2016 Family Adventure - Part 1: The Train

November 5, 2016 2:11 pm

We're finally getting caught up around the house. So I can start blogging our big adventure. Our big family adventure this year was a train trip to the East Coast.

We loaded up on the California Zephyr in Martinez, CA on September 30. The Martinez station is fairly nice. It seems to have been recently renovated and the parking is free.

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We booked a private sleeper room and a roomette since 4 people can't sleep in a single room (you could fit 4 in the "family bedroom," but then you don't have a private bathroom/shower).

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Heather was super excited to sleep in the top bunk. She and I stayed in the roomette while Jess and Corinne stayed in the regular room.

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However, Corinne and Heather completely changed personalities / temperaments while on the train. We called them "train children." They were just...different. We had a long stop in Denver so we got off the train to walk around a bit. Which was when we decided maybe Heather was getting motion-sick. So we bought some Dramamine for her, which helped her significantly, but she was still a "train child."

Meals generally involved Jess and I attempting to cajole some food into their mouths while they acted loony. Watching shows on phones was about the only way we could get Corinne to sit still.

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The California Zephyr runs to Chicago at which point we had a long layover before boarding the Lake Shore Limited out to Springfield, MA. We took the opportunity to walk around Chicago for a bit.

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It was a bit cloudy so we postponed going up in Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) until the return trip. But we did get some authentic Chicago-style pizza at Giordano's.

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Okay, the perspective makes the pizza look bigger than it really was, but it was still impressive.

After dinner we hung out at the station--in the Metropolitan Lounge and wandering around to stretch our legs. The newly renovated Metropolitan Lounge is quite nice with plenty of space. The dedicated "Kids Corner" was very helpful in keeping the girls contained and entertained. I also took the opportunity to use their new showers which was quite nice.

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Our train out of Chicago didn't leave until 9:30pm, so the girls were pretty exhausted, but we got them changed in to pajamas before boarding so they could go straight to sleep.

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Then it was on to Springfield. Mom and Dad picked us up at the station and we were glad to be in New England and off the train.

A big difference between this trip and the one we did in 2011 was the timeliness of the trains. Amtrak must have worked out a new agreement with the freight companies or something because we were almost always either ahead of schedule or on time. Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but it also seemed like last time we always waited at every station until the scheduled departure time. But this time I think if the stop didn't have a real station (meaning people couldn't show up and buy a ticket at the last minute) the train would leave as soon as all expected passengers had deboarded/boarded; which really helped with the time performance.

Thanksgiving Road Trip 2015

December 29, 2015 2:59 pm

For Thanksgiving this year we drove down to Texas to visit with Jess' family. Christopher & Jenny and their kids were going to be down from Colorado and Cameron was home from school. Chance & Rachel and their kids live in the general area as well as Colton; so it was a pseudo-family-reunion kind of thing.

2015 - Texas - Travel Map

We had originally intended to leave Livermore the morning of November 19, but Heather's preschool had their Thanksgiving Feast that day around noon. So we stayed for that and left immediately after.

Heather made the front-page of our local paper when the kids were singing the songs they've been learning:

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Oatman

Once the feast was over we loaded up in the van and drove to Needles, CA for the night. On Friday we loaded up and drove into Oatman, AZ to see the burros. Heather was a little apprehensive, but it was still a good way to get out of the car and stretch for a bit.

Grabbing some ice-cream at the Oatman Hotel

Lowell Observatory

From Oatman it was on to Flagstaff, AZ. We grabbed dinner (at Chick-Fil-A) and then headed up to the Lowell Observatory. They have public viewing and talks each evening. We got to see the moon up close through their largest telescope and we saw Uranus as well (even with a building-mounted telescope it still only looks like a fuzzy blue dot).

Heather with the Clark Telescope behind her.

We also listened to a talk about Pluto. The Lowell Observatory is where Pluto was discovered. In July of this year the New Horizons Probe completed it's 9.5 year journey to flyby Pluto and take the best pictures of it the world has ever seen. Heather was actually somewhat interested in the talk, but she really wanted to interrupt every few minutes to ask unrelated questions or make statements. They were always still space related though. I had to threaten to leave if she didn't wait to ask her questions at the end. She reluctantly agreed to do so. Then she asked the presenter what hit Uranus to tip it sideways.

Sunset Crater Volcano and Wupatki

The next day we drove North to see Sunset Crater Volcano and Wupatki National Monuments. Sunset Crater is one out of a string of dormant cinder cone volcanoes in Northern Arizona. North of the volcano a ways is an old pueblo from the 1100's.

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Heather playing in the dirt in the sports arena at Wupatki

By the time we finished at the National Monuments and headed back out the East side of Flagstaff the sun was already setting. We drove to Albuquerque, NM and stayed the night there and then drove straight on to Frisco, TX. I had more stops planned, but by Albuquerque we were already almost a full day behind schedule, so we skipped the remaining stops.

Thanksgiving in Frisco

We spent November 22 through November 29 in Frisco. We went to the Zoo with Christopher & Jenny and kids on Wednesday, but mostly just hung out.

Dr. Christopher reads "Human Body Theater" to kiddos

Cameron and Christina made adobo for dinner one night. Here it looks like there's a problem.

Christopher apparently said something humorous

We did get Johnson Family pictures taken while we were there and one of just our little family as well:

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Capulin Volcano

When our week in Frisco was up we began our long trip back home. Weather looked clear so we opted for the Northern route up through Colorado and across Utah and Nevada. We stayed the first night in Amarillo, TX and then angled up across the corner of New Mexico. We passed by Capulin Volcano National Monument on the way. We had to drive down a snow-covered road to get to it, but the park entrance had been plowed by the personnel running the monument.

Unfortunately, they hadn't plowed the road that runs up to and around the rim of the (dormant) volcano so we couldn't go up and have a look around.

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Colorado Springs

Our destination that evening was Christopher & Jenny's house in Colorado Springs, CO. We stayed a couple of nights there and gave Heather the chance to play in snow.

Arches National Park

We drove out the West side of Colorado and spent the night in Moab, UT. The next morning we drove through the first third or so of Arches National Park before continuing on our way to Lehi, UT.

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We bought a kangaroo rat stuffed animal for Corinne at the gift shop

Getting in and out constantly was annoying, so I started making use of the moon roof

La Sal Mountains looking South from Arches

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From Arches we drove up to Lehi, UT to spend a night at the house of some friends from college. Then it was on to Winnemucca, NV and home the day after that.

It was a lot of driving which was made bearable by having the Raspberry Pi running Kodi and hooked in to the van's entertainment system. We had movies and TV shows to watch to keep Heather occupied as we drove across hundreds of miles of nothingness. I caught up on all my podcasts which could be played through the front speakers using Bluetooth while Heather watched stuff in the back with headphones. I'm not sure how my family growing up survived driving across the country from Connecticut to Utah and back without such conveniences.

Monterey Bay 2015

September 5, 2015 9:09 pm

We went down to Monterey for the weekend of August 21, 22, and 23.

I took that Friday off from work and we drove down mid-day to avoid morning rush hour traffic. When we got there we grabbed lunch at Point Pinos Grill, which was considerably nicer than I was expecting considering the prices. After lunch we walked across the street to the Point Pinos Lighthouse.

This picture would have turned out better if the sky weren't so heavily overcast, but not much I could do about that.

After touring the lighthouse we headed to our hotel room at Asilomar Conference Grounds. Once we were checked in we walked down to the beach (Asilomar State Beach) to do some playing.

I dug a hole, because why not?

And Heather stood in it, because why not?

We hung out in our little beach shelter (which worked fairly well overall):

We walked along the beach and dabbled in the water:

This was Heather's usual reaction to the waves coming in:

I tried to take some artsy pictures of the waves stacked up as they came in:

Then we headed up to the room for a dinner of hastily retrieved McDonald's; eaten on the floor (there never seems to be a good place to eat food in a hotel room).

Saturday we eventually made it out the door and down to Monterey's main drag. We ate breakfast at Coco's which was....not a highlight of the trip. It could have been a smoother experience, but the food was fine.

With food taken care of we walked down to Monterey Bay Aquarium to spend most of the day. Public Service Announcement: Buy your tickets online and print them out. We walked straight in the door while a line down the block was waiting to buy tickets.

Heather got to see some baby moon jellies up close as we walked in.

Heather, Jess, and Corinne sat in a giant clam:

And some more jellies, because they seem to make the most successful pictures at aquariums for some reason:

After completely wearing everyone out at the aquarium we headed to a local pizza joint, Gianni's, for dinner. It sounded like a sit-down and order kind of place, but it turned out to be a place-an-order and seat yourself kind of place. Which would have been fine, except they were packed and there was nowhere to sit. And Heather was DONE with the day and couldn't take being in the restaurant. So we converted our order to takeout and I took Heather back to the van to decompress while Jess waited for it to be ready.

Once it was ready she called me and we drove around to pick it up (couldn't drive up earlier because there would have been nowhere to park). That worked well for Heather and we had another dinner on the floor of our hotel room. The food was good though. Probably would have been better not stuffed into takeout containers and driven across town though.

On Sunday we got up and eventually got packed up and out of the hotel. We headed down to Carmel-by-the-sea for breakfast at Em Le's. They have famous deep-fried french toast:

Em Le's is just a tiny little restaurant tucked into the corner of a building. There's only seating for maybe 25 people at a time. The food was really good; give it a try if you're in the area.

See with the Point Pinos Grill, Gianni's, and Em Le's? I tried to find unique, local places to eat; but it's tough not knowing what to expect when you have little kids. Don't want to unintentionally go somewhere too upscale or non-kid-friendly (Em Le's was close on these criteria, but we didn't have any problems).

After eating we went down to Carmel Beach for a few hours, but didn't take any pictures this time around. Then we loaded up into the van and headed home. Which took much longer than it should have. I was expecting weekend traffic heading back into the Bay Area so we left at like 2, but it was terrible. So try to avoid that. We ended up needing to stop for food so we found a Habit Grill (which is a chain, but I hadn't seen one before) which was decent.

Railtown and Mercer Caverns

June 27, 2015 12:09 pm

The next day after Columbia, Mom and Dad were headed up to Idaho. We went and visited Railtown 1897 State Historic Park and then Mercer Caverns.

We arrived just in time to catch the 12:00 train. It was hot. If you can, you want to sit on one of the cars with open sides; the breeze keeps it much cooler than the cars with just open windows.

At the halfway point the train stops and the engine decouples and then hooks back up on the other side to take us back.

While that was happening all the kids were piled up at the end of the train watching. I was standing at halfway back in the car to make room. Then I hear Heather screaming for me.

As I work my way up to her I discover that she'd gotten her head stuck in the gate at the back of the car. Before I can get to her a woman helped her get her head out. Heather then turned to her, thinking it was me, and really lost it. At that point I was only a step away though, so I picked her up and carried her off to try and calm down.

After she calmed down we went back to the end of the car to look out again. The crowd had dispersed by this time so it was mostly just us and another little boy. For unknown reasons Heather pushed the boy so I grabbed her arms to discuss why that was not acceptable during which she kicked him [sigh]. So I picked her up again and carried her off screaming. That part was less than great.

It could have been more relaxing. I would recommend against visiting when it's over 100 F out.

We got back in the van, bought some cold water, and headed off towards Mercer. At least underground it would be cooler.

On our way there we crossed this bridge. This sort of highlights California's water problem. You can see where the water level is supposed to be and used to be. The little pull-off here has a plaque commemorating this location as the location of one of the first ferry crossings for this water. At the moment you'd have to work your way pretty far down the cliff to cross the water.

We stopped for lunch in Murphys, which we discovered is apparently a somewhat hoity-toity little town that was having some sort of festival so it was packed. After contemplating driving back the opposite direction to find some less crowded food, we eventually decided to be adventurous and just go with it. So we found a parking lot and loaded up the strollers.

We had been heading for the Murphys Grille, but then stumbled upon Peppermint Stick (which didn't sound like a restaurant when we saw it on the GPS receiver). But they had food and ice-cream which, again, it being over 100 F sounded like a good idea. We enjoyed some really tasty and plentiful burgers and shakes.

After lunch it was time to delve into the earth where it was blessedly 55 F. We were concerned we might get chilly in shorts and t-shirts, but let me assure you, the tour is only long enough for the cool air to feel nice. Heather did end up wearing her jacket, but we ended up just carrying our other jackets the whole time.

I didn't take the camera into the cavern as I was concerned I might end up needing to carry Heather, so I only have pictures from my phone, but the lack of light was mostly too difficult to get any pictures worth looking at. But I did get this one near the entrance:

On the cavern tour Heather was a perfect little angel. The heat seems to really affect her ability to concentrate and maintain her self-control.

After the cavern tour it was time to pile back in the van and head home.

Columbia, CA - Old Timey Town

11:34 am

For the past couple of weeks Mom and Dad have been wandering around the western states and last weekend we met up in Columbia, CA. It's technically a State Historic Park, but it's still an actual town too. The main street and surrounding area is a preserved gold-rush era mining town (though they have paved the road).

But, before we talk about the town, let's back up a moment to the night before. The only arrangement we'd made with Mom and Dad was to meet them in Columbia Friday morning. Then Jess and I decided drive out Thursday night to give us a better chance of getting an early start in the town before it got too hot (forecast was for over 100 F).

I called the hotel at which we had booked a room for Friday night, but they were sold out for Thursday. So I found another hotel a couple towns over and booked a room there. As it turned out that was where Mom and Dad were staying.

We left town late Thursday evening to avoid sitting in traffic (it was going to be a ~1.75 hour drive already). Heather eventually fell asleep and we pulled in to the hotel's parking lot around 10:30pm. After groggily working her way up the stairs to our room, Heather was startled by Mom stepping out of the room right next to ours to say, "Hello." Turns out, grandparents popping out of doors unexpectedly late at night was not something Heather was going to tolerate. She pretty much lost it.

Anyway, we eventually got to sleep and Heather was somewhat less wary in the morning.

In town we had a blacksmith put our name on a horseshoe (this was something Jess was super excited to do):

We also did candle dipping (again, something Jess was super excited about):

We had lunch at one of the restaurants (with sarsaparilla) during which Heather had a few meltdowns; heat and hunger didn't combine well for her. As it turned out, we then left Heather's water bottle at the restaurant and didn't notice for several hours. When I went back to get it the worker greeted me with, "Oh yeah, you had the screaming blond-haired girl. She was memorable." Yah....

We took a stagecoach ride which was set upon by a bandit:

Heather panned for gold. She found some rocks, which she declared to be her treasure, but nothing of value.

And we had some ice-cream to cool down from the heat:

And Heather enjoyed spending time at the antique bowling alley:

It was a good time. It was hot, but most of the buildings were air-conditioned and the old trees along main street provided nice shade.

Apparently the real secret is to go during cooler months and rent one of the cottages (there are cottages and hotel rooms available only through the ReserveAmerica system as they're run by the Park Service). The cottages don't have air-conditioning, but they seem to have plenty of room and are reasonably priced.

Bonus pictures: