I am behind in visiting the 111 places in Silicon Valley that you must not miss. But some of it is due to this whole pandemic thing. Not sure the PEZ museum in Burlingame and Bigfoot Discovery Center in Felton will ever reopen. But here's the lowdown on places visited since July.
 |
| Bedwell salt ponds. The salt has stained the water red. |
In July, we visited the Bedwell Bayfront Park (#32) in Menlo Park. Named after a longtime mayor of the city, it's land reclaimed from a landfill. The scent of wild anise is intermingled with the odor of a nearby sewage plant, and varies between pleasant and unpleasant. But the real draw is the salt ponds that still dot the park, and acres of still-harvested salt ponds can be seen in the distance. There is nothing quite like standing on a crunchy solid bed of salt. It made me nostalgic for for the Dead Sea in Israel. Growing salt was the big industry of the valley, before it all went electronic. Cargill Industries was the Facebook and Google of the 19th century, with about 8,000 acres of salt ponds in the Bay area. To cap off our visit to the salt ponds, we grabbed dinner to go at the Dutch Goose (#29), a hang out for Stanford students. It was only takeout when we visited, so we got an order of the famous deviled eggs and some really good burgers to go.
 |
| Hundred year old cacti tower over Steven at Arizona Cactus Garden (in California). |
In July we also visited the Arizona Cactus Garden (#97) on Stanford campus. The garden was created in 1881, when Leland and Jane Stanford ordered up a cactus garden on their many acres of property. This was just a few years before their son Leland Jr. died, and they established the university in his name. Quite close to the garden (which is beautifully overgrown and has huge succulents) is the mausoleum containing the Stanfords' remains, protected by the Angel of Grief.
 |
| Endless marshes, SF Bay, and lots of electric towers. |
In August, we took Samuel to the Baylands Nature Park (#42) in Palo Alto, where we saw a lot of marshes and some intrepid parasailers, out on SF Bay. The wind was ferocious. We then took Samuel to the garage where it all started, the Hewlett-Packard garage (#46). You can't go in, but you can peek at this one car garage that looks like a horse carriage through a metal grate. This was where, in 1939, William Hewlett and David Packard manufactured the HP200A audio oscillator. Folks say there is where Silicon Valley was really birthed. The house is a stately two story, built around 1905. I pictured mid-century modern, maybe an Eichler model. But Silicon Valley started well before that.
 |
| Where Silicon Valley began - the HP garage. |
In September we visited a very large and very sad tree. It's El Palo Alto (#44), the Eiffel Tower of Silicon Valley. And yes, the tree that inspired Stanford's logo. This historic tree is boxed in by a concrete culvert and a railroad track. It's also on life support, with a pipe running to the top of its 110 feet so that it can be regularly misted. This 1,100 year old tree could be seen all the way to San Francisco a hundred years ago, and was probably a landmark for Don Gaspar de Portola when he explored the area in 1769. Now it's tucked into a small park with a few plaques at its base, struggling to stay healthy.
 |
| El Palo Alto. That lifesaving pipe mists the top. |
 |
| All that's left of the fruit canning capital of the world. |
In October, I asked Steven if we could stop by Libby's Water Tank (#104) in Sunnyvale, while there for other errands. It took a few circuitous turns, but we finally found the tank in the bank of a business park now occupied by Raytheon. It turns out Sunnyvale used to be the the fruit canning capital of the world. In 1922, Libby's was largest cannery in the world, and it was in Sunnyvale. Fruit cocktail anyone? And all that's left is this 150,000 gallon water tower, now a 25 tall fruit can, advertising fancy fruits for salad.
 |
| Eichler open floor plan |
In October, we also saw an Eichler house (#83), up for rent. Eichler was a progressive developer who built homes for "common people" starting in 1949 and through the 1950s. You could snap up an Eichler for $10,000 then. Most are closed off ugly things from the street. But then you step inside and discover vaulted ceilings and a wall of windows looking into a private backyard. There are a cluster of them in Palo Alto, and hundreds all over Silicon Valley.
 |
| Egrets love the Bair Islands |
 |
| Bair Island at dusk |
And now it's November. On November 1st, we visited Bair Island preserve (#57), a marshland in Redwood City. With a little work, you can ignore the noise of 101, and the odor of another sewage plant, and take in 3,000 acres of wetlands. Egrets, killdeer, plovers, shovelers, avocets and a lot of other shorebirds congregate here. We watched an egret do a dance in the mud, stirring up the bugs for his grub. I also filched a ridged clamshell of a type I'd never seen before. It felt good to be out.
21 sights viewed, 90 to go.
 |
| Marshes at Baylands |
