Written by: Sunday, August 08, 2010 9:05 PM
3 hours out. 3 hours back. That was a long trip.
Saw a few things along the way that stood out.
A truck with a vague promise and a URL, something like http://mynvdreamjob.com.
Another truck with the URL http://hartmannstudios.com. I don’t see many trucks with the word “studio” on it.
My legs are spent. Yesterday, I did the first 20 minute exercise in Jillian Michael’s 30-Day Shred DVD. That woman kicked my ass. Today, I hiked for miles around Turtle Bay. Now my legs are paying for both.
It’s notable that there are many more rest stops on I-5 between here and Redding than there are on Highway 99 between here and Redding.
We ate at the local cafeteria in the museum at Turtle Bay. I had a pretty decent chicken, spinach, and feta grilled Panini (is that redundant?) with some kind of garlic spread. Michele had a chicken wrap, and Hunter had a Mediterranean salad. Yes. For those folks playing along at home, this very carnivorous child ordered a pretty vegetarian salad powered by his own free inclination. I think he liked that it had olives.
The bridge is very cool. It’s easy to get a sense of vertigo if you walk along the sides and watch the river passing under your feet. I wish we’d been able to stay long enough to see it at night.
We walked around a very long paved trail which circumnavigated a chaparral. I guess. It looked like a field with trees to me. I enjoyed getting out and away from it all, even if it was pretty hot.
After a quick stop for some drinks, we headed into the museum proper. Fish, microscopes, antiques, GPS mazes, a giant bark teepee, and a tree with all the dirt removed so you could see all of its roots.
Then off to see animals. Not a lot, but they were worth the visit. A gray fox, a barn owl, and a red-tailed hawk, which, according to a hand-cranked box of audio along the trail (I’m not going to explain that), makes the traditional sound effect for a bird of prey in movies.
Finally, the butterfly tent. Even though it was considerably smaller than the butterfly sphere in the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, they had more butterflies which were much closer and easier to see. Some Julian butterflies (or maybe they were Orange Banded…) were swarming over orange slices.
The butterfly docent told us that our milkweed we planted should yield some monarch caterpillars and chrysalises (chrysalii?), which should be jade green with orange spirals. We’re looking forward to that.
Then it was time to head back. We stopped in Corning at a tourist restaurant called The Olive Pit. After doing some sampling, Hunter got some golden balsamic vinegar (the kid loves his balsamic vinegar), Michele got some hot pickled okra, and I got spicy blue cheese stuffed olives.
The final stop, for dinner, was at an ancient-looking shack called Bartel’s Giant Burgers. They were fantastic! Cooked to order, quickly delivered, and perfectly made, they provided a satisfying conclusion to out family trip. I wrote up a quick review on Yelp.
That’s it. Took way too long writing this and the Yelp review and then checking Facebook. One thing I must do is make these shorter and spend less time writing them. I’ll get there.
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