Our actual trip home was a far cry from what I had imagined- instead of leisurely exploring the coast, we ended up almost making a straight shot home.  We did make one teensy detour in San Francisco, a city which offered two major draws.

Attraction #1: This lovely lady:

I met Jenny last year when she joined Mary, Scott and I on our trip to the Bahamas.  It was pretty much love at first sight- Mary and I  agreed that we liked her even better than Scott.  And not only is she a total blast to party with on a tropical island, she was also able to immediately engage MIKE in conversation once we arrived at her place.  Yeah, Jenny is pretty much a rockstar.

The next morning, we showered and re-packed our stuff, ready to hit the road again- with one last scheduled stop.

Attraction #2: The California Academy of Sciences

If you haven’t noticed before, Mike’s go-to activity when we go pretty much anywhere is to head to the nearest science museum.  It’s kind of ironic, considering that he boycotted field trips as a child (he thought 6th grade science camp was dumb so he never gave his mom the permission slip to sign- what kind of kid does that?), but now that he’s almost 30, we go to a lot of museums that elementary schoolers would totally be jealous of.

So when we woke up Saturday morning, knowing full well that we had about 13 hours of driving ahead of us, we still decided that it would be a good idea to make a pit stop at the California Academy of Sciences.  Mike had been talking about this place since we first decided to make this drive, so I didn’t have the heart to argue with him.  This turned out to be a good decision, because this place was freaking amazing.

As soon as we walked in and I saw this, I knew that Mike was in love.  He immediately started taking pictures to archive under “future house/aquarium integration project.”

There is an entire aquarium INSIDE the museum.

There are few things that make my husband happier than fish tanks.  When he was 11, he found an octopus at the beach and kept it alive for 3 years in a tank he maintained by himself.  Our first apartment was 800 square feet and the only furniture we had was a mattress on the floor, a 4th-hand futon, a computer desk and a 200 gallon coral reef tank.  The first bit of renovation we did on our house in Anaheim was to knock a hole in a wall in preparation for a fish tank.  (We moved before the fish tank could actually get set up, but the wall still has a sweet hole in it.

The aquarium featured fresh water creatures too, like these adorable wax frogs!

Love.

But what was my very favorite animal?  If you know me, you can probably guess it was an albino.

Albino anythings hold a special place in my heart.

The museum had sections dedicated to all kinds of cool places.

There was even an entire rainforest!

So dope.

And just when we thought we were done, there was the roof.  Yeah, the freaking ROOF was an exhibit.

It’s called a living roof.  It regulates temperature, makes the most of solar energy, and does all kinds of other cool hippie earth-friendly stuff.

Also, it makes you feel like you’re a hobbit.  I want one.

We spent more than 4 hours at the museum.  And this wasn’t like our day-long trek through the Museum of Flight- this was super engaging and totally devoid of planes.  I was super happy that we had taken the time to explore.

However, once I realized that we weren’t going to make it back home until about 2 am, I was less happy.

See, I don’t even have to put on theatrical make-up to look like a zombie.  I just have to go on a road trip.

It’s actually a really good thing that so much crap happened over the holidays, because ever since we got back we’ve both been so slammed at work that we haven’t had much to write about happen and I haven’t had much time to write about it.  So that’s a good thing, I guess.

But anyhow, the fact that I’m here in Seattle writing about our time in California means that we did in fact successfully get home somehow.  As of Sunday, Jan 3rd, at 3:30 pm, I had no idea how or when that was going to happen.  12 hours later, we were on the road.

How does that happen when the car we drove down is still minus one wheel and hasn’t even begun to be worked on?

Easy.  You get another car.

My beloved old Mini had been starting to show it’s age and we’d been talking about retiring it eventually, and thanks to the craptastic economy and a promotional APR, we got a pretty sweet deal (even my dad was impressed, which is hard to do, as he’s a master car negotiator- as a child I watched as he made a car salesman cry over the deal he secured on our first minivan).

I know that it sounds a bit weird to buy a car while you’re on vacation.  In fact, I only know of one other person who’s ever done it (again, that would be my dad, who bought the afore-mentioned minivan while we were on a camping trip).  But, as my dear friend Scott said, “Only you and Mike would buy a new car for a drive up the West coast.  And rationalize it as sane.  I think that’s why I love you guys.”  (This coming from the guy who flew to Munich for 3 hours so he could retain Executive Platinum status with American Airlines.  We really are soulmates.)

So anyways, we picked up the car Monday at noon and packed it up.  Few things are more entertaining in life than an overstuffed Mini:

And we were off to San Francisco!

With one last stop at In n Out on the way.

(Don’t be alarmed- that’s an iced tea in my cup.  Not that I ever closed my eyes and WISHED it was a Diet Coke.  ::le sigh::)

Time: 4:05 pm
Location: brea, ca
Listening to: old Dave Matthews
Temperature: 72 degrees
Number of giant glowing orbs in the sky: 1. And that’s all we need.

Time: 1:46 pm
Location: the last road stop before the grapevine
I don’t have any really good numeical values to put here. We stopped because mike was starving and sick of my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. This was out table after he finished eating:

Time: 12:01 pm
Location: somewhere in the middle of California where cows outnumber people (no, not chino hills)
Listening to: malcom mcdowell’s TED talk
Hours we’ve spent actually driving so far: 15 hours
Hours til we arrive in orange county: 4 (hopefully) (mike says 3)
Miles we’ve driven so far: 1,000 (mikes trip odometer resets at 1000)

Time: 7:00 am
Location: leaving redding, ca
Listening to: hey lover by ll cool j w/ boyz II men (circa 1997)
Drinking: starbucks triple americano black, 1 stevia (I already miss Seattle coffee) (me); mango naked juice (mike)
How awesome is my dad for letting us use his wealth of hotel points and get a free, non-grody hotel room last night: immeasurable
Miles driven so far: 680
Miles to go: 500

Time: 1:42 pm
Location: a rest stop south of Eugene but north of Medford
Listening to: TED talks
Number of naps taken: 2
Number of electronic gadgets that have crapped out on us so far: 1 (our gps died- WTF?)
Number of electronic gadgets we’ve spontaneously bought on the road: 1 (a radar detector that we’re returning as soon as we get home. Suckaz.)

Time: 10:00 am
Location: mother’s bistro, Portland, OR
Number of calories consumed: I don’t want to know

We made it to Portland just as my absolute favorite breakfast place in the world was opening, so we were able to eat without a wait. (By the time we finished the wait was an hour and a half.). Why was it so important to get the timing just right? Because this is the home of the greatest biscuits in the world.
Next, a quick stop to stock up on water and contact solution, and we’re off.

Time left: 5:32 am
Injuries sustained while walking to the car: 1 (I twisted my ankle. Shut up. Walking is hard.)
Currently listening to: spice girls “I wanna make you holler” (it’s sentimental)
En route to: a stop at the Microsoft campus so mike can drop off the gifts he forgot yesterday, then straight to Portland for breakfast. Fingers crossed that we’ll get near San Francisco by night.

So in my last post, I stuck to the high points of Mary and Scott’s trip to Seattle- good food, a beautiful hike,mike’s leggins and super happy friend love crap.  In an effort to keep the post more Hemmingway than Tolstoy, I decided to skip on their visit’s definite low point.

But then Scott bitched about it in the comments section so I decided that I had to tell you about the worst 30 minutes of last weekend.  And it was all Scott’s fault.

On the way to Wallace Falls State Park, we passed a sign that read “Washington State Salmon Hatchery.”  Scott, who had previously been singing along to the Miley Cyrus’ opus “Party in the USA” (thank you KISS and your 3 XM stations that played the song 4 times during our one hour drive), suddenly started shrieking like a woman possessed and insisted that we stop there on the way back.  Well, actually, he wanted to cancel the hike and just go look at salmon, but I told him to shut it and we hiked anyway.

But we did indulge him on the way home.

And it was horrific.  Or, as Scott would say, “horrif.”

As soon as we parked, we were greeted by this sign:

I really don’t know what to say about these visual fun facts, except that I really hope that this is a popular spot for elementary school field trips.  And I really hope that it prompts lots of interesting dinner table conversation afterwards.  “Mommy, why does the boy salmon get squeezed and pee on the bucket of salmon eggs?”

Evidently, late October is the time of year when the adult salmon have already made it back to their spawning grounds, let their goodies loose and are basically just waiting to die.  We went down to look at the live fish, and they were big.  And fat.  And barely alive.  It was really just depressing.

If you look closely, you can see nasty dead salmon carcasses piling up on the bottom of the holding pen.  This was so depressing that I took a big step back…  right into a giant pile of dog poo.  Nice.  And then I saw this:

Yeah, that’s a dead salmon.  Filled with maggots.  Evidently the salmon here are so half dead that just about any hungry animal thinks of this holding pen of their own Vegas buffet during this time of year.  The entire lawn was filled with nasty rotting carcasses.  Between that and the dog poo, I wanted to cry.

Meanwhile, Scott pranced around, explored the hatchery, and learned about his favorite fish.  I sat in the car and complained.

The rest of the day went well- we celebrated our friend Shaun’s birthday, where Mary and Scott met my Seattle friends and we ate his pulled pork, followed by an after dinner snack of rillette, duck confit and sparkling wine at Bastille.  I honestly don’t know how the hell we ate that much after seeing the dead salmon fiesta.  Scott really brings out the best in me.

Thank you so much, Scott, for adding this side trip into our day.  I’ll never forget it.

Oh, if you aren’t familiar with the amazing musical achievement that is “Party in the USA,” I think the best way to acquaint yourself with it is via this epic rendition: