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.
Last Thursday I got an invitation to "Meet Mitt Romney" at an ice cream social Friday night before the Nevada Republican Convention Saturday. Duke and I went and had ice cream. We saw Mitt but we didn’t push our way in to ‘meet’ him. He didn’t speak and other than good ice cream the event was pretty much a dud.
Since Duke is a Democrat I’m thinking I may be able to use this picture for bribery.
We had a 4.7 earthquake at 11:40 tonight. Duke and I were at a Blackjack table at the Peppermill. It felt very strong there but it must have been really bad at our house which is within about a mile of the epicenter. When we got home we found broken dishes, books on the floor, pictures crooked and a big mess. If we had been here when it happened it would have been really scarey The noise as stuff came off the shelves and started breaking would have been awful. We have had a few smaller quakes since we got home but hopefully we won’t have any more big ones!!
Spring is here and tax season is over. That means that the Sierra Canyon hiking and snowshoeing group just switched from snow shoeing to hiking for our Monday activities. It also means that since Duke is done working as a tax preparer he can hike with me during the week. Yesterday we hiked the Stevens Trail, a nine mile out and back hike that starts just of of Interstate 80 in the town of Colfax at an elevation of 2352 ft and descends to the North Fork of the American River at an elevation of 1360 ft.
According to the BLM description of the trail "The Stevens Trail is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places." It was built during the gold rush and was used from 1870-1895.
The trail is fairly easy and the views are stunning.
It was a cool clear day. The trail was lush and green and the wildflowers were out in abundance. I’m trying to learn the names of a few of the wild flowers we saw. I think this is Bush Lupine.
I’m not sure what this is but we saw quite a lot of it along the trail.
Our lunch spot was right next to the river.
If you would like to see all of my pictures of the hike you can see them on Flickr here.
I really enjoyed snowshoeing but it was great to be hiking again and it was great to be hiking with Duke again.
Duke and I live in an over 55 community in Reno, Nevada called Sierra Canyon. A lot of people in our community love to hike , ski, and snowshoe. Many of the skiers have skied 50 or more days this year. Although I don’t ski I learned to snowshoe and I love it.
Monday was our last snowshoeing hike of the year. We went to the same place that we went on New Year’s Eve last year – Andesite Peak. The snow was a bit slushy but there was still lots of it. The hike starts just across from Boreal Ski Resort (Boreal is now closed for the season) at the summit of Donner Pass off of interstate 80.
Last time there were no rocks to be seen on top but this time we could see the sign at the top. 
The wind was blowing at the top but the views are breathtaking.
We had a lunch this time on an exposed log.
Next Monday we are going to the American River canyon, at least 6000 feet lower elevation.
If you would like to see all of my pictures from the Andesite Peak hike you can see them here.
I was in Oakland last Saturday for my daughter’s birthday. It was a sunny warm day. She and I took a docent led tour of Mountain View cemetery. When she told people that we were going to tour the cemetery on her birthday many people thought that was a bit weird and asked Why?? She and I are both big history buffs. The Cemetery is full of famous and familiar names as well as not so famous people whose lives are still interesting. Hearing their stories makes history come alive.
I’ve loaded all my pictures on to Flickr and I’ve added captions to most of them based on my notes and what I’ve discovered searching the web since I got home. You can look at them all on Flickr here but I’ll also include a few here
Sara Plummer Lemmon and her husband John Lemmon were both self taught botanists. The tomb stone says "The California Poppy was named the state flower in 1903 due to the persistent efforts of Sara Lemmon" In searching the web I also found a blog written by a woman who had just climbed Mount Lemmon outside of Tucson. She includes more of the Lemmons’ story.
"According to an article we found at the new community center in Summerhaven (on top of Mt. Lemmon), written by Eileen Palese:
"The
mountain was named for the first white woman who dared to climb it, a
vibrant, curious woman who was challenged by the beauty of the mountain’s plant life and the harshness of its precipices.It
was in 1881, when the US Cavalry still pursued Apaches and gunslingers
fought it out at Tombstone’s OK Corral that Sara Allen Plummer Lemmon,
a slender, dark-haired woman of 45, challenged and then conquered the
mountain that loomed over the old Spanish community called Tucson.Sara
arrived in Tucson with her husband, John Gill Lemmon, on the first
train ever to reach the town. He was a self-educated botanist, respectfully called the "professor", whose health had been permanently undermined during the Civil War when he was imprisoned by the
Confederates in the notorious camp at Andersonville, Georgia.Sara
and John had met in 1876 at a lecture he gave in Santa Barbara,
California, where she owned a lending library and stationery store. She
already had an unbounded interest in botany, and, when they married
four years later, she was qualified to assist her husband in an
ambitious effort to catalog the plants of southern Arizona, a part of
the world few botanists then had visited.Their first ascent
into the Santa Catalina Mountains was up the south face, the one
closest to Tucson, along roughly the same path that the Catalina
Highway follows today.[I’ve left out much of the story which you can read on Alanna’s blog]
Though largely self-taught as a botanist, her work was
outstanding. She published many scientific papers, and, thanks largely
to her efforts, California adopted the golden poppy as its state
flower. She lived to be 93.A mountain peak is not all that
bears her name. An entire group of plants was named for her by Harvard’s
Asa Gray, one of the outstanding botanists in the United States in the
19th century.Perhaps the best description of Sara Lemmon,
was provided by her grandnephew, Dr. Harold St. John: ‘She was
enthusiastic, sincere, intense, a driver and an organizer, cultured,
literary and scientific.’All in all, she was a woman far ahead of her times"
These are pictures of our tour. I think but am not sure that the man in the middle of the pictures in the checked shirt is Michael Colbruno. Colbruno has done a lot of research on the stories of people buried in Mountain View and has created a wonderful blog of these stories. The stories he shared on our tour added immensely to the tour.
Mountain View Cemetery is 220 acres and was founded in 1883. Over 170,000 people are buried there. It has views of San Francisco, Oakland and the Bay. It was one of the first garden cemeteries. The annual tulip festival was a couple of weeks ago. It is full of the stories of people’s lives from Domingo Ghirardelli to Henry Kaiser, to Julia Morgan to John Lee Hooker.
Allison and I thoroughly enjoyed our visit and will go back again.
Marion's Blog 
