{"id":475,"date":"2013-07-06T17:04:57","date_gmt":"2013-07-06T22:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/fathertime\/?p=475"},"modified":"2013-07-14T08:44:13","modified_gmt":"2013-07-14T13:44:13","slug":"scenic-california-avmtour-recap-part-four","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/?p=475","title":{"rendered":"Blue Skies and Dinosaurs: #AVMTour Recap Part Four"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s part four of my recap of last month’s Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Tour<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"AVM<\/a><\/em>Between all the exercise we had at Muir Woods the day before and the very comfortable beds at the Acqua Hotel, the girls and I had a great night’s sleep prior to Day Four of our trip. After a nice breakfast at the hotel, we packed up our rental car and headed back in San Francisco. By the end of the day, we needed to be in Three Rivers, California, just south of Sequoia National Park. But more immediately, we were meeting Jen and Natasha, a couple of colleagues of mine who work at the Academy of Art University in SF, for coffee.<\/p>\n

As GPS Kate led us through the streets of San Francisco, I noticed a funny-shaped street on my phone’s map. GPS Kate was directing us around it, but there was no way I was going to pass up the opportunity to drive down Lombard Street, the crookedest street in the world. (You’ve seen pictures. It’s a San Francisco landmark.)<\/p>\n

I muted GPS Kate, who had other ideas, and headed for the zigzags I saw on the map. I quickly realized that before going down Lombard Street, one must go up Lombard Street. I’m sure the incline wasn’t as bad as it seemed, but it seemed to be 45 degrees. I had these visions of the front wheels of my car arcing up over the backwheels and sliding down the hill on my roof.<\/p>\n

That didn’t happen, of course, and when we got to the top of the hill, we could see the famous switchbacks of Lombard Street before us. It was slow doing, because of the switchbacks and because of all the other tourists doing exactly what we were doing. There were plenty of tourists there on foot, too, along with colorful beds of flowers everywhere we looked. As was the case the day before driving over the Golden Gate Bridge, I couldn’t get any photos, but the girls got it all on video. And we appeared in probably hundreds of photos taken by the tourists lining the street!<\/p>\n

We had a nice time visiting with my friends at the nearby coffee shop. I was grateful for the chance to talk to an adult for a change, and the girls liked the hot chocolate there well enough. They offered to show us their office, which turned out to have incredible views of the San Francisco Bay. And a parked trolley car along the way made for a handy photo opp.<\/p>\n

As much fun as we were having, I knew we had a lot of miles to cover before the end of the day, so after a quick stop at a convenience store to stock up on snacks for the road, we headed out of town. It was only four or five hours to Three Rivers, California, if we took the direct route, but I wanted the girls to see a little of Highway 1, the scenic coast highway that runs south of SF. That meant adding an hour to our journey. Plus, I had a list of interesting and occasionally weird roadside attractions for us to stop and see during the drive, thanks to the incredibly useful website Roadside America<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Montara<\/a>The views along Highway 1 were spectacular. We drove for about an hour before stopping for lunch in Half Moon Bay. Hannah seemed more interested in taking care of the virtual pets in her Nintendo DSi game, but Lily kept her eyes directed out the window the whole time. I stopped a few times to take photos, and Lily joined me almost every time, eager to put her hot pink camera to work. I probably could have stopped every five minutes to take photos, the views were so amazing, but I knew we had ground to cover.<\/p>\n

\"Dinosaurs<\/a>We reached our first roadside attraction just before lunch. There’s a little area just outside Half Moon Bay called Spanish Town where a number of artists have shops. One of the artists specializes in, well, yard ornaments, and years ago he built a number of giant metal dinosaurs that now sit, very rusty, in front of Spanish Town. The girls and I spent a fun ten minutes wandering among the dinosaurs (and assorted other animals) taking pictures and making silly dinosaur faces. After a quick lunch at a nearby Subway, we were on our way again.<\/p>\n

Lily fell asleep not long after lunch, which further limited my ability to stop and take photos. I made Hannah put away her DSi and look out the window, which wasn’t stimulating enough for her, so I spent a while telling her stories I remembers from reading West Coast Avengers<\/em> as a kid. The whole series, which starred Hawkeye among other Avengers, took place in California and nearby states, so I figured it was on topic.<\/p>\n

\"Ms.<\/a>Highway 1 led us into Santa Cruz, home to the second roadside attraction on my list. This one I couldn’t pass up, given the theme of our trip. Outside the Seymour Marine Discovery Center sits an 87-foot-long blue whale skeleton, named Ms. Blue. The whale washed up nearby a few decades ago, already dead. Scientists preserved the skeleton and it’s been on display in Santa Cruz since then. The girls and I had seen live blue whales (the largest animals ever to walk, swim, or fly this world) just two days earlier. Now we could see another blue whale–okay, a skeleton–up close to get a better sense of just how massive these creatures are. I was once again thankful I had rented a wide-angle lens for the trip!<\/p>\n

My plan was to check out Ms. Blue and hit the road. We still had at least four hours of driving ahead of us, and it was already approached 4pm. But the girls begged to go in and see the Marine Discovery Center, so I mentally crossed out everything else on my list of roadside attractions, and paid the entrance fee. This turned out to be a great choice–the discovery center was small but full of interesting sea creatures and friendly, informative staff. We were able to pet (and learn about) some kind of small shark, lots of colorful starfish, sea cucumbers (very freaky), and a few other varieties of sea life. The only problem was that we had so much fun that we missed our opportunity to shop at the gift store, which closed at 5pm. That made for a couple of sad little girls for a little while.<\/p>\n

Back on the road, we hit a massive traffic jam, losing maybe a hour to Santa Cruz rush-hour traffic. (I think it was just normal rush hour traffic; I never saw an accident or construction site.) The following hour wasn’t any more enjoyable, at least for me. Let’s just say that I started to feel better after I picked up some Imodium at a gas station somewhere east of Santa Cruz.<\/p>\n

\"Pacheco<\/a>By that time, we were about 50 miles east of Ms. Blue, driving through Pacheco Pass into California’s Central Valley, trading horizons full of farmland for the otherworldly beauty of the Diablo Mountain Range. I wish there had been time or places to stop and take photos.. the hills there were like nothing I had ever seen before. There was a stretch with hills on the left and the San Luis Reservoir on the right that was just stunning–and a bit scary given the lack of guardrails on the two-line highway we were traveling!<\/p>\n

That reservoir was pretty much the last interesting thing we saw that night. Once we hit the flatness of the Central Valley, there was nothing but massive farms on both sides of the road. In fact, I would say that the drive that evening to Fresno was one of the most boring drives of my life. Fortunately, the girls were well-behaved, playing on Hannah’s DSi and later watching a movie on my laptop. We had a late dinner at a McDonald’s in Fresno, which was one of the most stressful parts of the trip. I don’t know if there’s a good side of town in Fresno, but we were definitely on the bad side. After that, the girls zonked out, which meant I got to drive the rest of the way to Three Rivers listening to whatever music I wanted!<\/p>\n

You might think our night ended once we got settled in our room at the Comfort Inn & Suites in Three Rivers, but you would be so, so wrong. After about an hour of sleep, I woke to the sounds of Lily coughing. Before I could figure out why that bothered me, she had thrown up all over the bed, the poor kid. I carried her to the bathroom, got her cleaned up, and phoned the hotel’s front desk, asking for fresh… everything for the bed. Once I got the bed situated, Lily went right back to sleep. The only good thing about little kids getting sick is that throwing up gets whatever it is out of their system. It was a miserable experience for her, but I figured we were out of the woods.<\/p>\n

An hour later, I woke to the sounds of Hannah coughing.<\/p>\n

I didn’t waste any time trying to get Hannah to the bathroom, but I wasn’t fast enough. She tossed her cookies all over the place. I carried her to the bathroom, got her cleaned up, and called the front desk again. (“You’re not going to believe this, but my other<\/em> daughter just threw up.”) Neither girl got sick again during the entire trip, fortunately, but that night in Three Rivers wasn’t a fun one! I’m guessing that this was the result of hours of driving combined with a lot of junk food along the way. Two days later, for our nine-hour drive to the Grand Canyon, I made sure we had healthy snacks! That apparently prevented a similar night in Arizona.<\/p>\n

Hannah took a while to get settled that night. Her tummy was feeling better, but she couldn’t fall asleep. So I let her watch some TV, which woke up Lily. It was probably three in the morning before we all finally went back to sleep. I figured the next day would be a miserable one because of that, but the girls did fine. I’ll recap that next day, which featured our trip to Sequoia National Park, in my next blog post.<\/p>\n

Since I don’t want to leave you on a low note, here’s one more photo from our drive along Highway 1 near Santa Cruz. It’s a beautiful stretch of road.<\/p>\n

\"Highway<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s part four of my recap of last month’s Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Tour. Between all the exercise we had at Muir Woods the day before and the very comfortable beds at the Acqua Hotel, the girls and I had a great night’s sleep prior to Day Four of our trip. After a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[99],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-avmtour","column","twocol","has-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":495,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions\/495"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/derekbruff.org\/blogs\/disfordad\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}