many other things you
may do at the wonderful Mission Inn. But the open road called us and we
had time for only one night in Riverside. We drove from Riverside to
Redlands, a particularly charming town. It has a better situation than
Riverside, being on a slope instead of upon a level plain. It has
beautiful streets and hosts of lovely winter homes of most attractive
architecture. The drive up to Smiley Heights, where one runs through
exquisite gardens along a narrow ridge, looking down upon a green
cultivated valley on the one side, and a polished winter city on the
other side, is a delightful experience.

From Redlands we drove on to San Bernardino and thence to Pomona and
Claremont. The San Bernardino Valley has miles of grapes, the vineyards
being on an immense scale. In California the grapes are not trained upon
arbors. The stalks are kept low, and in looking over a vineyard one sees
long rows of low growing, stocky vines, and masses of green foliage. In
San Bernardino they have a fashion of planting windbreaks of evergreens
around their gardens and smaller vineyards; but there are also immense
stretches of open country planted with vines. One vineyard of three
thousand acres has a sign announcing that it is the largest vineyard in
the world. Pomona and Claremont are pleasant towns, Pomona being the
seat of a college. From Claremont we drove on to Pasadena. There are
lovely drives about Pasadena, and one should not neglect to go up along
the foothills and from that point of vantage look down upon the town
spread out on the slopes below. There is now a motor drive up Mt.
Wilson, from which one has extremely grand views, but the Mt. Wilson
drive is to be recommended only to people with small, light machines
which have a short turning base. The mountain road is by no means the
equal of the roads one finds in the Alps. It is too narrow and too
hazardous for any but small machines. For most tourists the nine miles
of the Mt. Wilson road would better be traversed on donkey-back. For
those who love to climb, the winding road is a delightful walk with
views of changing grandeur. The hotel at the top is a very pleasant
place to stay, and one may have there the glories of the sunset and the
sunrise.

The most lovely avenue in Pasadena, up and down which one should drive
several times, is Orange Grove Avenue. Along the street the feathery
pepper tree and the palm alternate. The strikingly handsome electric
lamp standards a