Stan’s Obligatory Blog

I recently read that the building that was the world’s first Taco Bell is going to probably be torn down soon. I looked it up, and it’s in Downey, not far from the old Johnie’s Broiler that we visited recently. Between that and the oldest operating McDonald’s in Downey, there’s a lot of fast-food history there.

We rode straight down Del Mar through San Gabriel, and then when we got to Whittier Narrows, we turned down Rosemead and took that all the way to Downey. We passed the old McDonald’s and then turned on 5th St. That took us past the apartment buildings The Carpenters owned. Then, when we got to downtown Downey, we stopped for coffee and snacks at 3rd St Coffee.

After the snack stop, we continued west for a bit, and then south to Firestone Blvd. We went a couple of streets beyond Firestone, turned right, and came back out on Firestone through a sidewalk at the end of a cul-de-sac. That brought us out right by the former Taco Bell. The building, as well as the building next to it, and their parking lot were all fenced off. I had to hold the camera up over the fence to see anything. It looks like the preservationists may not have succeeded, since the site looked like it was ready to knock down. I guess we will have to stop by again in the future and see.

Continuing south for a bit, we came out by the Rio Hondo. We got on the Rio Hondo bike trail and took that all the way back to Whittier Narrows. Then we took Walnut Grove back home. It was a pleasant ride.

40 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Last September, we went to Mt. Wilson for an evening with the 60-inch telescope. But last spring, I got a notice from the Atlas Obscura people that they were going to be doing an evening with the 100-inch telescope. That telescope is the one that Edwin Hubble used to discover Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda nebula, which enabled him to establish that it was in fact another galaxy. This was a major discovery, since it proved that the universe consisted of far more than just our galaxy. It was also the telescope he used to discover the expansion of the universe. All told, it’s a big piece of astronomical history.

Our group met up in La Cañada before heading up Mt. Wilson. At the top, our session director, Shelly Bonus met us and led us back to the telescope. Inside, we got a tour of the dome while we were waiting for nightfall. As it started to get dark, they pointed the telescope at the moon so that we could have a look. The magnification on such a big telescope is pretty large, and we could only see a few craters in the small field of view. After that, they moved the telescope just a bit to have a look at Saturn. The Cassini Division was clearly visible, and this was the first time I’ve ever seen the C-ring. The planet also showed some nice color, and bands in the clouds.

Next up was M13, the big globular cluster in Hercules. I didn’t recognize it in the big telescope. In my little telescope, it looks like a ball of fuzz. But here it was big, and it was resolved into stars. Many, many stars. Then we moved just a short distance away to M92, which is a smaller globular cluster. It didn’t fill the field of view, so it was more easily recognized as a globular. We looked at a few double stars just to admire the resolution of the big telescope. Then we looked at Campbell’s Hydrogen Star. The nebula around the star was a deep red color, and it looked good. All in all, it was a fun time in a geeky way.