Vertigo Through Frisco
Sunday, July 25th, 2010
When I last wrote about Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece Vertigo, I mentioned that it is not one of my favorite of the Master of Suspense’s films. While noting that it was a stylish and visually engrossing masterpiece, I found that it was not all that entertaining. Since that time, my opinion has been somewhat revised. While it would still linger near the bottom a top ten list, I have since come to appreciate the delicious story along with the stunning pallete on which Sir Hitchcock paints. So having said that, perhaps you might see how visiting several of the filming locations from Vertigo while in the San Francisco area was a top priority. Read the rest of this entry »
I skipped the continental breakfast at our comfortable Super 8 motel in Monterey on the morning of Monday, June 14, 2010 – opting instead to chat online with Erin for a bit while Bob gathered his morsels. We didn’t have to get up too terribly early that day as the cemetery in town that we were going to visit didn’t open until 8:30am. It was the Cementerio El Encinal (or Cemetery of Many Oaks). We weren’t visiting any graves here. We were dropping off. Not a body, but a marker. Bob had spearheaded some fund raising to put a stone on the unmarked grave of Viola Richard. 
Bob and I were rising and we were most definitely shining very early on the morning of Sunday, June 13, 2010. We got ready and got our stuff packed up from the Motel 6 in San Simeon, California, in time to get down to the lobby, eat some breakfast in the adjoining Sunset Grill restaurant (where I enjoyed a delicious and very filling seafood benedict), and head out to our first and foremost major destination of the day. It was a little country cabin in the hills known as Hearst Castle. 
After Erin and her family left Ohio on Wednesday, June 9, 2010, I had just a few nights to scramble together my packing necessities before embarking on my third week-long adventure of the year. The culmination of this trip would be the 17th International Sons of the Desert convention in Sacramento, which was scheduled to begin on Wednesday, June 16. Bob and I had originally planned to begin in Seattle and head southward to the convention. The main reason for this was to visit with John Babcock, the last surviving Canadian soldier from World War 1. He was living in Spokane, but unfortunately, although we had pre-arranged a meeting, he passed away in February.