Catch up for several days

Update 3/01/09
It is Sunday afternoon and kind of rainy. Rich is working on putting up shelves in the garage for Rosi and Scott, so I will try to catch up on our blog. We left Scottsdale February 19th to drive to Burbank. It was another case of bad planning as the sun was just setting and right in our eyes when we got to Burbank and resulted (even with Garmin telling us what to do) in a couple of wrong turns. It still only cost us about 20 minutes, so not bad. I don’t know how we ever would have done this trip without the GPS. We had a good visit with Wilma and Bruce. She had gotten us all tickets to the Jay Leno show, but they overbook, so we knew we had to be there early to make sure we got seats. It was not bad at all. There were ledges on flower beds to sit on while waiting and the NBC people came out to talk with us and give us instructions on what was going to happen. We had to go through security about the same as at the airport and then were directed into the studio and to our seats. They had tapes of previous musical guests singing to watch while we were waiting. Then Jay Leno came out to talk to us for about 15 minutes. After he went back to get ready, John Menendez came out to warm up the audience. We really enjoyed the show. The guests were good and it was very interesting to see what goes on behind the scenes. The only big surprise was how cool the studio was, temperature wise. We were all pretty chilly by the time the show had finished. It was quite an experience that we will always remember. On Saturday, we went to the Nethercutt Collection and Museum owned by Merle Norman Cosmetics. This place was amazing! It houses over 170 antique, vintage and classic automobiles in completely restored condition, plus a collection of antique hood ornaments (did you know that they even had crystal hood ornaments?), collectibles and the world’s finest assemblage of mechanical musical instruments which included everything from small music boxes to jukeboxes to a huge theater pipe organ. If you want to read more about this place, go to http://www.nethercuttcollection.org/. Then we headed to Simi Valley to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. It is such a beautiful place with gorgeous scenery. We especially enjoyed going through the Air Force One that he traveled on. It is a Boeing 707 that was used by Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, H.W.Bush, Clinton and W. Bush. There was quite a difference from the Air Force One plane we got to see at the Air Museum in Tucson that was used by Kennedy and Johnson. This was really a flying White House. We saw an exact replica of the oval office, the Marine One helicopter, cars used in the motorcades and where Reagan is buried. On Sunday, we went to brunch at a restaurant by a small airport. This looked sort of like an ivy covered French farmhouse. We sat by the window and could watch the small planes and Leer Jets take off and land. Food was great. Then we drove around N. Hollywood so Rich could get a picture of the Hollywood sign. We were just a few blocks away from where the Academy Awards were held, but could not get over there as they had blocked the streets off at midnight the night before. We went back to their place to watch the Awards. Coverage started at 3PM Pacific time. Monday, we headed up to Fremont to visit Scott, Rosi and Gemma. Gemma is almost 18 months old and quite the little miss. She is so funny and cute and of course, we are not at all biased! We are very much enjoying our time with them.


Following are pictures from the discussion above:


There will be no pictures from our Jay Leno show visit as they will not allow you to even take your cameras inside the studio.

This is the "showroom" for some of the automobiles from the Nethercutt Museum. They said this was how the showrooms looked back in the Thirties when these cars were for sale. Very elaborate marble floors and pillars.

This is the 5000 pipe Theatre Pipe Organ in the Museum. When it plays it raises up from the floor by about 2 feet. They had it play music for us. They had it controlled by a Microsoft Computer program instead of a live organist during the guided tour.

When the Organ plays, the curtains in the back of the room open up to show two sets of Pipes that look like this. This is just one side of the two sets for a total of 5000 pipes. We could not use flash and my camera is not fast enough to get good picture but it demonstrates the immensity of the pipes as the hight of what is in the picture is probably about 30 ft.



These Antique Vintage cars are in a museum across the street from the first section. This picture shows one row of about 10 within the Museum.

All cars must be in perfect working condition to get a spot in the Museum. They are all very polished. You dare no even touch one or you will have a security guard standing beside you very quickly as a couple young visitors found out.

Another row of older vintage cars

Anyone on the fence about going to this museum, you should know it is all FREE. You do have to make reservations for the guided tour part.

Air Force One from the Reagan Library

The Burial Place of Ronald Reagan outside the Library

Back to Hollywood and a picture of the "Sign"

A picture of our Hosts Wilma and Bruce outside their home in Burbank.

Thanks for a great time you guys!

As we drove northward in Calif on Highway 5 we say several large fields of flowering trees. We do not know what fruit these will grow. I am sure that whatever it is, they will harvest them from all the equipment in the area.

As we got to the Palm Springs areas as we drove from Phoenix to Burbank we came across a massive group of wind chargers. This is just a sample picture form several groups of a very large cluster of chargers. One would think they could power the whole state of Calif on a windy day. We always maze at the clusters that have developed around the south of Fond du Lac. They have a long ways to go to get fully populated based on what we saw here. I was really amazed and went crazy trying to get pictures of all the fields of chargers as Nancy drove through them. Some of them were up on hill tops, and some were down in the valley with mountains on all sides. Also note the beauty of the snow covered mountains in the background.