Our penultimate stop in California, and in the United States, before heading back overseas, is in Walnut Creek to meet up with our old friend Craig, and work in a side trip to the fantastic Blackhawk Museum in nearby Danville. It was named the Best Museum of the East Bay by the East Bay Times — an honor we’d say it richly deserves. It’s so expansive and so chock full of things to see, that one day doesn’t do it justice. But that’s all we have.

The Blackhawk Museum is located, appropriately enough, in Blackhawk Plaza (though it operates independently), a complex of shops and restaurants designed to be esthetically pleasing with a rustic vibe. The Plaza at this writing is facing possible closure with mounting financial headaches and many tenants jumping ship. But supposedly this will not affect the museum, even though it’s on the same property.

The museum opened in 1988, which also happened to be the year we founded our nonprofit touring theatre company in San Francisco (of which Craig was a board member for the duration). In fact, one of our very first performances was for a special event at the museum during its first year and ours.

The Blackhawk is best known for its impressive automobile collection, featuring about 90 specimens of rare and unique jalopies — some very old, going all the way back to the cradle days of motored vehicles, like the 1886 Benz Patent Motorwagon. And the 1924 Hispano-Suiza H6C, with a body made from tulipwood. Some of them are one-of-a-kind prototypes. Some have been used in Hollywood movies. Some are odd colors, like… purple??? The collection rotates, so you may not see exactly the same exhibit on different visits. (Craig is the ideal person to tour this museum with; a former naval officer and retired engineer, he has a breadth and depth of knowledge about a number of topics, especially things mechanical; and these cars are right up his alley.)

But there’s much more to Blackhawk than just the cars. There are also eye-opening exhibits in five other sections; it’s like getting six museums for the price of one. One is called Spirit Of The Old West, which houses Nineteenth Century weapons, clothing and other gear from both settler and Native cultures, and features a nifty diorama depicting a frontier settlement. There are also Art Of Africa and Into China, with some intriguing exhibits of items from those respective cultures. The Chinese section includes a wooden diorama that required eleven years just to gather the raw wood! And finally there’s World Of Nature, showcasing a very wide spectrum of taxidermied beasts, a large number of specimens in a relatively small space.

The next day, we take a hike in the hills above Walnut Creek, spotting a snakeskin and the largest colony of poison oak we’ve ever seen. On a non-hazy day (which you don’t have a whole lot of here), you can catch a glimpse of The City from these hills.

Our ambling leads us to the Old Borges Ranch, a historic homestead with a redwood ranch house built in 1901 by Portuguese immigrant Francisco Borges that is furnished in period trappings. You can also see the original barns, a blacksmith shop, a windmill, and antique farm equipment — along with farm animals that are not antique, but very much alive and cared for by the local 4-H Club.

And we stop by the Walnut Creek Library (where we’ve also performed in our past life) and have a look at the Hand Of Peace, a 1967 sculpture by Italian sculptor Beniamino Bufano. Using the difficult technique of hammering copper (no heat was involved) and incorporating mosaic tile and stained glass, Bufano took five years to complete this piece promoting global unity and peace. But apparently he made a boo-boo. If you look carefully, you’ll see the words “Inherit the hearth”. Either he meant to say “Inherit the earth”, or he was combining “earth” and “heart”, or he was using “hearth” as a metaphor, or was in some other way being a poet as much as a sculptor.

And with that towering hand waving us goodbye, we are set to resume doing our own bit for global unity et cetera; the next day, we’ll be taking our leave of California and the U.S. to fly off to Hong Kong and begin making our way back to Cambodia.

Events occurred 06/22-23/2025