January 15, 2014
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Epic Road Trip, day 22, part 2
I don’t think I’ve done a good job of keeping track where I was taking the photos, but on this day I was traveling from Roseville to Fairfield and then on to Eureka, all in California. It was 338.68 miles. Maybe when I get “home” I’ll recap my journey by showing my itinerary and how many miles I traveled each day, something I should have been doing all along but forgot since I had too many photos to show!
Till then I’ll continue my slip-shod method of showing you where I went without telling you where I was. Cause, I don’t know.
I’ve driven up and down California several times so I felt like I was in somewhat familiar territory now and as on this whole trip I had specific goals of places I wanted to see, but this time it was places I wanted to see again rather than new places. But, before we got to Confusion Hill, we stopped at a “Solar Energy / Green Living” place in Hopland, which was interesting.
The outdoor structures were innovative and functional.
And the store inside was pretty cool till we got to the section promoting marijuana and we decided it was time to move on. Quickly.
You really can’t drive in this part of California without seeing some redwood or other with bragging rights, like this one in Ukiah.
There was a Muffler Man in Willits that we wanted to see, but it took a great deal of searching. Finally spotted him hiding behind barbed wire fencing by some rodeo grounds.
Then, on to Piercy and Confusion Hill, where gravity and magnetic fields are not the way we think they should be. We all love optical illusions so I’d been keeping the admittance fee stashed away and keeping a block of time open so we could play here.
And it started in a shoe house.
And quickly went into picking the noses of or getting bit by statues. Of course. Have you noticed this theme on the trip?
I was amused by this sign.
And the kids decided to give examples. In reality they both enjoyed this place.
We opted to spend some extra money to take the train ride.
Which had a 100 MPH speed limit so most the photos I got were blurry. Ha ha!
We stopped often but the whole place was pretty run down and while it was fun to be on the little train and to see the different sites they’d set up for our amusement it wasn’t really worth the expense. But, of course, I didn’t know that and I would have regretted not doing and imagining it was cooler than it really was. Still, I got some interesting shots.
And, since the train was full of foreign tourists, we had some fun photobombing their pictures and playing around with our own.
Our engineer was rather odd. Besides his floppy tattoos and unfortunate clothing choices, he was full of jokes that slammed previous owners, lamented the “destruction” caused by logging, kept telling us he was lying, and was just, in general, a negative and somewhat crude guy. Maybe I would have enjoyed the tour a lot more if we’d had a better engineer.
And I neither tipped nor fed him.
But the kids did get to blow the train’s whistle! Worth the price of admission right there!
Then it was time to walk around and get dizzy!
This one got cropped a bit, but you can just see there on the right how the water is flowing up the trough.
Then it was just all kinds of fun to try to stand upright. No, the real fun was trying to get photos of kids trying to stand upright while I’m struggling with it myself! Woooo!
And more water flowing uphill –
And a few signs.
Then, it was getting late and we needed to set up camp so we said our goodbyes to the crazy place and headed off to the KOA we had reservations at. But, before we got there we saw this not-quite-a-muffler-man that we got a picture of.
Then, the most exciting part of the trip, maybe! We had been driving through nothing for quite a while, hadn’t see any civilization and the few exits we saw didn’t seem to go anywhere, which is when my gas tank light went on. As far as I knew, that meant I had about 30 miles or so before it was actually empty so I did a search on my GPS for the nearest gas station, which was some 25 miles in the wrong direction. The nearest station to the north was some 45 miles. What to do, what to do. While I may have a lot of rocks, and Jelly Bellies, and camp chairs I hadn’t used even once on this trip, I did NOT have any spare gas. Going to the nearest would take us so far out of the way we’d be late getting to the campground, going forward might leave us stranded on the side of the road who knows where.
What would you do?
I like “might” better than definite in this case so we plowed ahead in the hopes that GeePS was outdated and there was a gas station closer it didn’t know about. I thought this might be where my new AAA membership might come in handy, and thought since I’m a long ways from nowhere I should call now and have them meet me in the approximate location I’ll be spluttering to a halt so I don’t waste time waiting for them.
Well, according to my GPS, I drove 42 miles beyond where the light had gone on, and I didn’t run out before finding a station. I was curious to fill the tank and see how many gallons went in, but it was by far the most expensive gas I’d stopped for on the entire trip and opted instead to get get a few gallons, just enough to get me somewhere more competitive in their pricing.
So, I didn’t have to go out of my way, I didn’t have to call AAA, and I was doing good for time to the KOA. Except I couldn’t find it. I had an address for it in my GPS, I had directions from the campground in my book, and they were both pointing to nothing. I finally called them up and asked where they were and she was able to direct me to their real location, another 10 miles or so down the road.
Let me just say, KOA is great when you rent their cabins, they usually have nice facilities and sometimes a pool, but they have the idea that as tent campers we like being sardines! I don’t.
Our little tent barely fit in the space, the lines for the fly actually went under the divider. But, this ended up being one of those experiences I won’t forget because as we were trying to settle down to sleep, the guy in the tent next to us started to read aloud to his wife. I know this because I could hear every word. I was sad when he stopped reading but I got to listen to their conversation about the book section he’d read, so all in all it was quite a pleasant stay and we slept well.
