Sometimes you get what you Paid for…
The drive down was long and tiring; I sat in the passenger seat and played solitaire for about 8 hours of it (I won three times and I never win). I quit when my thumb started feeling kind of numb and my shoulder ached a little. It’s a good thing that Brent kept pointing out the scenic points so that I didn’t miss them. The sights were really beautiful; we passed Mount Shasta when the lighting was just perfectly casting shadows on its ridges. And I really didn’t mind the distraction from my solitaire.
In Redding, I had my first In-N-Out burger. I walked in prepared with the secret menu memorized: Animal Style burger and fries well done. Oh, and it was good. I watched them make my fries from potatoes! Real potatoes. They washed the spuds and pushed the fries out of the potato puncher. I’m not even sure that Mc Donald’s fries are made from anything organic. We grabbed a list of all of the IN-N-Out locations on the way out. Something tells me that I will be dieting when I get home. I was so pleased that I began snapping pictures that nearly got us kicked out.
Fast forward now to why I feel so dirty and gross and need a shower to wash Stockton out of my hair. Now if you are from Stockton and think it’s a lovely place, then we obviously took the wrong exit. Or perhaps you might need glasses. We noticed that the signs for Gas, Food, and Lodging were conspicuously absent in California. Or hidden. It was getting very late and we needed a place to rest our weary over-travelled, over-solitaired bodies. Since all we could find were motel-hotels, we assumed that maybe it’s a California standard and they aren’t all that bad. It was that bad and if they should decide to erect a sign for tourists it should read something like, “Move along – nothing to see here”.
We knew how wrong we were as soon as we paid and walked into a room that smelled a lot like cream of mushroom soup. And the bathroom light didn’t work. And there were ashes on the desk. So this is what we paid $45 for. Also, I am really glad that we decided at the last minute to bring our own pillows from home.
The night was restless as I worried about what kind of critters were roaming around in the dark and neurotically kept checking the sheets. I managed to have a few weird dreams before we were rudely wakened by a rooster. Yes. A rooster. At 4:00 am. Once we had had enough (and not enough sleep), we forwent showers after we saw the state of the bathroom in the daylight.
Ah, yes, the daylight revealed many things to us. Like the building across the street that also looked like a hotel. In the dark, I thought I saw a sign that said “Bug Free Zone” on the side of the building which I thought was faily odd to begin with. In the daylight, the building may have once been a hotel but now had fencing all around it (it seemed that most places in Stockton have fencing), and the sign clearly said, “Drug Free Zone”. There was a basketball hoop in the yard and some rough looking dudes wandering around. (Mom, if you are reading this, we are OK. Really.)
I think I handled all of this pretty well for a girl. I had a little fit last night, but didn’t insist on leaving. Probably because we were so tired, or because it was too dark to see what else was around us. We just finished breakfast at Denny’s and are now heading off to Twisted Oak for a pirate party. I hope with every greasy hair on my head that El Jefe has a shower that I can use.
Oh yeah, and since I have made you all wait long enough I shall tell you how I made my decision. In true Canadian form, I couldn’t really pick one and not the other and since their offers made it possible to do this: I picked both. Saturday, August 15th we will have a pirate wedding at Twisted Oak during their annual Twisted Few Looting party. and then on the 18th we will be wed privately at Michel Schlumberger Winery. We are really excited to be here and experience the awesome hospitality of these two wineries. I will post as often as I am able.
(I am posting this a day late as I wasn’t near a connection long enough.)
