Photo-a-Day - November 2012 - Day 30: Roadside Attraction

Photo-a-Day - November 2012 - Day 30: Roadside Attraction

It's odd how one establishes patterns of where one goes, even within one's own area.  I drive up Lincoln Avenue all the time, but almost never go past where it intersects with Mountain Boulevard.

One day that changed.  I headed on up, past where the Lincoln changes to Skyline, on a morning when I was looking for a photograph for the prompt "calm".  I knew exactly where I was headed.  Yet I also had other prompts in mind and was on the lookout for those as well when I saw this building on my left.

Rather than stop then, I finished taking my intended shots, and pulled over at this roadside attraction on my way back down the hill.  I am so glad I did as I was astonished at what I learned.

This little house, known as The Abbey and The Hights, is where poet Joaquin Miller lived.  

I move now to information from Wikipedia:  "From 1886 to his death in 1913, Joaquin Miller resided on a hill in Oakland, in a home he called "The Hights" [sic]. He planted the surrounding trees and he personally built, on the eminence to the north, his own funeral pyre (not used) and monuments dedicated to Moses, explorer General John C. Frémont, and the poets Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The Japanese poet Yone Noguchi began his literary career while living in the cabin adjoining Millers' during the latter half of the 1890s."

For those unfamiliar with Joaquin Miller, as was I before moving to California, I provide the following information also from Wikipedia:  "Joaquin Miller was the pen name of the colorful American poet Cincinnatus Heine (or Hiner) Miller (September 8, 1837 – February 17, 1913).  Called the Poet of the Sierras and the Byron of the Rockies, he may have been more of a celebrity in England than in his native U.S. Much of his reputation, however, came not from his poetry but from the image he created for himself by capitalizing on the stereotypical image of Western frontiersmen."

When traveling a road, one just never knows what one might find.  Now, I shall always remember what I found simply by taking the suggestion of Robert Frost, and when, finally

I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.