Barack Obama's California College Days

They may be small and often out of tune, but Huell discovers that beautiful music can be made with toy pianos. Scott Paulson, the resident Schroeder at the University of California San Diego, takes Huell on a tour of the Geisel Library’s Toy Piano Collection. Huell is also treated to an amusing toy piano recital, including scores commissioned exclusively for this unassuming instrument.

Rock & Roll and cars have always gone hand in hand. Join Huell as he gets a behind the scenes tour of the Peterson Automotive Museums new exhibit Cars & Guitars of Rock ‘N Roll, which showcases some stunning cars owned by famous rock and rollers. Billy Gibbons from the band ZZ Top shows Huell some amazing cars and talks about the significance of the exhibit.

Join Huell as he visits one of the last remaining buildings from the great old Long Beach Pike Amusement Park. For over 40 years the LITE-O-LINE has been going strong as a sort of ‘pinball bingo’ game; but, the history of the building goes back even further, as it used to house the famous Loof’s Carousel.

A quick visit to the vibrant Thai community in Thai Town on Hollywood Blvd. where Huell sees some great places to eat, meets Thai Elvis, and even has time for dessert.

Luis Fuerte, Huell Howser’s longtime cameraman joins Val Zavala to reminisce on working with Huell and give behind-the-scenes stories of the following three episodes.

CALIFORNIA'S GOLD WITH HUELL HOWSER #909
BIG THINGS IN THE DESERT

After getting a letter about the world's largest stuffed Komodo Dragon, Huell visits the World Museum of Natural History at La Sierra University. Once there, he discovers all the other treasures housed there, from minerals that glow in black light to a world class Freeze-dry taxidermy facility.

There’s lots going on Friday nights in downtown Garden Grove. Huell strolls along Main Street admiring the many hot rods lined up for their weekly outing, and pops into the markets and restaurant that make this location such a popular, family-friendly destination for residents. 

Completed in 1915, the Ridge Route was carved from the San Gabriel Mountains by workers using mule-drawn dirt scrapers. From ridge top to ridge top, they cleared a 20 foot-wide roadway which was the first direct route between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, uniting Northern and Southern California. Today, a 30-mile portion of the abandoned Ridge Route between Castaic and Gorman, can be found hidden in the mountains just east of Interstate 5 which long ago replaced it. Huell is joined by Harrison Scott, a retired Pacific Bell engineer, who, with the help of U.S.

Spring is here and Huell meets the new arrivals at the Bouncing Hoofs Ranch in Mojave. This farm is home to a variety of goats and Huell learns all about their hair, their milk and, of course, the babies. 

Huell visits four rustic barns in Ventura with a photographer who holds the distinction of documenting all of the quickly-disappearing barns in Ventura on film.

Huell visits Temescal Gateway Park in Pacific Palisades which was a major center of the Chautauqua Movement in the 1920s and ‘30s.

From 1901 to 1998, the Vail and Vickers families had been cattle ranching on Santa Rosa Island. When you ranch on an island, you have to come up with a creative way to get your cattle to the mainland for market. The families had a custom built boat made named the Vaquero. Huell travels to Santa Barbara to visit with the families and builders of the Vaquero and learn about it’s fascinating history.

Huell takes a tour of some of L.A.’s most beautiful fountains. Marlene Gordon of The Next Stage Tours shows Huell five of the most spectacular.

When most people think of Yosemite, they imagine towering peaks and cascading waterfalls, but there is an amazing human history that is told through some of the many buildings that dot the valley floor. In this adventure, Huell discovers two small buildings that are very historic and very beautiful. He visits the Yosemite Valley Chapel, which was built in 1879 and is the oldest structure in park. The little chapel continues to serve as a place of worship for residents and visitors alike, as it has done for over 125 years.

In this episode, Huell rides the historic Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad in Yosemite.

Huell visits Yosemite's high country for a walk through spectacular Tuolumne Meadows.

Huell recently had the adventure of a lifetime when he climbed Yosemite's formidable Half Dome. Join him in this one-hour special documenting his 17 mile round trip trek, along with other avid hikers, to conquer this 4800-foot high landmark.

Huell tours the Victorian residence in Martinez where the naturalist John Muir lived from 1890 to his death in 1914, and meets the special folks who are responsible for preserving this important site. While living there, Muir laid the foundations for the creation of the National Park Service in 1916.

Huell's off to Yosemite National Park where he walks the newly rehabilitated trails to the base of Yosemite Falls, the highest waterfall in North America.

Huell tours a reconstructed village of the Ahwaneechee Indians, who inhabited Yosemite for thousands of years.

Huell joins the centennial celebration of Colonel Charles Young's tenure as superintendent at Sequoia National Park. Young led his "Buffalo Soldiers" during a historic summer working in the second national park ever created in the United States. Young discovered and named a majestic Giant Sequoia after an individual that inspired and influenced his life, Booker T. Washington. After nearly 100 years, this tree has been rediscovered and stands as a monument to both Colonel Charles Young and Booker T. Washington.

Join Huell as he hikes high up in the Eastern Sierra to visit the Conness Glacier in a stunning part of the National Forest.

A shout echos through Yosemite ... "let the fire fall," and from 1872 to 1969 that's just what happened. Join Huell at the top of Glacier Point with Nic Fiore who was the last to push a pile of burning embers off the edge, creating the beautiful red hot "waterfall" effect know as Firefall. Then down to the bottom at Camp Curry, the best spot to view Firefall, where Huell talks with Keith and Ginny Bee who for 42 years ran the nightly outdoor theater show which led up to the fiery finale of this now lost California tradition.

San Onofre State Beach in San Diego County covers some 2100 acres and has five miles of beach, including Trestles – one of the most famous and truly iconic surf spots in the world! Park Supt. Rich Rozzelle showed Huell a spectacular section of the park that most people don’t know exists. Turns out the park goes four miles inland, contains several archeological sites, is the home of seven threatened or endangered species and protects significant portions of San Mateo Creek, which is one of the last relatively unspoiled watersheds in Southern California. 

Leave it to our own Huell Howser to think he could go kayaking in Death Valley! But it turns out that's exactly what he does as he travels to normally parched Death Valley National Park to kayak on the huge salt lake created by this year's heavy rains. Ancient Lake Manly at Badwater only reappears about every 100 years, so he figured he better go for it.

In addition to the lake, Huell also captures the bounty of endless fields of wildflowers, which covered Death Valley this spring.

Huell travels to the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake to see the largest concentration of rock art in the Western Hemisphere. The small canyon houses up to 6,000 images. Although an accurate dating technique is still being sought, certain petroglyphs are thought to be 16,000 years old, while others were made as recently as 1800. This rock art is so important to our cultural heritage and our knowledge of the desert's past that the sites were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1964.

Located just of highway 14, Red Rock Canyon State Park features scenic desert cliffs, buttes and spectacular rock formations. The park is not only rich in natural beauty, but has a deep human history as well. From the native Kawaiisu Indians, who left petroglyphs, to the 1880s 20-mule team freight wagons that stopped for water. There are also the remains of 1890s-era mining operations, and the area has been the site for a number of movies.

Spend the day with Roy Murphy who’s been photographing the Angeles National Forest for the past 40 years. Huell goes deep into the heart of the magnificent mountain range that is our backyard.

Travel to Downieville, nestled high in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where gold miners organized the first ski races in the country; meet the staff on the Mountain Messenger, the state's oldest weekly newspaper; and watch a demonstration of the long, heavy wooden skis worn by the gold miners in the mid-1800s.

When most people think of Shasta Lake, they imagine themselves on a houseboat enjoying California's largest manmade reservoir. With 365 miles of shoreline it is a boaters paradise. What most people don't think about is the massive structure that is responsible for holding back the water that creates Shasta Lake. We're talking about Shasta Dam which, is a perfect example of "California's Gold". Construction of the dam started in 1938 and ended in 1945. It's 602 feet high, 883 feet thick at the bottom, 30 feet thick at the top, and 3,460 feet long.

It's thought of as one of the bleakest and most desolate places in the world, but as Huell discovers, Death Valley can be beautiful. Contrary to its name, Death Valley is host to a wide variety of life- from prehistoric pupfish to stunning miniature wildflowers and much more!