spaazlicious

We had a really good time driving around seeing California. The diversity of climates and landscapes is astounding and it made me wonder why anyone pays so much to live in San Diego.

Of course, saying that, I will miss this place when we go (at the earliest: July) so I guess I already know. San Diego has an unexpectedly large fiber community, and I've really been enjoying the knit meet-ups, and bummed I missed the last two. And people keep saying something about the weather...

But check out Tulare county in only a teeny part of its vista-full glory:



And the open road beckoning northward...



Thanks for all the comments and suggestions. We were thinking about Cloverdale, as there is a resident post/office/something around Santa Rosa. Cloverdale was gorgeous--although out of our price range (wine country, don'tcha know) it didn't cost anything to drive through, we got a chewy pastry at Schat's and snagged a lot of county literature at the visitor's information bureau.

We didn't even torture ourselves with the beautiful Bay area...If we won the lottery, we'd move to back to Oakland in a heartbeat, we miss Le Cheval and the Redwoods rec area a terrible ton, especially this time of year, but so far the lottery winnings haven't appeared. And it's probably not good financially planning to think they will. Doesn't mean they won't though. ;P

We did torture ourselves with visiting our other favourite ex-hometown though: Sacramento. Such a beautiful town, good food and comfortable, but with bad air quality (especially when they're burning the rice fields) and still out of our price range. We stayed on the Delta King, a riverboat that's been converted to a hotel moored in the river off Old Sac.



Small room, (duh, it's a boat) but so cozy. Here's a pic looking upriver.



And we saw the drawbridge operate, a relatively rare treat. The whole center section is lifted to let boats and ships pass.



We walked to Streets of London (a British-style pub) for dinner with Nick's friend from UC Santa Cruz who occasionally doodles a great comic.


The next day we drove north to Eureka. And on the way, we stopped at a "Drive-Thru Tree" and had a very Californian experience:



In the lavatory at the Drive-Thru Tree Official Gift Shop, I noticed this on the back of my stall door. I'm hoping these two are married and just still very much in love...but that apostrophe makes me think they're siblings:



Then when I was washing my hands I saw this:



Which means someone registered a misspelling as a trademark? Perhaps proper spelling is a slave's behaviour, or, since a google search returned a fair amount of results for "towls" which were subsequently spelled "towels" in the pages, is it an alternative spelling not recognised by the dictionary but part of a hygienic supplies vending culture?

Anyway, those are the things you wonder with so many beautiful redwoods whizzing by for hours on end. And elk. One section of the 101 was just crawling grazing with them.



When we got to Eureka, we ate at the Lost Coast Brewery, read some papers we snagged at the local food co-op, and went to bed.

The next day, we went to the zoo, where we saw something shocking.

An alpaca (identified as "Pano") having relations with a llama!!




I mean, I'd heard that Humboldt is very liberal, but nothing had prepared me for such terrible wantonness! I am writing a letter to Congress to demand a Ban on Alpaca on Llama Humpiness Amendment for our Constitution, and I think you should too!

I would have complained to the Zoo management about the depraved display, but then they might have asked why I was taking so many pictures.