Back to California

We’re heading back to Big Bear for some more Covid R&R. Along the way we stopped to check out something we had seen several times as we drove by along I-15 but had no idea what it was

. It turns out that in 2017, a group of friends bought 36 acres in Yermo (very near Peggy Sue’s Diner). One member of the group was Chinese born dissident Weiming Chen, who christened it Liberty Sculpture Park.

His first sculpture dedicated to the Park was The Origin of Freedom Number One: 

Chief Crazy Horse, celebrating the 140^th anniversary of the death of Crazy Horse in 1877. He sculpted a 16-foot-tall likeness of Chinese activist Li Wangyang. The giant number 64 is what caught our attention from the freeway and got us here. Chen sculpted it as the world’s largest monument to the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square.

In describing this sculpture, Chen says that the massacre took place on June 4, the numbers are 6.4 meters high, and the sculpture is exactly 6,400 miles from the massacre site in Tiananmen Square. His latest addition there is Tank Ma

n, another tribute to Tiananmen Square. Chen had wanted to use a real tank in the sculpture, but couldn’t make that happen, so he eventually built one using steel, wood, fiber glass and plaster.

We got the chance to cross the historic Scottsburg Bridge, open now only to foot traffic. The bridge was built in 1929 to span the then raging Umpqua

River. The bridge was too narrow for current traffic patterns on Highway 28, so a new bridge was built and opened in 2020. California DOT requested volunteers to move the old bridge to preserve it due to its historic nature, however nobody stepped up. Good thing we found it now, as it is slated to be dismantled.

As always, Big Bear was glorious. We managed to find 4 more sections of the Pacific Crest Trail

we had not discovered the last time we were here, and probably knocked off another 8 to 10 miles. The Woman was in her happy place. I wish I had kept track of all the miles we have hiked of the PCT. I imagine it would add up to a not insignificant portion, including having been at both ends in the last year or so.

We hope to be talking to you soon.