Webb Family Blog

Today, Kellie and I got up around 7AM. We packed up all of our stuff and checked out. We traveled northbound on Highway 1. We ate at a Denny’s in Pacifica before continuing into San Francisco. In San Francisco, we travelled along the western side of the city to the Golden Gate National Recreation area and Fort Miley. We pulled off at Fort Miley to take photos. We then proceeded to San Francisco’s Lincoln Park,  home of the Legion of Honor and many memorials, including a Holocaust memorial. Despite wasting $15 for The Mystery Spot and $10 at Año Nuevo State Park, I didn’t feel like spending $20 to visit the museum at the Legion of Honor, so we continued on. After driving though a nice neighborhood near China Beach, we progressed across the Golden Gate Bridge.

In the town of Dixon, we pulled off at Milk Farm Road to visit the Cool Patch Pumpkin for their Guinness Book of World Records Largest Corn Maze. We spent the $20 I could have spent at the museum here to do the maze. Thankfully, they gave us a good map of the maze with coordinates and the occasional flags marking coordinates. I think I found at least one flaw in the map, but I was able to find an alternate route. If I were to do this again, I think I would take a pencil or other marking device. I found it difficult to solve the maze on paper and translate that to which route to take. I think it took about two hours to get through.

All-in-all, our mini-vacation was a lot of fun and I’m glad we did it.

This morning, Kellie and I woke early. We hit the road for Santa Cruz around 7 AM. When we first arrived into Santa Cruz, I was thinking of where to eat breakfast. After parking near the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, we walked up to the Beach Street Cafe. The door was open and the lights were on, so Kellie and I walked inside. Upon walking in, a man told us “We’re not open yet. We open at 8.” It was 7:52, so 8 minutes early. We decided not to even return for business, as his attitude left a lot to be desired. We decided to walk down the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf. We enjoyed watching the California sea lions making a racket under the wharf and watching the turf war amongst the biggest, presumably male sea lions. We saw a couple places open for breakfast on the wharf, but we waited until we got to the base of the wharf and ate at the Ideal Bar & Grill. I had an avocado and mushroom omelet and Kellie had huevos rancheros. It was very delicious. We walked all around the Beach Boardwalk which was closed, but we were able to walk around all the closed attractions. Upon return to the car, we debated on what to do. After our hike through sand yesterday, the thought of walking on the sand was not as enticing. We decided to head up to a tourist trap I’ve heard about but don’t actually remember going to… The Mystery Spot.

Upon arrival at The Mystery Spot, we found that it was $5 for parking and $5/person… oh well, we are here to be a tourist, I guess that is the cost of being a tourist. We just missed the first tour of the day, so we got the second tour… the 10:50 AM tour. Our tour guide did her job, but not as convincing as I’m sure other guides are. The tour was entertaining and the illusions were believable. I’m not sure it was worth $15, but I’m glad I now know. Everyone on the tour gets a Mystery Spot bumper sticker. I guess I’ll have to find an old VW bus owner that doesn’t have one yet and give them this bumper sticker, so their bus is no longer naked.

After The Mystery Spot, we decided to head down to Downtown Santa Cruz, to the Pacific Avenue area for shopping and eating. We walked around and found a place I like to eat, Pizza My Heart. We enjoyed a Super Veggie pizza. As we walked, we came across a theater and saw a movie I’d been wanting to see, Julie and Julia. This was a cute movie about two different women who apparently never met; Julia Childs and Julie Powell. Julia Childs was the wife of an American diplomat to France and being a wife, wanted something to pass the time. She loved French food and couldn’t find any cookbooks in English on how to cook French food. She attended Le Cordon Bleu and learned to cook, then met with a couple other ladies interested in bringing French cuisine to Americans. They eventually came up with the Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In 2oo2, Julie Powell hated her job working with people suffering the tragedy of 9-11-2001 in New York and took solace in her cooking. She decided she would learn to cook like Julia Childs, but not only follow her instructions but blog about her experiences doing so. It was a very enjoyable movie. Only a couple words will need to be removed for its eventual television release.

Upon completion of the movie, we wandered about in a few stores before heading back to the car. It had been a rather enjoyable day. The weather was perfect, it was relaxing. We finally found our way back to the parking structure I parked in. Before leaving, we saw something under the windshield wiper of the car. I initially thought it was an advertisement, but unfortunately, it was a parking citation. Apparently, the City of Santa Cruz is not to keen on people shopping at the local businesses and only getting a relatively small amount of tax money each store takes in, so they initiate hidden forms of revenue generation which pays off a whole lot more than sales and business tax. Apparently, in much smaller letters than “Free Parking” on all the entrances to the parking structure, it also says three hours maximum. We were there for about four hours and I guess it will cost us $40.

We arrived to Costanoa last night around 6 PM. The check-in process was OK and we quickly found our cabin. First thing to note about Costanoa is that there are several different types of accommodation. They have the lodge, which appears to be like a hotel. They also have small individual cabins, which I have only seen from the outside. There is then the tent-cabins that we chose to get. Staying in a tent-cabin is much like camping with a few added benefits. The structures start with a wooden floor platform. There is a door, but is quite lightweight. There are windows on all four walls and a tall ceiling. Taking the majority of the floor is a bed. It is said to be a queen-size, but I believe it is actually a full-size bed. There is one power outlet in the room with lights and bed heater plugged into each outlet port. I have been intending to put a power strip in my computer case, but unfortunately I have not done that yet, so we went without lights last night (charging phones via USB connector to laptop.) They have a couple Adirondack chairs outside, but they are a bit too narrow for my wide backside for comfort. It is about a minute or two hike to the nearest comfort station or public restroom facility. Each comfort station has a men’s and women’s restroom and shower. They also have outdoor showering facilities, a fireplace and a dry sauna. When you wake from sleep to the call of nature, you’re reminded that you are CAMPING; thankfully I’m a guy and not all my trips were as far.

We got out of bed around 9:30 this morning and Kellie and I took showers. After showering, we drove up to Gazos Grill  Restaurant for breakfast. We ate a delicious omelet and continued on with the day. We continued north to the Pescadero Creek and drove through the Town of Pescadero to the Town of San Gregorio. This was a scenic trip along Stage Road. We stopped at an eclectic market in San Gregorio before heading back south on Highway 1. We pulled off at Pigeon Point Lighthouse. After seeing this lighthouse, it became quickly obvious that it was a shame the condition the lighthouse was in. I know that lighthouses don’t serve quite as high of a function as they once did, but it used to be quite beautiful, but now needs quite a bit of repair. With the state of finances in California, I’m afraid it will be permanently destroyed before restoration is done. We wandered around the lighthouse for a bit before heading further south.

Our next stop, after a pit stop at our camping spot, was Año Nuevo State Park. Año Nuevo is a popular place for many marine animals, particular northern elephant seals. Earlier this year, Kellie and I stopped at another popular elephant seal hang-out in Piedras Blancas Northern Elephant Seal rookery. There is a $10 parking fee at Año Nuevo. After paying our fee, we showed up to the visitor’s center where we obtained our “hiking permit.” I put that in quotations because I found it kind of funny to have to have a hiking permit that was essentially a photocopied brochure that said hiking permit on it. This permit had a map of our walkway. At one point along this walk, we came upon a sign that said it was a closed area and hiking permit was required to go further…. I’m glad we had this photocopied piece of paper to allow us passage beyond there. We continued along the trail until we came to this huge sand mountain. This sand mountain was made of powder-soft sand that was constantly being wind-blown. I recall that during my first visit to Año Nuevo as a child that I thought this sand was so soft it would be fun to fall into it; bad idea… it hurt… I did not do that this time. I did however climb over it, as it was part of the pathway to get where the elephant seals hangout. It zaps your energy walking over a mountain of powder-soft sand.  Once past that point, we continued on between hard ground and sand until we got to the viewing area. When we got to this viewing area, some marine biologists were doing some testing on several of these large beasts. Many were playing in the water and many of the juvenile male elephant seals were practicing their fighting tactics. The walk back to the car felt even longer than the hike out to the point. We arrived back to the car around 4 PM.

Upon leaving Año Nuevo, we headed back up to the town of Pescadero and had dinner at Duarte’s Tavern. Despite the name being a tavern, at least the part I walked into was a small restaurant. This place is known for it’s cream of artichoke soup and was featured on Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.  We had chilled artichoke hearts with an aioli sauce. For desert, I had a warmed olallieberry pie ala mode. It was a very good dinner, but unfortunately it was a bit pricey. Before tip, our meal came to $68 for two vegetarian meals with soda to drink; typically this is much cheaper than meat with alcohol, so I can only imagine what someone else may pay.

I am now back in the lobby of the lodge here at Costanoa and plan to visit the hot tub before heading to bed.

Kellie and I are about to take another mini-vacation. The get-away begins tomorrow as we head to the Raiders-Broncos game in Oakland. Following the game, we are heading to a resort near Pescadero, CA called Costanoa. This is a unique location between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay. It appears to be a cross between staying in a hotel and camping. We will be staying in a tent-cottage. The resort is about 1 mile from the ocean. If I get around to it, I’ll later add pictures and/or video of our trip.

Another bit of interesting information is what I’m typing this entry with. A couple weeks ago, Woot! had a one-day sale (all of their sales are one-day sales) on an Asus EEE PC 900 netbook computer for $150. This is a tiny little computer that is easy to carry around and use quickly. It has a surprisingly crisp 8.9″ screen and tiny little keyboard. It has a 4GB SSD drive instead of a typical spinning magnetic disc hard drive. My normal laptop computer has a 500 GB hard drive and so does my desktop. This new device is primarily for Kellie, although she seems to think it is just mine. It initially had a special version of Linux specifically for Asus, but I thought it was a garbage operating system. There are several operating systems for netbooks, with new flavors coming out frequently. I initially tried Easy Peasy 1.5. I liked it, but found a few issues, like I could not add support for mounting NFS shares. I am considering trying out Ubuntu Netbook Remix but have not done so yet. The operating system I have installed at the moment is currently in the alpha stage, Jolicloud. All three of these OS are netbook-flavors of Ubuntu Linux. Jolicloud makes it easy to add applications, similar in concept to iPhone apps. Several apps are essentially taking a website an application, for example, I have a GMail, Twitter and Facebook app installed. Each of these apps looks like the web page, but operates like a separate program. I was able to add NFS support in Jolicloud which allows me to mount my network attached storage devices easily; this makes the anaemic 4GB built-in storage more palatable. I now have nearly 1 TB available. Due to its size, this little netbook is easy to pull out in bed when I can’t sleep, or wish to look something up on Wikipedia when I wish to understand an obscure reference.

Wow… It has been quite a while since I’ve made a blog entry. It always seems like I’m busy… or maybe just overly stressed. I am currently working two part-time/per diem jobs… continuing as a critical care transport nurse for AMR and I’m teaching classes for NCTI. With NCTI, I’ve been going all over Northern California. I’m primarily teaching Advanced Cardiac Life Support, but occasionally Basic Life Support (CPR) and Pediatric Advanced Life Support. Do to the nature of these jobs, I have no routine… feast or famine. I only list this as it is part of what is going on in my life.

Now, for my main activity at the moment… it is football season again. This past Monday night, despite the disappointment with a Raider loss to the San Diego Chargers (thanks in part to a controversial reversal of a touchdown), it was a great game. This weekend, the Raiders are playing in Kansas City against the Chiefs. As I did last year, I have flown out to Kansas City to meet up with my brother Richard to see the game. I flew Southwest Airlines from Sacramento to Los Angeles, then on to Albuquerque, and finally Kansas City. While making two stops, it was the same plane.

During the flight, I enjoyed looking out the window, attempting to recognize landmarks along the way. We traveled along the base of the Sierra Nevada foothills until we reached Fresno. We then continued westward over the Lost Hills area, then over the mountain range into the Los Angeles area. It was cloudy throughout most of northern LA, but I recognized the Los Angeles Coliseum complex prior to landing. Upon landing in Los Angeles, the airline staff counted those that did not get off the plane to match the record of those continuing on. There was 30 on the list, but there was 31 of us still on the plane. Apparently, my name was absent from that list. I had to get off the plane, have someone re-print a boarding pass and get back on the plane before my seat was taken.

Upon take-off, we headed out over the ocean and over cloud cover. This is where I saw something cool… the shadow of the airplane was cast on the clouds below, completely surrounded by a full-circle rainbow. After a bit, we banked to the south and I could see Santa Catalina Island to the west. We came back over land over Laguna Beach. I could see Dana Point a little to our south. We progressed over Laguna Niguel. The next landmark I recognized was Murrieta and the southern intersection of I-15 and I-215. The next major landmark was Salton Sea, followed by Blythe and the Colorado River. I lost track of landmarks, due to cloud cover, until we passed just to the north of Phoenix, AZ… several recognizable landmarks seen. After Roosevelt Lake, I did not recognize landmarks, but I saw many odd colored rivers. Upon arriving near Albuquerque, NM, I saw more automobile junkyards than I’ve seen anywhere else… great first impression. After a short stop in Albuquerque, we continued on. Within minutes of take-off… I could still see land, but there were absolutely NO landmarks. For the most part, it was flat lands of circular fields in square spaces; peculiar but not distinguishable. The only landmark that was different was the Missouri River around Leavenworth, KS… just before arrival into Kansas City International Airport. I’m sure that those that live under our flight line are proud of where they are from, but it really lacked in physical features.

Upon landing, I met Richard at the baggage claim. He had already checked into the Fairfield Inn in Liberty, MO. Unfortunately, they had no rooms with two beds… only one with a king-sized bed. I have to sleep on an inflatable twin… THIS SUCKS! My brother used Priceline to get the room and chose 2 adults… apparently there is no distinguishing for 2 adults sleeping together or separately, major flaw in the system. It is now passed midnight local time and I can’t seem to sleep on this bed. I hope I’m not too tired for the Raider game, starting in about 11 hours.