California, Here We Come (Again)

Albert has been away for a couple of weeks, which has left me home alone. Just me and the little doggos. I LOVE being by myself, especially in my own house. I did whatever I wanted, none of which is very exciting. I cleaned up the house, got ahead on my schoolwork, took my time at the gym, cooked nothing, watched some movies that I knew Albert wouldn’t like. Turns out *I* didn’t much like two-thirds of these movies either. At least I only have to tolerate one of us complaining about those wasted hours. BTW, the one I liked was called “Bad Education,” starring Hugh Jackman and Allison Janney.

I’m not always this boring. I’ll be taking a trip this upcoming week with Audrey down to California. I’m super excited to see my sister and my parents for the first time in over a year. But since there’s very little to write about this week besides the marginally remarkable fact that I can be completely content eating avocado toast for dinner ten times in a row.

I thought I’d share another road trip adventure with you. This is another two-week period when Albert was off for his Navy Reserve training, and I took an adventure with the kids down to Southern California. Since we took the obvious, direct route the first time in 2010, I concocted this more creative route in 2011.

On our way to Medford, we stopped in Albany to see the Foam Volcano House. Steve Fletcher, the founder of Sprayfoam, Inc., used to live in this house. I suppose he had access to all the Sprayfoam a guy could want, and this is how he decided to use it. It looks a little bit Flinstsone-ish, plus there are a couple of pretend wild animals and a little fish pond with (not pretend) fish you can feed for a quarter.

After that brief stop, we headed to Brownsville to visit the Living Rock Studio. This quaint art studio and museum is run by the artist’s two daughters. I wasn’t sure whether the kids would like it, but the rock art was quite amazing, and they especially enjoyed pointing flashlights and making some of the luminescent rocks light up. You just can’t believe that THERE ARE ROCKS EVERYWHERE.

After an overnight stop in Medford, we headed toward Redding with a stop at Shasta Caverns. I never cease to be amazed by caves, even though they mostly look alike. We boarded a little boat that ferries us across beautiful Lake Shasta, and we took in all the wonders that hide inside Mount Shasta. Here’s a picture of Audrey and me waiting for the little boat.

After a night in Redding, we took our time and headed to Sacramento. We stopped at the National Yo-yo Museum in Chico where we saw a yo-yo that cost $300. It's probably still there ten years later. Who in their right mind would spend so much on a little yo-yo? Here is a picture of Audrey and Chris with the biggest yo-yo. Check out Chris’s gorilla feet in those Fivefingers shoes.

I was excited to stop at Madison Bear Garden in Chico to try their Jiffy Burger, which is topped with peanut butter, mayo, cheese, and bacon. Alas, it was not lunchtime by the time we passed through, and chances are slim that I will be passing through Chico any time ever again. If you have ever tried this burger, please let me know how it was.

We took a detour to El Dorado to visit Barber Jon’s Room of Oddities and Curiosities. This place surprised us, because it is literally a regular barber shop where people were getting their hair cut. The four of us must have looked perplexed, because the barber just looked at us and pointed his scissors toward a little room off to the side filled with wack-out weirdo things from big balls of twine, which I never really understood the remarkable-ness of…..

To a bikini-clad roller derby mannequin covered in gum.

The next day, we enjoyed the farmers market in Alameda where Audrey ate blackberries as big as her little 11-year-old hand.

We spent a couple of days in the Bay Area visiting the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda…

And the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. Little did we know that the day we visited was one of the four days per year that the museum was available free to the public. That sounds super lucky that we could save over a hundred bucks on tickets, but the line to get in was CUH-RAY-ZEE! I told the kids to wait in the line while I ran to the front to see what was going on. Except while I was running, the line started moving, and I totally lost all three of them! Did they go in? Were they outside? Welp, sorry, Albert. I made it a solid three days before losing all of your children in San Francisco.

In my panic, I heard someone call my name. A childhood friend, Elliot, FROM CAMARILLO was way in front of the line telling me to come take cuts. Man, what an opportunity! But alas, I couldn’t go in without finding my kids. I eventually found them, and miraculously we all got in for free and had a swell time.

Did you know there is a Museum of Pez Memorabilia in Burlingame, just south of San Francisco? It houses so much Pez. It was way more interesting than it sounds and admission was just three bucks.

This is the trip I introduced the kids some of my favorite pizza of all time, Zachary’s. Zach’s makes this deep dish spinach tomato pizza that is to die for.

From San Francisco, we made our way toward Santa Cruz where we visited the infamous Boardwalk...

...and The Mystery Spot. As amazed as we were at the Oregon Vortex the year before, this Mystery Spot was suspiciously similar. Are they both truly magnetic vortexes? Perhaps.

On our way out of Santa Cruz, we visited the Bigfoot Discovery Museum in Felton. The founder, Mike, spent hours telling us stories about his Bigfoot encounters and experiences. We learned that these elusive creatures love Snickers Bars. Mike showed off his Bigfoot poop which was displayed in a plexiglass box.

Along the way, we tried to find places that Guy Fieri had featured on Diners, Drive-ins & Dives. Here was quite a yummy find in Santa Cruz!

The Universe must have decided that we needed a break after all this excitement. After spending the night in Atascadero, we came out to our van to see that we had picked up a nail and had a completely flat tire.

But here’s where the blessings really start piling up. There was a super nice gentleman at the hotel who helped me take the flat tire off and put the spare tire on. We drove less than 20 minutes to the Costco in San Luis Obispo which was on our way anyhow. The bad news was that the tire was not reparable, so I sank a hundred bucks into a new tire. There happened to be some mobile puppy adoption going on in the parking lot, so the wait wasn’t even terrible. This little girl’s name is Ivy.

The fun continued in Southern California. We spent time at the beach with all the cousins and even visited Legoland and Sea World. Our trip back to Oregon had much fewer stops. Our first day, we made it all the way to Fresno, stopping in the tiny town of Lindsay to see the Giant Olive. You know Lindsay Olives? This is where they’re from! Their Giant Olive holds a place of honor in the parking lot of a Super 8 Motel. (Trust me, we didn’t go inside.)

The next day, we visited the Forestiere Underground Gardens. This is a fellow’s HOME that he built COMPLETELY UNDERGROUND. It was over 100 degrees the day we visited, but underground it was nice and cool. And also dark, so I guess this is why I don’t have many good pictures of this place.

We drove through the town of Locke, CA, looking for this remarkable toilet garden.

We did find some weird, old Chinese things which leads me to believe that this little town has some Chinese American history linked to it. But when we passed through, there were only VERY white people there, and we got some looks that made me feel uncomfortable, so we headed out without stopping, never finding that toilet garden.

After a couple of days of hitting the road pretty hard, we spent a day in Sacramento at the water park. Thinking back, this is probably one of the last times I could really enjoy a water park with the kids. After a certain age, they don’t want Old Mom tagging along anymore. We had so much fun in the hot, Sacramento sun. We’d be completely dry before getting on the next slide. We were so tired at the end of the day that Chris left his flip flops in the parking lot and nobody noticed until we got to the restaurant for dinner. Fortunately we weren’t very far away, and those flip flops were still right there in the middle of the abandoned parking lot when we drove back to retrieve them.

The following day, we rambled back toward Medford, stopping only for some free olive tasting at the Olive Pit in Corning. There is everything olive there, including earrings.

Before turning in for the night, we stopped to see a real, live Bigfoot trap in Applegate. This place was built by a couple of guys in the 70’s and is a little hike off the road. See the little Bigfoot stamp on the trailhead sign?

There were the telltale oddly-fallen trees that we learned about at the Bigfoot Discovery Museum.

As well as Snickers wrappers! Now we all know why!!

It was warm and muggy and we all got about a million mosquito bites.

There was lots of graffiti inside and outside the trap. It looked like folks had enjoyed some campfires in the area, so there was lots of charcoaled sticks.

Of course, we took the opportunity to leave our marks.

Itchy and tired and almost out of gas, we planned for a stop at the Medford Costco before dinner and bed when WHAMMO! I totally saw it coming. The guy in front of me stopped suddenly. A reflexive glance in the rearview mirror showed me a big Ford truck barreling toward us. “Oh, no!” I managed to squeak. I saw the kids’ faces look up with concern for just a spilt second before we were rear-ended.

We were pushed into the OTHER big Ford truck in front of us. Those big trucks were barely dented, but our poor little minivan was now an accordion.

The guy in front of us had a big trailer hitch on his backside that split our frontside in two, piercing our radiator.

Now we were REALLY in a pickle. We were 300 miles from home with a van full of supplies for a two-week road trip. A SUPER nice chaplain from the police department stayed with us for hours until a tow truck arrived. Then this SUPER nice tow truck driver was so kind to make a special stop at the Medford Airport where we had rented a car. He stayed with us until I could pick up the car and helped us offload all our crap from the van.

There was only one seat in the tow truck, so the police chaplain followed behind with the kids in the back seat of his police car.

I know angels were following us on this road trip. Nobody was hurt, and we weren’t even terribly inconvenienced. By the time the whole ordeal was done, it was 11pm, and we were STARVING. Final treat of the trip: First experience eating at Shari’s.

Have you ever seen the Big Olive? If so, I wanna see pics. Thank you for reading!