San Francisco Tour and Show – Day 81

San Francisco Tour and Show

Day 81 – June 20, 2003 – Friday

We continue to extend our stay with son Ryan in San Francisco. More phone help today. Ryan has hired a new helper to start on Monday. Alcatraz tours are sold out for the weekend!

32 years ago today, on June 20, 1971, Barbara Jane Gray Windsor and I flew from Dallas to Montego Bay, Jamaica on our honeymoon. It was a wonderful honeymoon provided by my parents. We have so many funny stories to tell from that trip! We’ll never forget the unmarked taxicab with a trunk full of bananas; the little guy who fixed the problem with the two single beds in our “honeymoon suite” by strapping the legs of the beds together to form one larger bed with a massive valley down the center; the 15-year-old Cadillac “limo” convertible with longhorns mounted on the hood that picked us up for horseback riding; the horseback ride that left Bozzie Jane bruised from ankle to ankle; the looks on people’s faces around the pool when they saw the young groom and his bride with bruised thighs and legs; and the glass-bottom boat that ran out of gas and drifted out into the ocean.

We went on the San Francisco Fire Engine Tour and Adventure today. It was one of the tours available from Ryan’s company — www.alcatraz.us. We rode around in a big, shiny red fire engine with bells clanging. The 1955 Mack Fire Engine has been beautifully restored. The tour went from the waterfront through the Presidio, across the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and back again. We had seen all of these sights before, but never in a 1955 fire engine. Robert and Marilyn Katzman dressed us up in fireman coats and hats. Folks on the street certainly do enjoy seeing you pass by. The Katzmans are really nice people. Marilyn sings songs and tap dances, and she got all of us singing. We learned a lot about firefighting, and we got some good photos. It was a lot of fun. Robert and Marilyn live in a real, restored 107-year-old Victorian firehouse bought from the city when modern fire trucks became too large to fit through the doors. They have a Dalmation and their own fire pole. I forgot to ask if they know Richard Tuck. There are so many interesting people in the San Francisco area!

The Fire Engine Tour crosses the Golden Gate Bridge twice, and we crossed it a total of six times today. The bridge links San Francisco with Marin County, and it can be crossed by car, by bicycle, or on foot. The Golden Gate Bridge took more than four years to construct, and it cost $35 million. It is a visitor attraction recognized around the world. The conventional wisdom in the early 1930s was that it would be impossible to bridge the Golden Gate because of insurmountable difficulties. Joseph B. Strauss thought it could be done, and it was his dream to do it. Though Strauss lived for only a year beyond the completion of the bridge, his dream came true, and he built one of the world’s most impressive landmarks. The 1.7-mile long suspension bridge opened to vehicular traffic on May 28, 1937, at twelve o’clock noon, ahead of schedule and under budget. President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced the opening from the White House. The Golden Gate Bridge’s 4,200-foot-long main suspension span was a world record for 27 years. The bridge’s two towers rise 746 feet making them 191 feet taller than the Washington Monument. The Golden Gate Bridge crosses Golden Gate Strait which is about 400 feet deep. The two main cables that support the floor of the bridge are 4,200 feet long. These cables are 36 1/2 inches in diameter, the largest bridge cables ever made. Each cable is 7,659 feet long and contains 27,572 parallel wires, enough to encircle the world more than three times at the equator. The design of the Golden Gate Bridge is considered to be Art Deco.

Dinner was again provided by Ryan’s personal chef, Karen.

Tonight, we saw the renowned San Francisco show, Beach Blanket Babylon. It is a wonderfully entertaining show — more entertaining than many of the Broadway shows we’ve seen. Beach Blanket Babylon is hard to define; I guess you’d call it a musical comedy. There was great rock/pop music throughout — often with lyric changes to make the songs funny.

Beach Blanket Babylon is the longest-running musical in the world; it began in 1974. The show is hilarious with various “skits” and routines of different types. Each of the performers is incredibly talented. Val Diamond would be regarded as the star of the show, and this was her 25th year with Beach Blanket Babylon. She is outrageously funny, and she has an incredible voice that enables her to sing a wide range of songs.

The show is a musical spoof of pop culture, and the show continually changes to make current events part of the show. For example, Martha Stewart, the Dixie Chicks, and the French were the targets of jokes that generated a lot of laughter tonight. There’s a skit about Hillary and Bill and Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky and the many other young Clinton women. President and Laura Bush, the Bush twins, Elvis, Snow White, Madonna, Eminem, Diana Ross, N’Sync, James Brown, Barbra Streisand, Puff Daddy, Jennifer Lopez, Tina Turner, Oprah, Whoopie Goldberg, John Travolta, Prince, Michael Jackson, Winona Ryder, Barry Bonds, Mayor Willie Brown, the Beatles, Britney Spears, PG&E, and the Village People were also included.

Big hats are a BIG part of the show. The crowd absolutely loved the show, and we certainly did. It was a full house. When you come to San Francisco, Beach Blanket Babylon should be a MUST DO! Great, great time. As different from “O” as you can get, but equally entertaining. See www.beachblanketbabylon.com. When you book your tickets, be sure to get seats on the area in front of the columns that support the balcony. Go with an open mind and prepared to laugh, and hoot and holler and have a big time.

We met some fun people tonight. Two couples from Greenville, South Carolina were really, really funny. And we sat next to four women (Maryann, Mary Ann, Theo, and Glenda) who have been vacationing together every year for 14 years.

The Daily Journal of Round America:

Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.

You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.

 

More Information on the Sights Visited Today:
San Francisco California — San Francisco Fire Engine Tour — Golden Gate Bridge — Beach Blanket Babylon
 

Happy Anniversary – Day 80

Happy Anniversary

Day 80 – June 19, 2003 – Thursday

On June 19, 1971, in Dallas, Texas, Barbara Jane Gray and I were married. 32 years of wedded bliss today. We dated for almost two years before we were married. I am a really lucky guy.

We continued to extend our stay with son Ryan in San Francisco. Two of Ryan’s key employees had personal emergencies that kept them away from work. Meanwhile, the phones were ringing off the hook. So, we decided late last night that we needed to spend another few days as telephone tour reservation agents. Our job was to help answer the phones and whittle away at the seemingly never-ending list of 300+ calls that ring into voice mail while the lines are busy with other callers. A madhouse. Ryan was working on hiring and training two additional people! He has developed a surprising ability to remain cool under such massive stress. Bozzie and I don’t drink hardly at all, but we felt like we needed to take the wine-tasting tour every night after the stress of each of these phone days.

Boz was actually answering phones today. My duty was returning calls to Alcatraz inquiries left on voice mail, since that’s all I have been trained for. I’m an Alcatraz veteran now.

We weren’t sure when we would leave San Francisco. It would depend on when Ryan had helpers back in place. Tomorrow, we planned to go on a Fire Engine Tour, and we arranged to see the renowned San Francisco show, Beach Blanket Babylon. The plan was to work really hard in the morning and early afternoon and play late tomorrow afternoon and evening.

I enjoyed several emails today from people we have met along the way.

Ryan took us to the Buckeye Roadhouse in Mill Valley for anniversary dinner. Dinner was excellent, and we enjoyed the White Peach Blackberry Cobbler and the S’more Pie. Mike, the valet, was especially nice. At the gas station on the way home, we met Mike and Mike, Jr.

The thought for the day is to make every anniversary special.

The Daily Journal of Round America:

Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.

You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.

More Information on the Sights Visited Today:

San Francisco California — Buckeye Roadhouse

The Land You Used To Be – Day 79

The Land You Used To Be

Day 79 – June 18, 2003 – Wednesday

We extended our visit today with son Ryan in San Francisco. We spent the day helping Ryan with his exploding business. We were telephone tour reservation agents for the day. Our job was to handle the 350 calls that rang into voice mail while the lines were busy with other callers.

This is one wild deal. Ryan specializes in San Francisco and Hollywood, but he has recently expanded to Orlando and San Diego, and is expanding to handle tours in most major tourist destinations in the country within a year or two. He’ll need more phone lines.

If you want great tours in San Francisco, go to www.alcatraz.us. For Hollywood, it’s www.hollywoodtours.us. For Orlando, www.Orlando-Tours.com. For San Diego, www.sandiegotours.us. For everything nationwide, see www.unitedstatestours.us.

We did our weekly radio show at 7:11 am with Dan McGrath of EX-103 in Palm Springs, California.

I didn’t take a single photograph today, but I did add to the website what I feel are the best-quality photos from the last month. Click here to see the best of the new photos — page 3. Here are the best photos from the first two months of the trip — Page 1 and Page 2. The Trip Scorecard has been updated as well as our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip and the running rating of the pie we eat.

Thanks to Kevin Fricke for producing a map that shows our route. See the Itinerary page. The two loops around the country are shows. Click on each of the “routes” to see the routes we are traveling.

The PT Cruiser was repaired. We shipped 44 pounds of accumulated stuff back to Atlanta today.

We received the following poem from a great college friend, Jack D. Kennedy:

America, I Love…..

I confess
I get so nostalgic
For a way of life
That slowly disappeared
Today I hardly recognize our country
Who’d have thought
That it could happen here
Time was folks said grace
At family dinner
And every school day
Opened with a prayer
Now we’ve got
Political correctness
The ACLU in on a tear
Way back when
We all spoke the same language
Back when we kept lunatics
Away from our shores
When did we decide to start this new age
Where the old ways
Just don’t matter anymore
Once we were united
From sea to shining sea
With guidance from above
America, I love…..
The land you used to be

Jack D Kennedy

America is still a fabulous place, but I do agree with Jack’s sentiments that it’s a shame we have lost so much of what America used to be. This has been a strong theme we have felt again and again on this trip. We love the land America used to be.

The Daily Journal of Round America:

Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.

You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.

 

More Information on the Sights Visited Today:
San Francisco California

Writing in San Francisco – Day 78

Writing in San Francisco

Day 78 – June 17, 2003 – Tuesday

We have extended our visit today with son Ryan in San Francisco.

The PT Cruiser went in the shop for brake repair. Ingrid at Midas helped us after Steve at the local Chrysler dealer could promise neither prompt nor courteous service.

Today marked the start of Week 12. 27,178 on the odometer. We racked up 18,113 miles over the first 11 weeks. 66 days on the road with 11 spent writing in Atlanta. So, we averaged right at 275 miles per travel day. 1,005 gallons of gas. The little white car got 20 miles per gallon, but the 4-cylinder PT Cruiser gets just 15 mpg. 23 states so far, though we’d hit several twice. 1,393 towns behind us and about 1,100 ahead. Over 8,000 photos have been taken. We passed only 13 cars in 77 days. We have eaten 73 pieces of pie so far. We have been to three doctors — one eye injury, one ear problem, and a gastrointestinal disorder. No flat tires so far, though the little white car did eat up one set of tires on the first loop. No significant car problems, though the little brake problem that is being repaired today could have been a big problem if Jiffy Lube hadn’t identified it for us. We met well over 1,000 people in the first 77 days. We have given out about 1,200 business cards.

We’re on our second case of beads.

I had visited 48 states prior to this trip. We will soon mark off Alaska and North Dakota — the only two I was missing. I was really looking forward to both Alaska and North Dakota, as was Bozzie Jane.

I spent the day writing. Boz worked on Ryan’s place; she has always been everyone’s interior decorator.

We went shopping for pie today, but all we could find was overpriced packaged pie at the nearby grocery store. We passed. We again enjoyed outstanding meals from Karen, young Ryan’s personal chef.

The Dude has had one of his biggest tour business days ever. He will generate more business this month than he did in all 12 months last year! His biggest problem is that he and his staff just can’t even handle the number of phone calls that come in. The phones ring continuously. We may help The Dude set up a Call Center to more efficiently handle what he has built. It is quite a business; we are really proud of him!

The Daily Journal of Round America:

Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.

You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.

 

More Information on the Sights Visited Today:
San Francisco California
 

Website Photo Day – Day 77

Website Photo Day

Day 77 – June 16, 2003 – Monday

We extended our visit today with son Ryan in San Francisco. We decided to add a day in San Francisco to take care of various “housekeeping chores.” I took the day to try to catch up on the website photos. Boz and Ryan got the oil changed in the PT Cruiser, but we learned that we needed a minor brake repair, so we will have to get that done tomorrow.

It seems we may also be able to help Ryan with his business. So, it looks like we will spend a couple of extra days in San Francisco. We don’t get to San Francisco often, and we’d just flat like to spend more time with The Dude (aka Ryan). We are changing our flight arrangements for Alaska as a result.

We planned to get it all figured out tomorrow.

I worked until 2:30 am, and I finally had photos posted to the website with captions through today! We envy those parents who have their children and grandchildren living near them. This is one of the things that we did not recognize or appreciate in regard to our parents.

The Daily Journal of Round America:

Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.

You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.

 

More Information on the Sights Visited Today:
San Francisco California
 

Fathers Day on the 17-Mile Drive – Day 76

Fathers Day on the 17-Mile Drive

Day 76 – June 15, 2003 – Sunday

We spent a wonderful Father’s Day with son Ryan in Carmel, Monterey, and Santa Cruz, California. We had great conversations with PaPa in Dallas, Texas and Great Grandpa in Orlando, Florida. We also spoke with daughter Brittanita (aka The Beetmeister or Brittany) and son-in-law Ace (aka Robert).

We started the day at the Marin Headlands. The Marin Headlands side of the Golden Gate Bridge is a great place to take photos and watch freighters and sailboats cruise under the bridge as you enjoy a view that stretches from Golden Gate Park and Twin Peaks to the Bay Bridge and beyond.

Boz, Ryan, and I drove from San Francisco to Carmel to take the 17-Mile Drive and have lunch. We planned to return via Monterey and Santa Cruz. We had planned to see these sights on the way to San Francisco, but nightfall caught us. We lived in San Francisco for a year back in the early 80’s, and Ryan has lived here for several years, but it had been 20 years or so since any of us had taken the scenic 17-Mile Drive.

We grabbed a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts and hit the road. They weren’t hot, but they were excellent. As donut experts, we can tell you that the quality of a KK will vary from location to location. These were as good as we’d had, and I’d probably been to as many as 30 KK locations around the country.

17-Mile Drive is a scenic drive through the Del Monte Forest, along the rugged coastline of the Monterey Peninsula in Carmel, and by the world-renowned Pebble Beach Golf Links. It is one of the most famous drives in the country.

17-Mile Drive was originally navigated by horse-drawn carriages back in the 1880’s. Folks would drive through the Del Monte Forest and along the spectacular coastline usually ending up at a picnic spot at Pebble Beach. Samuel F.B. Morse was the property manager of the Del Monte Forest who is credited with taking the steps necessary to maintain the unique beauty of the coast and forest. He must have been a golfer. In 1916, he contracted with Jack Neville and Douglas Grant to design Pebble Beach Golf Links. Construction began in 1917, and the course opened to the public in 1919. The first national tournament was held in 1929. Over the last 30 years, four U.S. Opens have been held at Pebble Beach. Jack Nicklaus is quoted as saying that if he had just one round left to play in his life, he would want it to be at Pebble Beach. It’s a stunning golf course. Barbara Gray Windsor said that if she was a golf course, she would want to be Pebble Beach.

The drive is a loop, and there are 21 stops; we managed to stop for photos at almost all of them. There are five golf courses along the way — Pebble Beach Golf Links, Poppy Hills Golf Course, Links at Spanish Bay, Spyglass Hill Golf Course, and Peter Hay Par 3 Golf Course. The drive goes through the Del Monte Forest and includes native pine and cypress trees as well as huckleberry bushes. The Lone Cypress is perhaps the most recognized landmark along the 17-Mile Drive. The tree has survived on its rocky perch for over 250 years. The coastline is rugged and very beautiful.

It wasn’t the most beautiful of days. Hazy blue sky. We enjoyed the drive, but to be honest, it wasn’t nearly as impressive to us as it was 20 years ago. We weren’t sure if our perspective has changed (having seen a lot of beautiful places in the last 20 years), if the weather was just much better when we were there before, or if construction over the last 20 years has changed the look and feel of the area. There were some gorgeous homes along the drive, but there were also some places that didn’t fit. It’s a beautiful place. I’m sure we were just on sensory overload at this point after having seen so much beautiful scenery all across the country.

We walked around Carmel — a quaint community filled with art galleries and beautiful shops. See www.carmelfun.com. Clint Eastwood was mayor here, and he owns the Hogs Breath Inn, among other things. We took the kids to Hogs Breath 20 years ago, so we stopped in for a late lunch / early dinner at 4 pm. The Dirty Harry Burger is one of the best hamburgers you will ever eat anywhere. We put a penny on top of a beam in the patio when we were there in 1983, but it was no longer there.

As with most of our days, the day was just about over, and we still had Monterey and Santa Cruz to visit.

We just drove through Monterey. We saw Cannery Row and the Monterey Fisherman’s Wharf. The water was a pretty blue in Monterey Bay. We saw the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

In Santa Cruz, we stopped and saw the Santa Cruz Boardwalk — a Coney island-type amusement park. We walked up and down the Boardwalk. I tried a newfangled ice cream called Dippin Dots. Tiny little dots of ice cream. It was REALLY expensive, and there just wasn’t much there. I’ll stick with regular old ice cream and frozen yogurt.

We missed some sights we wanted to see between Carmel and San Francisco, but it was far more important to enjoy a more leisurely Father’s Day with The Dude.

The thought for the day: Sometimes things aren’t as special the second time around.

The Daily Journal of Round America:

Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.

You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.

 

More Information on the Sights Visited Today:
San Francisco California — Marin Headlands — Carmel California — 17-Mile Drive — Hogs Breath Inn — Monterey California — Santa Cruz Boardwalk
 

Behind the Scenes at Circus Chimera – Day 75

Behind the Scenes at Circus Chimera

Day 75 – June 14, 2003 – Saturday

We spent a wonderful day in the San Francisco area with son Ryan.

Ryan took us to meet one of his friends, Richard Tuck. Among other things, Richard owns a circus. Before we knew what was happening, we were meeting the circus performers and enjoying a behind-the-scenes tour of Circus Chimera — www.circuschimera.com. We then enjoyed a special performance of the circus. It was a special day, and Richard is a special person.

Circus Chimera is not your typical circus. It is a blend of the traditional circus with theatre and international flair. Circus Chimera features extraordinary human feats. The ensemble consists of acrobats, aerialists, daredevils, and clowns from 25 countries around the world. It is a real team effort as everyone fills a variety of roles. For example, the high wire aerialist was taking tickets and managing the ushers before changing costumes and performing death-defying routines. The young man selling the programs changed into his costume and did the Walk of Death — walking upside down 50 feet above the circus floor (with no net).

Former Cirque du Soleil artist, Tom Dougherty, developed the theme for this year’s circus — “Moondreams.” It was the story of a little girl’s triumph over self doubt as she and her brother are swept into the magical world of the circus. They were taken on a circus adventure where they encountered aerialists, jugglers, teeterboard acrobats, daredevils of various types, and a very funny clown. The story was told not through words, but through scenes, sets, and circus techniques.

Each of the 16 performances was excellent. Highlights included Fridman’s incredible Walk of Death where he walked upside down the full length of the circus ring — 50 feet in the air with no net. It was amazing when he makes the walk, and it took our breath away when he repeated the feat walking backwards! Hernan Nunez was also incredible. He demonstrated exceptional strength and balance as he supported his outstretched body seemingly forever on one hand. In the next act, he balanced on his head and spun rings with his arms and legs, and they rotated so fast that the rings became just a blur.

Perhaps the most impressive acts to us were by Alex Chimal. He is the world’s fastest juggler. You can’t even believe how fast he juggles balls, knives, and fire. In the second act, he juggled what seemed like 100 balls as he bounced them off the floor.

Tom Dougherty was world-class as the circus clown.

We loved the Lunar Aerial Hoop routine as Mariana Chimal did a beautiful and dangerous aerial act on a single hoop high above the circus floor. The act was excellent, but it was far more entertaining as Richard told us the story behind the act. Mariana met Alex Chimal, and they fell in love and were married. Mariana was an accountant. Alex travels 11 months of the year with the circus as the world’s fastest juggler. So, Mariana joined the circus troupe. Not content to sit on the sidelines, she developed the aerial act after never having done any type of performing ever before. She is now the only CPA in the world who does a Lunar Aerial Hoop act high above a circus floor.

At one point, seven members of the Chimal family plus one Alvarado built a human tower as they launched performers one at a time off a teeterboard until they are stacked five high. Then there were the two young men riding motorcycles inside a steel ball. We just couldn’t imagine how they could keep but ending up in a tangled pile of metal, but they flew around in the ball in a perfectly synchronized way. Oh, the real grabber — Luis Fernandez hangs by his ankle from the top of the tent holding a cable, and his wife Sandra spun like a top on the cable — and she is holding it only with her teeth. And never a net at Circus Chimera.

At the end of the show, the little 10-year-old girl, Alina Sergeeva, spun a pile of hula hoops from just about every part of her body. All made even better by Richard who has told us inside information about the acts, the performers, and the people behind the scenes who help make it all happen.

Richard is a fascinating man who stepped in a few years ago to save the circus. He had also salvaged many artifacts from a San Francisco landmark that was destroyed — Playland at the Beach. In the back of his large computer consulting company’s offices, he has built Playland Not At The Beach. He also has the world’s largest miniature circus there (300,000 pieces). In addition, he has miniature San Francisco, miniature North Pole, miniature Disneyland, miniature Chinatown, miniature Dicken’s Village, miniature Candyland, and much more. See www.playland-not-at-the-beach.com.

And if all of that isn’t fascinating enough, Richard’s HOME has a name; it’s called “It Must Be Magic!” The home features a complete magic theatre, a room with over 450 clocks, a collection of 750 wizard figurines, movie memorabilia from the golden age of Hollywood, a room filled with roller coasters, a real roller coaster, and much, much more. Rooms include the Dickens Parlour, Wizard of Oz Room, Pinball Alley with a huge assortment of pinball machines and video games, a Soda Fountain, and a Movie Theatre with over 18,000 movies available. 100 circus people lived in Richard’s home for several months after he invested in the circus.

When Richard Tuck and Tim Sauer moved into the house looking out over the San Francisco Bay, they never dreamed of what they would someday be creating. With a reputation from hosting friends and family for meals and movies for over a decade, they now had the property to expand their generosity to larger groups. And the construction began. And never stopped. For thirteen years, construction crews and electricians have been adding new surprises.

Although small looking from the street, the house just seems to continue on forever. Visitors are disoriented and confused as walls melt into doorways, closets lead into whole new sections of the house, and illusion is the order of the day. When Frank Biafore joined the household in 1995, he brought another level of expertise to the growing merriment. Frank had studied architecture and design. By combining Frank’s design and construction experience and wild ideas with Richard’s magical touches and flair for the mysterious, the construction of some of the most memorable areas in the home was accelerated.

It Must Be Magic! is strictly a hobby — a part time endeavor to share fun and joy with the world. The three men behind the scenes work full time to support their generosity. Featured in numerous newspaper and magazine stories, It Must Be Magic! is one of those unadvertised special places that most of us never know about. Richard, Tim, and Frank live in the home; it is not open to the public.

Richard does a lot of good for a lot of people, and he enjoys the heck out of life. Those who have heard about Richard Tuck but don’t know him may think he is an eccentric. Not everyone turns their home into a magical world, but Richard is a corporate CEO who is more grounded than the vast majority of us. He just likes to have fun and share the fun with others.

We met a lot of folks who we would have thought were “eccentric” before the Round America trip, but after getting to know them a bit, we found they aren’t strange after all. This will be one of the most important lessons we have learned on the trip. Try to avoid prejudging people. Realize that we are all different and have our own unique interests and thoughts. And what may look bizarre to someone else may have a reasonable explanation once you take a look from the perspective of those involved.

I know what some people are thinking when they see me wearing my beads. They think I’m a weirdo of some type. I much prefer those who smile and ask about the beads, and I know they have a lot more fun when they hear a few stories about the trip and enjoy a laugh or two. The others just stare, pass by muttering to themselves, and miss out on the opportunity to meet some nice folks who are just having fun and writing a book.

Ryan took us to see more sights in San Francisco. We went up to Twin Peaks for a great view of the skyline of San Francisco. Twin Peaks is the highest point overlooking the city — fabulous views. We walked around Pier 39 at Fisherman’s Wharf where we paid a visit to the sea lions and enjoyed a variety of street performers. Our favorite was Bushman — a man who has two pieces of shrubbery on sticks. He holds them in front of him and jumps out and yells boo when poor unsuspecting folks obliviously wander by. We saw City Hall, Coit Tower, Ghirardelli Square, and San Quentin.

We also visited the famous hippy area of Haight-Ashbury where we stopped by to see the Grateful Dead House at 710 Ashbury. The members of the Grateful Dead lived there communally from 1966 to 1968. Jerry Garcia once described the atmosphere: “People trying to start various spiritual movements would be in and out. Friends trying to organize benefits would be in and out. There would be a lot of energy exchanged. It was a real high in those days because Haight-Ashbury was a real community.” Most of the band subsequently moved to upscale suburban Marin County.

There’s a great deal of rock-and-roll history in San Francisco. If time permitted, the Airplane House, the Avalon Ballroom, the Carousel, the Cow Palace, the Fillmore Auditorium, Fillmore West, Golden gate Park, the Pit, Slim’s, Winterland, and a number of other locations offer a lot of rock music history.

“The Haight” was the center of the 1960’s counter-culture movement, the center of the Summer of Love and Be-Ins, and home to music greats like Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix as well as Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Patty Hearst was held hostage in a home in the area.

There’s still a hippy feel to the area, and it was packed with tourists. There were a lot of would-be hippies there, though. The area was filled with health food stores, retro, costume, and head shops, cafes, and body shops. Most of the shops are locally-owned and individualistic. I understand that Safeway moved into the area, but the locals didn’t like it. Protesters filled carts with food, and then left the store. Safeway was gone in just three months.

We went to see two unusual hotels with funky theme rooms — the Triton and the Red Victorian. The Red Victorian is a historic hotel in the world-famous Haight-Ashbury, and you can rent a room and live like a hippy. If you are a hippy, you can rent a room and feel at home. Sami Sunchild designed each room to inspire, amuse, relax, or enlighten you. There are 18 guest rooms, from luxurious with private baths to fanciful economy rooms with private sinks and shared use of one of the Love Bathrooms. Theme rooms have names like “Summer of Love” and “Flower Child.” One of the bathrooms has an aquarium in the pull-chain toilet tank. There’s a meditation room, motivational videos, meditative art, and visual poetry. One of the best parts of the stay is said to be the family-style breakfast where guests from a variety of cultures, lifestyles, and professions gather for breakfast and conversation. See www.redvic.com.

The Triton is a very nice hotel, so if you want to have some fun in San Francisco, it looks like a great place to stay. The Triton features fabulous theme suites, rubber ducks in every bath, celebrity wake-up calls, nightly tarot card reading, feather boa rentals, and more. The hotel bills itself as “an Atlantean kingdom of sophistication and irrepressible charm.” The Triton is known for wacky publicity stunts such as putting stunt men on the roof and drag queens in the lobby. It’s a really nice hotel with massive creativity and a great sense of humor. Very refreshing. See www.hotel-tritonsf.com.

Our evening ended with a trip to Celia’s in San Rafael — The Dude’s favorite Mexican restaurant. It was excellent!

One of the most important lessons we have learned on the trip is to try to avoid prejudging people. Realize that we are all different and have our own unique interests and thoughts. And what may look bizarre to someone else may have a reasonable explanation once you take a look from the perspective of those involved.

The Daily Journal of Round America:

Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.

You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.

 

More Information on the Sights Visited Today:San Francisco California — Circus Chimera — Haight-Ashbury — Triton Hotel — Red Victorian Hotel
 

Alcatraz – Day 74

Alcatraz

Day 74 – June 13, 2003 – Friday

We spent a wonderful day with son Ryan in San Francisco, California. In addition to an Internet business, Ryan owns a tour company (see www.alcatraz.us), and we got the deluxe tour. When you travel to San Francisco or anywhere in North America, please contact Ryan’s company for tours. 

The tour of Alcatraz departs daily from Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Alcatraz was used as a federal maximum security prison from 1934 until 1963, when it was closed due to high costs and security issues. Allowing tourists to visit Alcatraz has proven far more popular and much more profitable. Many tourists come to San Francisco and are disappointed when they can’t get tickets to Alcatraz. Alcatraz is so popular that tours are often sold out a week or more in advance, and there are often long lines at Fisherman’s Wharf, and you never know what times or dates will be available until you get up to the ticket window. The best way to ensure a tour at the right time for you is to book a tour as far in advance as possible. Son Ryan is one of the biggest tour operators handling Alcatraz tours, so getting to Alcatraz has not been a problem for us. See www.alcatraz.us.

Ryan’s company offers two tours — a City Tour with Alcatraz or a Muir Woods – Sausalito Tour with Alcatraz. If you’ve never gotten a good look at the many sights of San Francisco, the City Tour with Alcatraz is best. In about five hours, you see Alcatraz and the major sights in San Francisco. It would take much longer if you tried to find each of the sights on your own, and the tour guides provide a lot of great information. If you’ve seen San Francisco but have never seen the nearby redwood forest, then take the Muir Woods – Sausalito Tour with Alcatraz. Alcatraz is the most popular tourist attraction in San Francisco, so it really is a must-see.

The Alcatraz Tour begins with a ferry boat ride from Fisherman’s Wharf over to Alcatraz Island. It’s an erie feeling as you approach the island and think about the stories you’ve heard or read and the movies you’ve seen about Alcatraz aka The Rock. The tours are self-guided with a great audio tour that provides fascinating information. The tour includes a movie about Alcatraz history and a 35 minute audio headset tour of the Alcatraz cell block. This tour is available in seven languages: English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish. After the tour, there is time to visit the Alcatraz Museum, the bookshop, and to just wander around the island. The museum contains interesting displays and artifacts, but we enjoyed the cell block tour the most. Al Capone’s cell is marked, and we saw where the Birdman of Alcatraz spent his time, but few cells are marked, and the audio tour is the only way to know who was in what cell and what happened where.

The cell block has been maintained, but parts of Alcatraz have been destroyed or deteriorated. The Warden’s House was destroyed by fire when Indians took control of Alcatraz a few years ago. You can stay at Alcatraz as long as you like, but it takes two hours to get a good look — longer if you like to read a lot of what is offered in the museum. Once we felt we had a good tour, we went back and caught the next ferry (they run every 30 to 45 minutes going back to Fisherman’s Wharf).

City Tour sightseeing includes three or four scheduled stops of 10 to 25 minutes at selected sights, including the Golden Gate Bridge, Twin Peaks, the Palace of Fine Arts, Cliff House, and City Hall. We also saw the Marina, Nob Hill, Chinatown, the Financial District, Presidio, Golden Gate Park, Civic Center, and North Beach. This is the most popular tour in San Francisco, and it is an excellent way to see San Francisco in a short period of time. It would have taken us a day or longer to see all of this…with a lot of frustration in the always jammed streets of San Francisco.

San Francisco is such a beautiful place.

In addition to Alcatraz, we saw the sights of Fisherman’s Wharf, took a walking tour of Chinatown, saw a building with furniture all over the outside of the building, saw beautiful Victorian homes, drove down the crookedest street in the world, enjoyed Musee Mecanique, had lunch at Ryan’s favorite spot, and had a delicious gourmet dinner prepared by Ryan’s personal chef (a lady who prepared gourmet meals and delivered them to Ryan’s home).

Chinatown is fun to see, and the food is great. Enter Chinatown at the Dragon’s Gate at Bush and Grant Streets. This gate was a gift to San Francisco from the Republic of China in 1969. The characters above the gate translate to read “Everything in the world is in just proportions.” San Francisco’s Chinatown is one of North America’s largest Chinese communities. It covers 18 square blocks centered along Grant and Stockton, bordered by Bush and Columbus. The streets are lined with restaurants, shops, and trading companies. Souvenirs, silk, jade, and antiques are all offered from numerous vendors. Ross Alley is located between Grant and Stockton and runs from Jackson to Washington. Ross Alley was once lined with opium dens and brothels, and it has been a backdrop in many movies, including “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” “Karate Kid II,” and “Big Trouble in Little China.” The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company is a fun stop. You can see how fortune cookies are made. Other attractions in Chinatown include the Chinese Cultural Center, Portsmouth Square, and Old St. Mary’s Church (built in 1852, it was one of the few buildings to escape the fire of 1906).

Fisherman’s Wharf is the hot spot in San Francisco. Lots to see and buy, and even more people. There are fishing boats, fish restaurants, shops of all types, museums, and various street entertainers (folks spraypainted silver, reggae bands, and the like). Across the street from Fisherman’s Wharf are a wide variety of shops and attractions, including the Wax Museum.

Musee Mecanique is very interesting. It is a museum filled with fully operational arcade games of all types. It was really a treat to see all of these wonderful old games, fortune tellers, and other attractions. We especially liked the looks of the shop “After The Quake” as it looks like what’s left after an earthquake did serious damage. San Francisco is the headquarters for several chocolate companies, so there’s always plenty of chocolate to be had.

Ryan took us around Sausalito for a few minutes. He lived in Sausalito when he first moved to the area, so we’ve seen it before. It’s a beautiful area surrounded by some of the most expensive homes in the San Francisco area. We went down to the marina and saw some of the yachts that Ryan rents for VIP tours. We also saw some multimillion dollar houseboats! We had lunch at the Sausalito Gourmet Deli — Ryan’s favorite spot for lunch. The sandwiches were great as was the carrot cake, and the folks who own and operate it were delightful. Bozzie Jane and I love Victorian architecture, so we enjoyed just driving around and seeing the beautifully restored Victorian homes. The real estate is outrageous here. A home that might sell for $150,000 in Atlanta could be $750,000 here. Many people will live in the San Francisco area their whole lives and never own a home.

Just about everyone has heard of the crookedest street in the world. It’s Lombard Street in San Francisco. It is one giant curve after another — speed limit is 5 miles-per-hour. It’s impossible to drive any faster due to the turns and the ever-present tourists taking the drive. We never saw it when we lived here, so we enjoyed taking the drive today.

High on our Quirk-o-meter for San Francisco was the building with furniture all over the outside. We asked a man in the street, and he gave us general directions. Then Ryan called a friend who got us to the right place. It’s an abandoned tenement at Sixth and Howard streets (rough part of town). Artist Brian Groggin launched a project he called “Defenestration” — defined as the act of throwing something or someone out a window. Furniture hangs out windows and runs down the side of the four-story building. There are over 30 pieces of furniture and home appliances welded and rigged to the two street sides of the empty building. There are also a variety of sideshow-like pieces of art surrounding the building. The building was for sale on March 9, 1997 when Brian held an Urban Circus to do the installation, and the building was still for sale (with or without the furniture). If in a safer part of town, it could be the ideal location for our collection of hotel shampoo and ballpoint pens. See www.defenestration.org.

We met several of Ryan’s friends and business associates today including Chris the Airborne driver.

We met Vanessa in Chinatown as well as some folks from Washington state and Geesa and Kim from Germany.

We had no problems on Friday the Thirteenth, but one of Ryan’s tour buses did have mechanical problems out in the Muir Woods redwood forest, so that tour took a little longer than planned. We were impressed with how another tour operator came to Ryan’s aid by dispatching an idle bus.

Always enjoy every moment you can with your children as you never know when they will move completely across the country to California.

The Daily Journal of Round America:

Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.

You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.

 

More Information on the Sights Visited Today:
San Francisco California — Alcatraz — Chinatown — Defenstration — Crookedest Street in the World — Sausalito California
 

So Close – Day 73

So Close

Day 73 – June 12, 2003 – Thursday

We drove along the coast from Buellton, California to Big Sur. We took side trips to see the Danish community of Solvang and the James Dean Memorial in Cholame. We couldn’t find a hotel room in Monterey, so we drove on in to San Francisco where we planned to spend several days with son Ryan.

Our day began with an “Ostrich Crossing” sign in Buellton. We pulled over and saw an ostrich ranch. Ostrich Land produces ostrich chicks and sold feathers, eggs, ostrich meat, and ostrich leather used for briefcases and boots. We learned that ostriches run up to 45 miles per hour; the ostrich is the only bird with 2 toes; ostriches grow 1 1/2 pounds of feathers each season; ostriches grow to 8 to 9 feet tall and weigh 250 to 350 pounds. Ostrich hens lay 40 to 60 eggs per season (weighing 3 to 4 pounds each); it takes 42 days for an egg to hatch. Ostrich chicks grow one foot per month until they reach full height. An adult ostrich consumes about 3 1/2 pounds of food per day. The Buellton ostriches did not seem at all friendly.

We met Joey and Ivan at the Chevron station in Buellton.

Solvang is a cute Danish tourist-oriented town. I enjoyed a fabulous Apple Pie Square at Olsen’s Danish Bakery.

We went to Pismo Beach to see the World’s Largest Clam. When we reached the city limits, there was a pretty good-sized clam on the sign, but we felt like it wasn’t big enough to be the World’s Largest Clam. So, we drove all around town looking for the World’s Largest Clam. We drove all along the beach, and up and down likely-looking streets. No sign of the World’s Largest Clam. We finally gave up, and Boz suggested that we stop at the offices of the Pismo Beach Chamber of Commerce to ask for directions to the World’s Largest Clam. I parked the car in front, and I went in and met two nice ladies. I told them we had driven all over town and just couldn’t find the World’s Largest Clam. I asked for directions. The two ladies smiled an odd-looking smile, and one of them said: “Just go out the door.” I said: “Then what.” She said, “Turn right.” I walked straight out the door, turned 90-degrees to the right, and there at the curb was our car with Barbara in the passenger’s seat. Immediately to her right was the World’s Largest Clam. We have laughed about this more than just about anything that happened on the trip. The 8-foot tall clam was right there next to Barbara as we pulled up. How neither of us saw it was amazing. I put my red-faced head back in the door at the Chamber of Commerce to say thank you.

A little further down Highway 101, and we stopped at Avila Beach. We saw dinosaur eggs there.

We met some wonderful ladies at the San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce. They provided directions and information about several places we wanted to see.

We had lunch and pie at Linn’s Bakery and Eatery in San Luis Obispo. We had a rare pie — Olallieberry Pie, and Boz felt it was one of the very best she had eaten on the trip. I ranked it as a top pie, but as much as I enjoyed it, there are others that I feel are better. Patty Carpenter and her husband, Bill, own Linn’s in San Luis Obispo. Patty sat and talked with us, and we really liked her.

We walked from Linn’s to Bubble Gum Alley. We thought we had good directions, but we couldn’t find it. We came dangerously close to giving up on seeing it when we stumbled by an opening between two buildings, and there it was. We had walked past it several times without seeing it.

Truthfully, we were kind of grossed out at first, but I came to appreciate it. Bubble Gum Alley is an alley in which the facing walls of two downtown commercial buildings are covered with gum. The alley is 70 feet long and 15 feet high, completely covered with gum. Chewed up chewing gum. Some gum chewing visitors had left messages like “Jesus Loves,” names, and fraternity Greek letters. There was art — flowers, an American flag, and more. The city’s historical society says the history is sketchy, but the alley was created sometime in the 1950’s. It is believed that high school students started putting gum on the walls, and college students soon followed suit. Over the years, Bubblegum Alley has made national news by appearing on a number of television shows, news programs and in newspapers around the world.

The first motel in the world is located in San Luis Obispo — the Motel Inn. In 1925, Los Angeles architect Arthur Heineman built it. He coined the term “motel,” meaning motor hotel, and named this property “Milestone Motel.” For $1.25 a night, guests rented a two-room bungalow with a kitchen and a private adjoining garage. All the units faced a central courtyard which housed the swimming pool and included picnic tables for social gatherings. The motel was not open for business during our visit, but this was road trip history at its best.

San Luis Obispo has the first motel in the world and the most outrageous motel in the world. The Madonna Inn has been in business since 1958. It was the creation of Alex Madonna and his wife, Phyllis. The motel has a Swiss Alps exterior, and bright pink common rooms. There are 109 rooms, and each room is uniquely designed and themed. The Caveman Room is one of the most talked about rooms. It offers a cave-like atmosphere, with solid rock floors, walls and ceilings. It even has a rock shower where you can relax under a waterfall of warm water from above. The sinks are solid rock and water flows down the rock to the sink basin below. The Old Mill room has a working waterwheel, and the Hearts and Flowers room has walls and floor that are bright red.

Some of the other rooms are the Love Nest, Kona Rock, Irish Hills, Cloud Nine, Just Heaven, Rock Bottom, Austrian Suite, Cabin Still, Old World Suite, Elegance, Daisy Mae, Safari Room, Highway Suite, Jungle Rock, American Home, Yahoo, and Bridal Falls. Even the casual visitor for lunch or dinner does not escape the Madonna Inn effect as the public restrooms are furnished in an outlandish style. Madonna Inn’s famous rock waterfall urinal is perhaps its best known feature. The urinal looks like a waterfall; the flow of water is activated when you break a beam of light. In another public restroom in the hotel, there is a towering copper trough urinal with a waterwheel. An electronic beam is activated when the urinal is approached, and the water wheel begins turning and splashing water down into the trough.

Alex Madonna said: “Anybody can build one room and a thousand like it. I want people to come in with a smile and leave with a smile. It’s fun.”

As we were walking up to the entrance when we arrived, Barbara asked me to hurry up with the camera. I rushed over to where she was standing next to a fountain just outside the entrance. She had spotted a hummingbird hovering as it drank from the fountain spray. I snapped a quick photo and was able to capture this unique sight. It is definitely one of my favorite photos from the trip. Another photo I took at Madonna Inn has been purchased to be on the cover of a book published in the UK. Of all the incredible sights we saw and great photos we took, this is simply a photo of a lemon tree. Nothing special to us, but when you are a book publisher looking for a lemon tree to go on the cover of your book, I guess it was really special to them.

The Mission in San Luis Obispo is really beautiful. We visited it and took a number of photographs. We had a great time in San Luis Obispo.

We saw the Morro Rock in Morro Bay as well as the World’s Largest Chess Board. Morro Bay has a falcon preserve, but we saw no falcons.

Our next stop was Harmony — population 17. It is a small artist’s community. It was serene.

Finding the James Dean Memorial was a challenge, and the side trip took much longer than we thought. We looked and looked for the monument at the intersections of two highways. Unfortunately, there are two intersections of those highways about 12 miles apart. There was no monument to be found. We drove back and forth on the highway for about an hour! Our information did not indicate the memorial was in the one-building town of Cholame, so we didn’t pull into the parking lot of the cafe there, but that turned out to be precisely where the monument was. The town of Cholame seems to consist solely of the shiny aluminum monument under a big oleander tree and the neighboring cafe. James Dean died 700 yards east of this spot on September 30, 1955. Donald Turnupseed pulled out in front of Dean’s Porsche Spyder in his 1950 Ford Custom Deluxe Coupe. Dean died of a broken neck. The memorial was erected by Seita Onishi, a Japanese businessman and fan. We were surprised to learn that James Dean made only three movies, and just one of those had been released at the time of his death.

We reached San Simeon too late in the day to get the full tour of Hearst Castle, but what we saw was staggering. In 1927, William Randolph Hearst told architect Julia Morgan that he wanted to build “a little something” on the California coast. Eighteen years later, Casa Grande (commonly called Hearst Castle) had been built above tiny San Simeon. It is a 165-room Moorish castle with 127 acres of gardens, terraces, pools and walkways, furnished with Spanish and Italian antiques and art. There are three large guest houses. In its heyday, Hearst Castle had a zoo, tennis courts, and two magnificent swimming pools.

The entire Big Sur area certainly has beautiful scenery, but we were both expecting to be more impressed than we were. We were fortunate, however, to have read about the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park where we could park and hike a short ways to see the only waterfall (McWay Falls) that drops directly into the Pacific Ocean. We went through a tunnel under the highway to see the very special sight at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. It was an absolutely gorgeous sight to see.

We also made stops at Cambria Beach, saw Elephant Seals at Gorda, saw the Piedras Blancas Light Station, and stopped for photos of the coastline at Ventana.

We made it through most of the treacherous road before dark, and then we tried to find a hotel. We had planned to stop in Monterey, but we stopped at several hotels where there was no vacancy. We were sure there had to be hotels with rooms just around the corner as we drove, but we never found them.

The family magnet kept pulling us to our son’s home, and we were so happy to pull into his driveway. Seeing our only son was clearly the highlight of the trip — even better than the World’s Largest Ball of Twine.

The lesson for the day? Sometimes you can’t find what you are looking for when it is staring you right in the face.

The Daily Journal of Round America:

Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.

You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.

 

More Information on the Sights Visited Today:
Ostrich Land — Solvang California — Pismo Beach California — World’s Largest Clam — San Luis Obispo California — Linn’s Bakery and Eatery — Bubble Gum Alley — Motel Inn — Madonna Inn — Morro Bay California — James Dean Memorial — Hearst Castle — Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park — Big Sur
 

Brother Onefeather – Day 72

Brother Onefeather

Day 72 – June 11, 2003 – Wednesday

We drove from Monrovia to Los Angeles and on to Buellton, California. As we had already been to both Monrovia and LA, the day was spent driving along the Pacific coast, seeing Malibu and Santa Barbara.

I had a business meeting in Los Angeles this morning. Nothing trip-related. We did spend some time in the world’s finest parking garage at the building we visited. Seriously, the garage was incredible, and it had the tightest security I had experienced anywhere — all kinds of guards and security features. We were searched twice before we got into the elevator. There had to be something or someone pretty important in the building I was in.

I regretted the two hours that this “business” took from the trip. But as we were heading to the Pacific Coast Highway, I spotted what had to be the world’s largest Mexican holding a plate of Mexican food. So, out of the car I went for the photo, and I was smiling again. Just think…if we hadn’t gone into LA for this business meeting, we would have never seen the “World’s Largest Mexican holding a Plate of Mexican Food.”

The Pacific coastline in Malibu is just beautiful. We saw the Malibu Pier; it was used in a number of movies. We saw a lot of surfers. We saw a film crew and some actors filming a movie of some type along the coast. We saw some gorgeous mansions, including a castle-like home on the side of a mountain near Malibu Beach. Most of the fabulous homes could not be viewed from the road, but when we were able to see something, it was usually spectacular. We drove by Neptune’s Net in Malibu; it is a popular restaurant frequented by many stars.

We drove around Pepperdine University in Malibu. I might not have ever attended a class if I’d gone here.

The farmland and barns we saw in Oxnard were very pretty. We saw a sign: “Thanks Oxnard for destroying this Farmland.” It looked like something was happening in Oxnard that the farmers didn’t like.

Neither Barbara nor I had ever been to Santa Barbara. It is incredibly beautiful, and Bozzie Jane said that if money and grandchildren were not considerations, she would live in Santa Barbara.

We saw the courthouse, Mission, the downtown area. It didn’t matter what it was. Everything in Santa Barbara was beautiful.

I photographed a tree in downtown Malibu that appeared to have donuts growing from its branches. I do not have the slightest idea what type of tree it was, but as I am into donuts, I choose to believe it was a Donut Tree. If it’s a Donut Tree, it was a Krispy Kreme variety rather than a Dunkin’ Donuts variety.

In a parking lot in Santa Barbara, we met Brother Onefeather. He lives in a van “down by the river” in Santa Barbara, California. A 1976 Dodge Sportsman van to be precise.

Brother Onefeather and his amazing van will certainly rank among the most interesting sights that we stumbled across on the trip. Bozzie happened to see the van parked in a lot near the Santa Barbara Visitors’ Information Office. Seven years in the making, Brother Onefeather’s van (called an “art car” in grassroots art circles) was a most impressive work of art featuring a variety of images and messages. The entire van, inside and out, is covered with art — primarily toys, figurines, and paintings — glued to every available surface.

Brother Onefeather, who has a Jesus-like appearance, says he checked out of the rat race and started living for himself and preaching his message of peace and God’s Love following a divorce. He is well-educated, articulate, and seemed to be a genuinely nice, real person. He took great pride in showing his van and sharing his story. “Star Wars” and “Star Trek” figures battle it out on the roof of the van. Mickey Mouse and friends wave from the grill. Beads hang from the van’s undercarriage, and 40 dozen red apples line the windows. Brother Onefeather says the apples are a tribute to 9/11. The van features a Beatles Yellow Submarine mural, bumper-to-bumper traffic artwork, an Angels mural, The Last Supper plus Aladdin scene, a Rainbow Family mural, a Tribute to Bob Marley, and more. We were sorry to see that Brother Onefeather endorses marijuana use through various displays on the van. There was a chalkboard with a message that changes periodically. When we saw it, the message said: “One cannot simultaneously prepare for war and peace.” There’s a little bit of everything on Brother Onefeather’s van, but it all seemed to have a somewhat logical place when Brother Onefeather explains it.

We corresponded with Brother Onefeather following our visit to Santa Barbara. He was looking for someone to store his van while he went on a trip. We hooked him up with Ros from the Grassroots Art Center in Lucas, Kansas. There couldn’t be a better place in the country to store and display his van.

We stopped at Ruby’s Cafe for dinner in downtown Santa Barbara. It looked great from the outside, but the meal was disappointing.

We ended the day with two excellent pieces of pie at Baker’s Square in Buellton. The desk clerk at our hotel recommended it.

We saw a lot of beautiful coastline today, but the various areas we saw in Santa Barbara took top honors for the day.

Random Comments:

Unfortunately, today was one of many days where interviews and great information was lost because of tape recorder issues. We’ve broken one tape recorder after another, and we have had a number of days like today where the tape malfunctioned or became damaged. We may have to try a digital tape recorder next trip, and then download and check the recording every night.

The Daily Journal of Round America:

Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.

You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.

 

More Information on the Sights Visited Today:
Malibu California — Santa Barbara California — Brother Onefeather’s Van