Seattle And Back Again: An Asian's Tale by Tom L. (Day Three)
Day Three - Wednesday, August 6th, 2008
Tom continues his travel up the coast of Northern California, bidding a fond farewell to San Francisco in the process. He has a fast food incident, some ice cream, delicious mexican food that really hit the spot, and a hotel room view to die for.
Our day in San Francisco behind us, we woke up to now-familiar views and a noon deadline to check out of the hotel. We do so, and it isn't until after we drive out of the parking lot that we left our car in that we realize that we probably should have eaten some breakfast in the surrounding area after we had checked out, but before we had left the lot. Parking fees were not a factor at that point in time. Thus, genius points awarded, we decided to continue exiting the city and see what kinds of eats can be had on the other side of the bridge.
The bridge, of course, being the Golden Gate Bridge. I don't personally ever recall being on a bridge of this length before, so it was quite an experience to approach the thing from a distance, close in, and ultimately driving on it. As you can see from the pictures, it was still quite foggy, even at about 11:30am, so I wasn't able to see the entire bridge.
I'm guessing that it's more of a testament to how weird the weather in San Francisco can be, because once we crossed the Golden Gate Bay and stopped at the vintage point, we could see the low cover of clouds over SF. Our side of the Bay was all blue sky and sun.
This is me at 11:30 in the morning, Golden Gate Bridge and tourists in the background, looking Asian. You can see Eddie in the reflection of my right (your left) sunglass lens.
Once we had our fill of the view of the Bay, SF, Alcatraz et al, it was time to address our next issue: breakfast/lunch.
I'm going save space by saying that we ended up going to McDonald's. It was off the freeway (as it usually is), I had a craving for Chicken McNuggets, and we didn't want to look for a place to eat anymore. In we walked, me looking around hopefully for a poster that advertised a $1 4-piece McNuggets deal. No dice. So I set my eyes on the next best thing: the 6-piece Chicken McNugget Happy Meal. Those of you snickering can stop. It's perfect, you see; you get McNuggets, small fries, small drink, and a toy! So I sauntered up to the cashier, and while laughing (to create rapport with said cashier because, well, it is a bit silly for a grown man to order a Happy Meal for himself, and if the dude was going to make a stink out of it, at least he now considered me an acquaintance; not just customer #334), ordered the aforementioned meal. I'm feeling victorious at this point, because I was going to get all that I wanted plus a toy!
So I pick up my 6-piece Chicken McNugget Happy Meal and sit down. Everyone knows that first act of the Happy Meal Protocol is to see what toy you got, and... I got a girl's toy! Ya, really funny, cashier man. I know you probably frown upon adults partaking in a recommended-for-children value package, but did you have to ruin my victory with a toy manufactured for the intent of amusing a 6 to 12 year old little girl? I was hoping for a cool set of binoculars disguised as a plastic book (actual Wendy's toy), or a Happy Meal box that transforms into a red dinosaur (also real), but instead you got me an un-posable orange-haired girl on rollerskates. Thanks.
The above picture was taken about a week later at my home, where the perpetually peppy girl in a yellow vest and her monkey sporting too-cool-for-you stunners (read: sunglasses) now reside.
After our first meal of the day, we continued our journey 400+ miles from where we originally started to... hit traffic for the first time. Ironic, as we had kind of left Los Angeles and its congestion of car in search of the open road. After a while we left civilization behind and entered the dense, sparsely populated forests of Northern California. The drive was scenic, but after the first hundred winding curve up and down the sides of mountains, a craggy wall of rock on either side and steep drops into the unknown on the other, it all looked and felt the same. This is the part of trips where your mind wanders, your eyes straining to see between the trees lined up on the sides of the highway, looking for giant moving shapes that could be bears. You think about getting flat tires and wrong turns, and inbred cannibal cousins who depend on green travelers for sustenance.
Anyway, after about three hours of that we reached Mendocino. Perhaps it was the overcast weather, but the place didn't look like how it did in the brochures. Maybe we just didn't venture far enough into the heart of town, but we both got the eerie sense that the town, nay, the village, was more akin to the cinematic cultish communities of yore. You know, the ones that snatch road-weary travelers at night from their rooms at the inn and then proceed to ritualistically kill them in the town square to appease their pagan gods. I am pretty sure that the apex of their local church was topped by a statue of a dude wielding a scythe. I could be wrong; it could just have been hysteria. In any case, it was time for a stop at the local ice cream shop, which I heard was quite excellent.
Frankie's Hand Made Ice Cream was a small, quaint ice cream parlor with free WiFi that sat close to the 101. They served the more traditional flavors, like chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, but also more exotic flavors like mushroom. Yeah, I know it's a vacation, but I wasn't about to hand the happiness of my stomach over to such a blend of milk and fungi. I settled for chocolate.
Being so close to the end of an immense forest didn't seem to diminish the spirits of the locals any, as the back of their overhead menus was a blackboard covered in the random things they have been asked transcribed by the parlor's workers. Some classic ones:
Snack complete, we went back on the road to Eureka. There was a whole lot of what the next picture shows on this leg of the drive, though I do want to point out the lone cyclist in the picture. He's pretty far out from dense civilization at this point; he's a brave soul indeed.
Here are more pictures highlight pretty much all there was to see in this neck of the woods. Can you imagine living in that house? There is no other house for miles, by the way. I can't.
Before you get to Eureka via the 101 you go through the legendary Redwood Forest of California.
It was here that we encountered more of my kind, in the form of travel that only my race can fathom. Why they were going to Eureka, I don't know. For the slow, it's not the Prius.
If you didn't know, the redwoods are tall. It got more and more ridiculously tall as we went, eventually stretching to a height that in a photograph a car was diminished to perhaps less than a tenth of the photograph. Useful for a frame of reference.
We didn't do the whole drive through the giant redwood bit because, well, it wasn't free, and it didn't seem like it was worth however much the tourist trap operators wanted to gouge us with. I would have stopped to take some photos along the way, if not for my irrational fears of getting mauled by a bear. We made it to Eureka just at dusk. Eureka is a pretty ghetto-looking town (read: El Monte) that is famous for its Victorian era architecture. My scouring of the Eureka wikipedia entry unearthed the factoid that the actor Brendan Fraser is from Eureka.
We arrived in the city just in time for us to get hungry. Luckily, I had prepared for such an event, and had found a Mexican restaurant that was conveniently across the street from the Red Lion Hotel that we were crashing at for the night. When I found it on yelp.com, its name was Carmela's. When we got there, the restaurant was actually named Puerto Escondido. Whoops. In any case, the food was fabulously authentic. I had the chicken enchiladas, which came on a hot plate with fresh rice and refried beans. It really hit the spot. Highly recommended in my book.
Our appetites thus satiated, we retired to our room, in order to veg out in front of the TV. Speaking of our hotel, I had wanted to keep all the pictures with the days that they were taken, but our hotel room's view was so magnificent, so glorious, that I decided to travel to the future and bring you a photo of our view that was taken the next morning here to you in the present as a present to you, loyal reader. (Much the same with the previous picture) It is with this picture that I will leave you. Until Day Four.
His trip now a third over, Tom gears up for an eight hour expedition through the entire state of Oregon, only to find that the details of even the best plan don't always favor the prepared.
Tom continues his travel up the coast of Northern California, bidding a fond farewell to San Francisco in the process. He has a fast food incident, some ice cream, delicious mexican food that really hit the spot, and a hotel room view to die for.
Our day in San Francisco behind us, we woke up to now-familiar views and a noon deadline to check out of the hotel. We do so, and it isn't until after we drive out of the parking lot that we left our car in that we realize that we probably should have eaten some breakfast in the surrounding area after we had checked out, but before we had left the lot. Parking fees were not a factor at that point in time. Thus, genius points awarded, we decided to continue exiting the city and see what kinds of eats can be had on the other side of the bridge.
The bridge, of course, being the Golden Gate Bridge. I don't personally ever recall being on a bridge of this length before, so it was quite an experience to approach the thing from a distance, close in, and ultimately driving on it. As you can see from the pictures, it was still quite foggy, even at about 11:30am, so I wasn't able to see the entire bridge.
I'm guessing that it's more of a testament to how weird the weather in San Francisco can be, because once we crossed the Golden Gate Bay and stopped at the vintage point, we could see the low cover of clouds over SF. Our side of the Bay was all blue sky and sun.
This is me at 11:30 in the morning, Golden Gate Bridge and tourists in the background, looking Asian. You can see Eddie in the reflection of my right (your left) sunglass lens.
Once we had our fill of the view of the Bay, SF, Alcatraz et al, it was time to address our next issue: breakfast/lunch.
I'm going save space by saying that we ended up going to McDonald's. It was off the freeway (as it usually is), I had a craving for Chicken McNuggets, and we didn't want to look for a place to eat anymore. In we walked, me looking around hopefully for a poster that advertised a $1 4-piece McNuggets deal. No dice. So I set my eyes on the next best thing: the 6-piece Chicken McNugget Happy Meal. Those of you snickering can stop. It's perfect, you see; you get McNuggets, small fries, small drink, and a toy! So I sauntered up to the cashier, and while laughing (to create rapport with said cashier because, well, it is a bit silly for a grown man to order a Happy Meal for himself, and if the dude was going to make a stink out of it, at least he now considered me an acquaintance; not just customer #334), ordered the aforementioned meal. I'm feeling victorious at this point, because I was going to get all that I wanted plus a toy!
So I pick up my 6-piece Chicken McNugget Happy Meal and sit down. Everyone knows that first act of the Happy Meal Protocol is to see what toy you got, and... I got a girl's toy! Ya, really funny, cashier man. I know you probably frown upon adults partaking in a recommended-for-children value package, but did you have to ruin my victory with a toy manufactured for the intent of amusing a 6 to 12 year old little girl? I was hoping for a cool set of binoculars disguised as a plastic book (actual Wendy's toy), or a Happy Meal box that transforms into a red dinosaur (also real), but instead you got me an un-posable orange-haired girl on rollerskates. Thanks.
The above picture was taken about a week later at my home, where the perpetually peppy girl in a yellow vest and her monkey sporting too-cool-for-you stunners (read: sunglasses) now reside.
After our first meal of the day, we continued our journey 400+ miles from where we originally started to... hit traffic for the first time. Ironic, as we had kind of left Los Angeles and its congestion of car in search of the open road. After a while we left civilization behind and entered the dense, sparsely populated forests of Northern California. The drive was scenic, but after the first hundred winding curve up and down the sides of mountains, a craggy wall of rock on either side and steep drops into the unknown on the other, it all looked and felt the same. This is the part of trips where your mind wanders, your eyes straining to see between the trees lined up on the sides of the highway, looking for giant moving shapes that could be bears. You think about getting flat tires and wrong turns, and inbred cannibal cousins who depend on green travelers for sustenance.
Anyway, after about three hours of that we reached Mendocino. Perhaps it was the overcast weather, but the place didn't look like how it did in the brochures. Maybe we just didn't venture far enough into the heart of town, but we both got the eerie sense that the town, nay, the village, was more akin to the cinematic cultish communities of yore. You know, the ones that snatch road-weary travelers at night from their rooms at the inn and then proceed to ritualistically kill them in the town square to appease their pagan gods. I am pretty sure that the apex of their local church was topped by a statue of a dude wielding a scythe. I could be wrong; it could just have been hysteria. In any case, it was time for a stop at the local ice cream shop, which I heard was quite excellent.
Frankie's Hand Made Ice Cream was a small, quaint ice cream parlor with free WiFi that sat close to the 101. They served the more traditional flavors, like chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, but also more exotic flavors like mushroom. Yeah, I know it's a vacation, but I wasn't about to hand the happiness of my stomach over to such a blend of milk and fungi. I settled for chocolate.
Being so close to the end of an immense forest didn't seem to diminish the spirits of the locals any, as the back of their overhead menus was a blackboard covered in the random things they have been asked transcribed by the parlor's workers. Some classic ones:
- What kind of bread does the ice cream sandwich come with?
- Do people actually live in Mendocino?
- How far away is civilization?
- Is this a Mexican restaurant?
Snack complete, we went back on the road to Eureka. There was a whole lot of what the next picture shows on this leg of the drive, though I do want to point out the lone cyclist in the picture. He's pretty far out from dense civilization at this point; he's a brave soul indeed.
Here are more pictures highlight pretty much all there was to see in this neck of the woods. Can you imagine living in that house? There is no other house for miles, by the way. I can't.
Before you get to Eureka via the 101 you go through the legendary Redwood Forest of California.
It was here that we encountered more of my kind, in the form of travel that only my race can fathom. Why they were going to Eureka, I don't know. For the slow, it's not the Prius.
If you didn't know, the redwoods are tall. It got more and more ridiculously tall as we went, eventually stretching to a height that in a photograph a car was diminished to perhaps less than a tenth of the photograph. Useful for a frame of reference.
We didn't do the whole drive through the giant redwood bit because, well, it wasn't free, and it didn't seem like it was worth however much the tourist trap operators wanted to gouge us with. I would have stopped to take some photos along the way, if not for my irrational fears of getting mauled by a bear. We made it to Eureka just at dusk. Eureka is a pretty ghetto-looking town (read: El Monte) that is famous for its Victorian era architecture. My scouring of the Eureka wikipedia entry unearthed the factoid that the actor Brendan Fraser is from Eureka.
We arrived in the city just in time for us to get hungry. Luckily, I had prepared for such an event, and had found a Mexican restaurant that was conveniently across the street from the Red Lion Hotel that we were crashing at for the night. When I found it on yelp.com, its name was Carmela's. When we got there, the restaurant was actually named Puerto Escondido. Whoops. In any case, the food was fabulously authentic. I had the chicken enchiladas, which came on a hot plate with fresh rice and refried beans. It really hit the spot. Highly recommended in my book.
Our appetites thus satiated, we retired to our room, in order to veg out in front of the TV. Speaking of our hotel, I had wanted to keep all the pictures with the days that they were taken, but our hotel room's view was so magnificent, so glorious, that I decided to travel to the future and bring you a photo of our view that was taken the next morning here to you in the present as a present to you, loyal reader. (Much the same with the previous picture) It is with this picture that I will leave you. Until Day Four.
His trip now a third over, Tom gears up for an eight hour expedition through the entire state of Oregon, only to find that the details of even the best plan don't always favor the prepared.