Channel Mike

Today was basically another travel day, but gave us more time and less distance so we were able to explore and have a little fun.

As we left our hotel, we swung by a local South San Francisco yacht club just to see the boats and the sights. There was a Miata owners club barbecue going on. The kids thought it was funny to see all the same model cars all parked in a row. The sight of the masts all reaching into the air with the San Francisco Bay in the background was nice.

We drove on, up the 101, onto 80, and across the Bay Bridge. It was disappointing to drive the whole way across on a layered bridge. The opposing traffic was above us on a second layer so we didn't have a very good view of anything. It was like being in a tunnel with large windows. We could see out the sides and see that Alcatraz island, Yerba Buena Island, and Treasure Island were all there. But we could not really check them out.

We stopped at Target for some supplies and had some fun there. I think it was the first two-level Target I've ever been in. They had some cool escalators with and up and a down for people and an additional up and down escalator for your cart. Cool stuff.

Our next stop was Berkeley. I wanted to try eating at a place I had seen called "Barney's Gourmet Burgers" that had good reviews. We drove up Solano Ave to find it. This was a super-cool place. There were independent shops up and down the street. The most refreshing thing to me was how shop owners would put up signs and comics and other expressions of opinion in their shop windows. Compared to the lawyer-induced crap we see as footers to everything nowadays ("The content of this post may not reflect the opinion of the hosting company, the registrar, or your ISP") this was delightful. We overshot the whole section of town we were looking for, turned around and parked, then walked some of it. The weather was lovely, cool and sunny. We found the burger shop, which gets five stars from me. Great burgers, even better fries, and a laid back clean atmosphere. I had one covered in mushrooms and melted swiss cheese. I picked up a local paper but never got to read it. I showed Jak the ads on the back for the marijuana dispensaries and never got it back. Is pot still cool when the counterculture becomes the culture? I'm betting nationwide legalization would reduce the demand and kill the coolness. Perhaps not.

From here, we hit the road for real, a 3 hour jaunt north to Redding, CA. We were distracted, though, by a serendipitous sighting of a jelly belly billboard in the middle of a conversation about how Jelly Bellies are made in San Francisco. A quick exit, a diversion through a new car sale, another diversion through a neighborhood, and a GPS-guided correction through a commercial park, and we came upon the Jelly Belly factory complete with decorations, tours, samples, and full priced candy. We spent about two more hours and $70 there. We took the tour. We got our picture taken. We ate samples. We ate ice cream. We bought pounds of candy. And we all wore white hats with the Jelly Belly logo on the side. We got to try the new honey flavored bean and also ate beans at different stages of production. Everybody loved the flavor of the juicy pear bean before being polished. A little tart with strong pear flavor. Yum.

We got to Anderson (a few miles south of Redding where our Gaia Hotel was located) a few hours later and checked into the hotel. It was a green hotel that had monitors installed in the lobby with current levels of electricity use, water use, and CO2 emissions of the resort. Like normal, we were unable to get adjoining rooms with doors between, but it was clean and comfortable. There were swans with babies swimming in the fountain and cherries growing on a tree out front. We made the quick trip to Redding for dinner at The Olive Garden (a favorite of Emma for the cute waiters and Shannon for the comfort of knowing they'll have something she likes). Trying to get back caused us problems. They have a ridiculous onramp setup where you have to get on one freeway (44) to get the the main freeway (5). After thinking "I don't want 44! I want 5!" several times, you finally figure out that you need 44 to get there and aquiesce. So you then try to get on 44 westbound where you just know you got off, but it only goes eastbound. The westbound exit is a half-mile away on another road! We fought this about three times before finally figuring it out the next day on our way out of town. Even GPS, while trying to be helpful, couldn't fix it because in my stubborn head, I just knew we got off the freeway in one place and the GPS must be taking us to another onramp.

Eventually, back to Anderson, back to the room, and into bed for a partial night's sleep.