My name is Marion Vermazen. I am a traveler, hiker, reader, Sun alumnus, computer geek, YouTuber, Spanish and French language student, knitter, weaver and genealogist.
I thought it might be fun to put together a picture time line of my life.
1953
probably about 1955
1956 – 4 years old
About 1959
1963
In my Clayfield College uniform in Brisbane Australia about July, 1964
1969
1970 at Iowa State
about 1972
College Graduation February 1974
About 1979
With my daughter Allison – December 1981
1996
About 1998
With my daughter Shannon about 2001
At our wedding 6-20-2003
July 2008
August 2008
Even if you are totally uninterested in knitting you have to find the story of Jimmy Beans Wool in Reno an interesting one. The company was founded in 2002 by Laura and Doug Zander. Laura focused on the store and the yarn and Doug developed the web site.
Last Saturday I stopped at Jimmy Beans Wool to look at a knitting
pattern that I had found from their web site. There were two cash registers open and a line waiting to
check out. Jimmy Beans is Reno's best knitting store. A yarn
distributor I know told me that Jimmy Beans doesn't buy from distributors
because they sell so much yarn that the yarn companies want to sell to
them directly. Business sure seems to be good.
According to an article about them in Fortune Small Business article in July of 2007 the on-line business at that time accounted for 70% of their business. They recently expanded their back room into the store front next door. Often when I am in the store I can hear people on the phone with customers taking orders.
The shopping experience on their website is wonderful. Browsing the web site just makes me want to buy yarn and knit. Right now they have cashmere sock yarn in delicious colors on the front page. They have hooked me on the possibilities. I am probably going to buy some.
Perhaps because I am a computer programmer at heart I find it inspiring that this website is their own, developed by them. I've always
thought that it would be fascinating to develop a web site and sell on line. But what a lot of
work. When you look at the complexities of the Jimmy Bean website and
store and yet how well it is designed for ease of use you really have
to admire the fact that the web site was created from scratch.
Bottom line is that Jimmy Beans Wool is a real Reno success story. If you want to create your own business, work really hard, be a bit lucky and I am sure put a lot of money and sweat equity into your effort Jimmy Beans is proof that it is really possible to succeed.
If you live in, or are just visiting Reno, a trip to Virginia City is a must. Virginia City is one of the oldest towns in Nevada. It was at the center of gold and silver mining and the rich Comstock Lode in the late 1800s. At its height 23,000 people lived in Virginia City. Today the population is about 1000. Although it is a tourist town it still feels like the old west and is a fun place to visit. If you take the main roads it is probably no more than an hour from Reno. But in the words of Doc Brown in the movie Back to the Future – “Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need roads.” My husband, Duke and I really enjoy exploring by taking old dirt roads.
Today Duke and I went with some friend and took the Jumbo Grade Trail and the Ophir Grade Trail to Virginia City. We came home on the Old Geiger Grade Toll Road. All of these roads are rough dirt roads and I think four wheel drive and high clearance are definitely necessary to drive on them. We had a great time. Ed, our leader, and his wife had done the trip before using the book Nevada Trails – Western Region as a guide.
We left the paved roads about 4 miles south of highway 395 near New Washoe City. You can see where we left the pavement and the road we started up on in this picture.
In this next picture I am looking west across Washoe Valley. You can see the remains of a giant landslide described in an article titled Catastrophic rockfalls and rock slides in the Sierra Nevada, USA by Gerald F. Wieczorek
“At about noon on May 30, 1983, a large complex rock and soil slide detached from the southeast face of Slide Mountain, Nevada…… Subsequently, along the northeastern margin of the rockslump zone, a rapidly moving rockfall avalanche of large boulders and a debris avalanche of gravelly sand initiated and entered the northern end of Upper Price Lake, a small reservoir….Price Lake, displaced most of the lake water, which overtopped and breached a low dam. The water then breached the dam of Lower Price Lake and sent a torrent down the gorge of Ophir Creek. In the steep canyon the rapidly moving water picked up fine and coarse rocky debris. Emerging from the canyon 6 km downstream, the debris flow spread out and deposited over the alluvial fan of Ophir Creek in the Washoe Valley, destroying and damaging houses, causing one fatality, and covering old U.S. Highway 395.”
Further along the road we had a wonderful view of Carson City, Nevada’s capital.
Here are a couple more pictures of us and the road. It was a cool, overcast, beautiful day.
After lots of rocks, ruts, and stops for pictures we eventually got to Virginia City.
Virginia City has a very large Catholic Church. Some guys were in a basket at the end of a very tall cherry picker repairing the steeple. It is not a job I would want to do!
We had a barbecue lunch at Virginia City Jerky and Smokehouse. My spicy pulled pork had a wonderful smoky flavor and was some of the best I have ever eaten.
After leaving Virginia City we headed down on the old Geiger Grade toll road. The Online Nevada Encyclopedia describes the road:
“opened completely in 1863 with several toll
stations. Its sharp descent, including hairpin turns and steep slopes,
made it impractical for heavy loads, but it was a popular route for
stagecoaches. Because drivers had to slow in some places, these became
favorite locations for robberies."
Even now it is a very steep and in places very narrow road. It is hard to imagine driving a stagecoach up that road or for that matter riding in one.
Here is a slide show of a few more of the pictures I took on the trip today.
http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=71649
Duke and I just got back from another road trip. We drove
about 2200 miles in nine day and had a lot of fun. The only down side of the trip was that we drove too much several days. Our biggest day was 390 miles. The way we like to road trip means we average about 40 miles an hour and we make lots of stops. We stop whenever we see something interesting whether it be a historical marker, an interesting rock or a museum.
fun.
View Oct 2009 Road Trip in a larger map
Day 1 – Reno to Chester California – 126 miles
Chester is very near Mount Lassen. We stayed at the Bidwell House Inn. The fall colors were beautiful and we enjoyed sitting by the fire reading.
Day 2 – Chester to Summer Lake Oregon – 326 miles
The drive through Mount Lassen National Park was beautiful.
Day 3 – Summer Lake to Halfway, Oregon - 390 miles
A long day. We didn't arrive at our Bed and Breakfast until after dark. We stayed at the Clear Creek Inn in Halfway, Oregon. This was the best B&B we stayed at on this trip. It is a beautiful fairly new building. We were the only ones there and sat by the fire in the wood stove playing cribbage and having wine, cheese, smoked oysters and crackers for dinner. We woke up to snow on the ground and a gorgeous walnut tree covered in yellow leaves outside the window of our room. Breakfast included home made apple sauce, and jams and home grown fruit.
Day 4 – Halfway to Spokane, Oregon – 219 miles
From Halfway we dropped down into the Snake River Canyon at Oxbow and checked out the Oxbow Dam. From there we followed a dirt road along the river as far as it would go and then headed up out of the canyon on a very steep narrow dirt road that literally climbed straight out of the canyon.
This is the view from the edge of the road down to the river
After climbing up close to three thousand feet, when we got to the top the road was covered in snow. Fun!
Day 5 – Spokane to Leavenworth, Washington – 225 miles
Before leaving Spokane we visited the cemetery where my Grandmother and at least one of her sisters are buried.
After my Grandfather died (Oct 31 71 years ago) my grandmother Marion Gibson owned and ran a sanitarium in Spokane. I remember visiting her there when I was about six years old. I Googled the address and discovered that the old Victorian house is being converted into condos. I called the real estate agent and asked if he would show us the house. The condos are beautiful and the house stirred long forgotten memories.
Spokane had a World's Fair in 1974 and as a result has a wonderful riverfront park now. I loved their big Radio Flyer wagon slide and the clock tower and fall colors were gorgeous.
From Spokane we drove west to visit Grand Coulee Dam. It is the largest concrete structure in the U.S. and largest electric power producing facility in the U.S. We looked around the visitor center but were disappointed that they weren't giving dam tours that day. The dam is immense. My dad told me he remembers visiting it when it was being built during the 1930s.
From Grand Coulee we went to Leavenworth a little town in the mountains east of Seattle. Many years ago Leavenworth decided to make itself into a Bavarian village. They did a wonderful job and now this little town gets over a million visitors a year. When we were there the Oktoberfest weekends had just ended and the Christmas festival weekends hadn't started. We had the town and our B&B pretty much to ourselves. We had a wonderful German dinner at Cafe Mozart. I would highly recommend it.
Day 6 – Leavenworth to Hood River, Oregon – 145 miles
After leaving Leavenworth we stopped and bought a box of Washington apples and pears at a roadside stand. Yum! We also tasted wine and bought some at couple of the wineries near Yakima. The drive along the Columbia River was beautiful. We stayed near Hood River at the Sakura Ridge Farm and Lodge. We had some of the best beer and pizza I have had in a long time at the Double Mountain Brewery and Taproom.
Even though Sakura Ridge has a fantastic view of Mount Hood it was overcast the whole time we were there so we never saw the mountain. Typical western Oregon weather! The lodge is surrounded by fruit trees which were a stunning yellow.
Day 7 Hood River to Bend Oregon – 265 miles
From Hood River we headed south around Mount Hood and finally caught a glimpse of its slopes. We stopped and looked around the Warm Springs Indian Museum and got to Bend in time to do some exploring down town and have a nice dinner at Staccato in the old firehouse
Day 8 – Bend to Surprise Valley Hot Springs – 194 miles
Day 9 of this trip happened to fall on Halloween. South east of Bend me explored some ice caves. They had some eerie green moss growing on a lot of the rocks which seemed quite appropriate for the day.
We spent the night at Surprise Valley Hot-springs which is in extreme north eastern California. Each room has its own hot spring fed pool which we really enjoyed. It is located a few miles east of Cedarville.
Day 9 – Surprise Valley Hotsprings to Home in Reno – 194 miles
On our last day we went into Cedarville for a great breakfast at the Country Hearth Restaurant. We bought some home made brownies to take home and then headed back to Reno via Pyramid Lake.
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If you would like to see a slide show of all our pictures from this trip click here.
It was great trip We went by many places on this trip that we couldn't explore properly because we didn't have enough time, They are on my list to go see another time
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I’d like to tell you a little bit
about my vision for this podcast.
Recently I listened to Charlie Rose interview author, Doris
Kearns Goodwin and her husband playwright
Richard Goodwin. They were discussing Robert Kennedy . Charlie Rose said
about Kennedy “He was in constant learning mode. He was a man who was in
persistent growth. Rose said that if you
are that way you are not interested in telling people what you know. You are interested in finding out what they
know.”
Rose also said “I know too many people who shut down when
they reach middle age they are not interested in catching up on things that
they were not exposed to. “
In the same interview Doris Kearns Goodwin said about her
husband that “it has been fun seeing how
excited people are with the idea that he in his 70s has written his first play. It shows that
sense of continuing curiosity”
The Charlie Rose Show is my favorite television show. Frequently
after watching a Charlie Rose interview I say to myself. I want to be Charlie
Rose!
Meeting and having conversations
with interesting people energizes me.
That is what I want to do with this podcast – Feed my continuing curiosity
and have conversations with interesting people.
Marion's Blog 