels of lime, and a little coloring matter,
one could almost discount the geysers in their present activity.
The ride down the Sonoma valley, and to the point where wheelmen are
obliged to take the train and ferry over to San Francisco, was through
a level country and over excellent roads, and an average speed of
six miles an hour was maintained throughout nearly the whole of the
ninety miles of the return trip. California is over twenty-five times
as large as Connecticut, and I have only seen a small portion of it,
but to say, as most Californians insist, that what I have seen is
a beautiful country, is certainly drawing upon the imagination to a
great extent. The roads are dry and terribly dusty, the grass is dead,
the streams all dried up, and the only green objects to be seen,
as you look across the country, are the trees and grape-vines and
occasionally a few acres of shriveled-up corn. And these are covered so
thickly with dust that the color underneath is hardly discernible. To
one accustomed to the refreshing showers of the Eastern States during
the summer, which render the verdure so luxuriant, the dry, dead,
dusty appearance of almost everything from the tops of the mountain
peaks to the rocky bottoms of the dry creeks and rivers, is anything
but beautiful. It looks as if the face of nature needed washing. But
let one imagine the hills and mountains covered with rich, green grass
and bright-colored wild flowers, as they were only a few months ago,
and think of the streams and rivers brimming full, or imagine the
hundreds of acres of grape-vines I have seen, loaded down with their
dark, rich fruit, and he can easily see that California has been
and will soon be again, a most beautiful country through which to
travel. We see California at its worst in August.
"Do the fleas trouble you any? We are eaten up alive with them,"
said an Eastern lady to me one day. My experience in Colorado
with mosquitoes was sufficient, it seems, for the fleas here have
troubled me very little, but they are a source of great discomfort to
most travelers, and even the old residents. Persons going out for a
walk will sometimes come back covered with them. The pleasure of an
evening's entertainment or social call is often sadly interfered with
by the presence of a flea in a lady's underclothing, and a clergyman
here was once seen to suddenly leave the pulpit during service and
rush for his study, and afterwards explained to some one that he
had to go out and "hunt a flea," but that was not the one that "no
man pursueth." It is said that some California genius has invented
a flea-trap, but I hear of no well-authenticated instance in which
the flea was captured.
Distance traveled on the wheel, 3,200 miles.