After early morning Mass in Bishop CA we headed south on US-395 to Death Valley National Park. We’re awfully glad we did this in October and not in the middle of summer. Not only were we hot but the car’s radiator got hotter than it has ever been. The landscape was stunning but forbidding. It was spooky to descend to an elevation hundreds of feet below sea level! We especially enjoyed learning about the borax mining and refining operations in Death Valley in the 19th Century. The name 20 Mule Team Borax comes from the fact that the refined chemical was indeed hauled from the refinery to the railhead by large teams of mules.
Ever since its debut on Broadway the two of us have wanted to see “Wicked the Musical”. Today we realized that dream. In the Apollo Victoria Theater in London’s West End we were witness to the incredible prequel to The Wizard of Oz, the story of the Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.
London’s National Portrait Gallery’s temporary exhibition, “Six Lives: The Stories of Henry VIII’s Queens” presents an amazing collection of portraits, jewelry, personal effects, books, costumes, and more to illustrate not only the lives of the six women who married the second Tudor king, but the effort across five centuries to keep their memory alive.
The purpose of our trek to Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham in the southwest of London was to see a recently recovered bronze bust of the Emperor Caligula but we discovered so much more in the recently restored 18th Century “little Gothic castle” built by Horace Walpole.
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