Road Trip: Mysteries and Wine Country, etc.

This morning started out with a frustrating trip to Walgreens to get a prescription refill. I won't go into detail here, but let it be known that Millbrae California is DEAD TO ME. I hate them, I hate their google map directions, and I hate their inhabitants. That is all. Moving on...

Driving to San Jose from my hotel, the weather and the surroundings were beautiful.

In San Jose, I went to the Winchester Mansion. I'd read a story about it as a kid that said Mrs. Sarah Winchester built the strange parts of the house to confuse the spirits of people who'd been killed by Winchester rifles. I always thought it was a normal house with some weird spirit-foiling additions. Today on the tour I learned that a psychic told her that to keep the spirits confused, Mrs. Winchester had to keep up construction on the house constantly. Therefore, the house remained under construction 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 38 years until Mrs. Winchester's death in 1922.

It turns out that, far from being normal, the entire house is pretty wacked out. Staircases that go nowhere, doorways that go nowhere, and even a chimney that goes nowhere. Plus cupboards opening onto walls, windows in the floor, "easy riser" staircases built into hidden closets for Mrs. Winchester. I don't care what they say, Sarah Winchester was batshit insane.

After the Winchester Mansion, I drove to Santa Cruz to see the Mystery Spot. Far from being simply a place that men need to learn more about, the Mystery Spot is, in my expert opinion, fucking crazy! I took pictures, but even those don't do the spot justice. You need to just go there yourself. Seriously. Gravitational (or whatever) forces cause people to gain or lose inches of height based on where they are standing. It also causes people to have to fight against a strange force that wants to push you in a certain direction. Balls roll uphill, and none of it's an illusion. It's just wacky gravity (or aliens, or whatever theory you prefer. I go with gravity and/or magnetic fields myself.)

I finally got a bumber sticker to cover up the Obama/Biden sticker. Because, you know, they won.

Well. You know what they say... "the best laid plans" and all that. The great thing about road trips is that plans can change, and you should never be in a hurry. As you know, I'd intended to be in Ukiah tonight, but thanks to delayed timetables and San Francisco traffic, I'd only made it to Petaluma by 7:00 p.m. I'd been stuck in traffic for 2 hours and was at the point of weeping, so I decided to get off the freeway and find a place to stay for the evening. I wasn't thrilled about staying in Petaluma, but what choice did I have? Until I exited from 101 and saw the sign, "Sonoma 17 miles; Napa 24 miles." My eyes opened wide. I heard angels singing a chorus. 'Wine country? I'm this close to wine country?!' I thought. A phone call to my mother plus a AAA tour book led me to the Best Western Inn in Sonoma, which takes dogs, has a surprisingly awesome room with a king size bed and a fireplace, AND has a free breakfast that is delivered to your room! Kind of hard to beat that. Plus they have free parking and coffee, and it's one block to the center of Sonoma. Which is a good thing when you've had a few glasses of amazing wine and you need to get back to your dog and make sure she's not barking in the hotel. Or, ahem, so I've heard.

My room in Sonoma. King-size bed and a fireplace!

I went to dinner at A Girl & A Fig, which is on the Southeast corner of the town square in Sonoma. It was pretty great. Not the food, which was tasty but not amazing, but the people I met! The bartender, Mark, was cool, plus after the dinner crowd left (I got there late due to getting to town around 8 p.m.), all the local service industry folks rolled into the place and I got to chat with them. It reminds me of Port Townsend, though maybe not as dysfunctional. One can only hope. I was chatting with an attractive, shy guy, and at the end of the night he had to take off because of a conference call in the morning. I gave him my info in case he's ever in Seattle, and he gave me his card. He's a winemaker! Well, I love wine, so maybe it's a match made in heaven. Or something. At any rate, I had a really fun time tonight.

The cozy bar at A Girl and A Fig

My revised schedule has me staying in Eureka, CA tomorrow (Friday) night and Reedsport, OR on Saturday night. I hope to be home on Sunday. But as long as I'm home by the 25th, I guess I'm ok.

More tomorrow night, hopefully from Oregon! More pictures here