Elko, Nevada Airport - Before and After

This was taken in 2010 on our way to Yellowstone National Park.  We took the photo because we needed to get a photo with something that was a historical marker as part of our road trip scavenger hunt.  Naomi is almost 11 and Ethan is 9.

This was taken this summer on our way to Utah.  We found the marker again, but didn't recognize it at first because it had been updated.  Yes, Ethan is taller now.

Scavenger Hunt Results are In

Alas, we did not win the scavenger hunt, but we came close again. We found all 20 items, but lost out on the tie-breaker. The tie-breaker is whoever comes closest to guessing the number of teams to find all 20 items. We guessed 93, and at least 2 other teams had guessed 88 and 89. The correct answer was 88 out of 452 entries.

According to the paper, people had the most difficulty finding people feeding pigeons. Other items that gave people a difficult time were ice cream truck, mime and motel named for two people. Our most difficult item was a mime.

We did get one consolation, with one of our photos making it on their slide show. See if you can find our photo in the Best of the Rest slideshow on their site. You might recognize where the photo was taken. The answer is in a previous entry on this blog.

We had a great time though. We'll give it a whirl again next time.

2010 Scavenger Hunt Compilation

This is a compilation of what we found for our road trip scavenger hunt this year. Some of these photos were in a previous post, but this is the entire list. The two most difficult items to find this time were a motel named for two people and a mime. There really aren't too many motels named for people these days. The market is dominated by chains, and the ones that are not chains have catchy travel related or destination oriented names like Ponderosa Motel or Drift-Inn Motel. We learned that miming is likely a dying art. Perhaps in NYC or other large urban centers street mimes can be found entertaining tourists, but we didn't have any luck finding a mime in the cities that we visited. In the end, we had to improvise.

We completed two road trips this year to find all of our items. In an earlier post, the first part of our first road trip is described. Picking up the discussion from that earlier post, we zipped across from Montana to Seattle in one day. We stopped along I-90 in Montana to pick up fireworks that were a hit later on the Fourth. There were many such fireworks stands along I-90 to Seattle. We knew that we could cover this last leg of over 500 miles to Seattle in one day because we had done it before.

We'll post our photos from our stay in Seattle separately so we'll just say that our stay in Seattle was shorter than usual, but we had a full Fourth with tons of food and a great fireworks show, a Mariners game, and visiting and sleepovers (for the kids) with family and friends.

The second road trip was to southern California. People who don't live in California may not understand this, but southern California is different from northern California. Geographically, southern California is just so much more spread out. We talked about going to the beach one day, but didn't make it because it was going to take too much time. Even though we live in-land in the Bay Area, going to Ocean Beach in San Francisco does not seem to be the same sort of ordeal. Ocean Beach is not like the California beaches you see on television which are usually beaches in southern California. Ocean Beach is 60 degrees and windy, with very few tan bodies.

Our trip to southern California was more scavenger hunt oriented so there were no stops at the "Happiest Place on Earth" or other amusement parks. The closest we came was the Watermelon Festival in Sunland, California. The itinerary of events for the Kids' Stage at the festival listed "mimes," but there were no mimes to be found. We did have a nice chat with "The Great Omar" who had a nice kid-friendly magic act. When we spoke with him after his performance, he said to us, "No, I don't know of any mimes being booked for this festival." He did give us his card that Ryan promptly took after which Omar said, "Here's another card because who knows where that card will end up."

We spent part of one day in Little Tokyo. The Japanese American National Museum had several activities ongoing that were all free. Besides free entry into the museum, they had a hands-on arts and crafts workshop with free popcorn and cotton candy. The museum had two main exhibits. One was on portraits of multiracial kids by Kip Fulbeck. There weren't any photos of Japanese-Chinese kids. The second was their main permanent exhibit called "Common Ground: The Heart of Community" on the 130-year history of Japanese-Americans. A smaller exhibit called "Textured Lives" on Japanese immigrant clothing from the plantations of Hawaii was also running through August 22, 2010.

We drove US 101 on the way to Los Angeles. it was a good compromise between taking the much slower Highway 1 on the coast and the faster, but less scenic I-5 route. The only Pea Soup Andersen's that we knew of was the one that is located along I-5 near Santa Nella, but the original one is located along US 101 in Buellton. Apparently, there were as many as four such restaurants. Not sure if all four are still open, but we'll have to stop in next time.

One reason for taking US 101 was because Dorothy's always wanted to visit Solvang. For those of you who have never heard of Solvang, it's a small town in Santa Barbara county that was founded in 1911 by Danes from the Midwest. It has the feel of a small European town with narrower streets and sidewalks full of tourists. The architecture is suppose to be consistent with what is common in Denmark. We sampled some delicious pastries, checked out the Hans Christian Andersen Museum and saw the sights of the town. Solvang is a picture of quaint.



Another US 101 stop was San Luis Obispo. Did you know that SLO is the home to the first motel? The term motel was coined by Arthur Heineman in 1925 for his new creation the motor hotel. The Milestone Mo-Tel (later renamed to Motel Inn) was suppose to be a convenient rest stop for travelers between San Francisco and Los Angeles, but the motel chain never got underway. Heineman was undone by an inability to register the name as a trademark allowing others to use the "motel" name and do so more cost-effectively. There's not much more than two partial buildings left today behind a chain link fence.





We also checked out the Cal Poly University SLO campus. Maybe a preview of things to come in perhaps six years or so. Wow! Can't believe that we could have a child heading to college so soon. Here's a photo of us outside the office of my friend who teaches in the Department of City and Regional Planning. He obviously was not in as the campus was still on summer break and quite quiet.



Okay, that's enough background on the rest of our road trips. Here's the compilation of our finds for the scavenger hunt. Drum roll please....

1. Covered Bridge - This was an easy one for us as it was a repeat item from a couple of years ago. The last time we had covered bridges on our list, we had no idea where we would find a covered bridge. We only could think about the "Bridges of Madison County" and the actual bridges of Madison County, Iowa. However, we learned that Oregon has many covered bridges, probably one of the largest collections in the country. We knew exactly where to find one that would be easy to reach. Cottage Grove, Oregon on I-5.



2. Church with Visible Bell - This one was a little challenging when we realized that most churches these days do not have bells. Even with steepled churches, the steeples are often solid with no belfry. Perhaps this is due to the age of technology and speaker systems that can broadcast the sound of bells. The church in the photo is St. Rose's Church in Dillon, Montana on I-15. We stopped in because I have a colleague who works for Caltrans and has in-laws that live there. We wanted to see what was in Dillon.



3. Sign that is Intentionally or Unintentionally Funny - We could have used any number of several signs for this one. Naomi picked this one in Twin Falls, Idaho as being funny.



4. Black Bear - Okay, so it was going to be a long shot that we would find a living black bear. Perhaps in a zoo, but we found this taxidermy black bear at the visitor information center in Butte, Montana.



5. Lemonade Stand - Normally, one would look for a lemonade stand in a neighborhood. We were surprised to find one at a freeway rest stop outside Missoula, Montana on the way to Seattle. The rest stop had this little stand complete with lemonade operated by a White Star of Jerusalem chapter out of Missoula who were raising money for dental work and orthodontics for children. I learned that one of the women working the stand was originally from Fairbanks, Alaska.



6. Water Tower with Writing on It - Almost all of the towns in Idaho that we passed through had water towers so we had our pick of towers to photograph. The trick was to try to get a shot showing the tower and the writing with members of our family in the photo. This was taken in Burley, Idaho.



7. Festival Celebrating Food, Vegetable or Fruit - The photo is from the Watermelon Festival in Sunland in southern California that was mentioned earlier.



8. House that Doesn't Have Four Sides - Another find in Cottage Grove, Oregon. These are yurts based on structures of the same name used by the nomads of Central Asia. They can now be found at some campgrounds in Oregon. The inside of the one in the photo was complete with sleeping, dining and cooking areas.



9. Mime - If you read our earlier post, you'll get the story behind the photo below from Hollywood, California



10. Someone Feeding Pigeons - This photo was taken in Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon. Did you know that if you feed pigeons and the birds do not pick all the crumbs clean, you could be cited for littering (at least in Portland)? We were told this by a nice security guard at the square who politely warned us. There were plenty of pigeons, but no one feeding them so we became the pigeon feeders. What was funny was that when we started feeding the pigeons none of the birds in the area would come to the food that we were tossing on the ground. It took one bird to take the first step and the others followed.



11. Ice Cream Truck - This is one of those trendy roving food trucks. On this day, the Coolhaus truck was on the rooftop of a business next to what seemed to be a very popular downtown Los Angeles seafood market and restaurant called the Fisherman's Outlet Seafood. The Coolhaus truck was partnered with another food truck serving some sort of Asian fusion food. The flavors are interesting, but their twist is that the ice cream is between soft cookies as a sandwich. Your fingers sort of stay clean due to an edible wrapper. The ice cream sandwiches were tasty!



12. Motel Named for Two People - This was the big head scratcher. We had no idea what to do, but did a little research while in southern California and came up with the motel in the photo below. Thanks to our GPS we were able to find the motel in a part of Oxnard that probably would not be a destination for most.



13. Obscure Historical Marker - This was one of the first items that we found. It was a marker at the Elko, Nevada airport marking it as the destination of the first air mail route in the U.S. This was covered in the earlier post.



14. Parked Car with More Than 10 Bumper Stickers - This was one of only two items that we found in Seattle. In previous years, we used the knowledge of family and friends in Seattle to find items there. My sister spotted this van and took us to where it was located.



15. Building Painted Purple - We found this building in Pocatello, Idaho. It was a night club, sort of explains its purple color.



16. Blank Billboard - We didn't think that this would be an easy find, but we were wrong. It's probably a sign of the times and the down economy, but there were plenty of blank billboards along I-80 in Nevada and other states too. This was near Hollister, Idaho on the way to Twin Falls. We found others but nothing like this where one could stand under the billboard. The story behind the story here is that we were looking for a place where Ryan could use the restroom. We couldn't find one and this billboard appeared so we took care of two things at once in the parking lot of the Country Haven General Store. No, we did not relieve ourselves on their property. We have a portable potty that has been a lifesaver on several occasions.



17. Closed Store with We've Moved Sign - This was the other item that we found in Seattle. We found it on the way back to our car from the Seattle Mariners game. Lianne is in the photo with us.



18. Ferris Wheel - We could've used a couple of different ferris wheels, but this one is from the Watermelon Festival. Ethan and I were the only ones to take a spin. Ryan wanted to take a spin too, but he was not tall enough. We got our money's worth with over a dozen revolutions on this ferris wheel



19. Rainbow - We have more information on this one on our previous road trip post too. But we got this photo along Highway 93 in Montana.



20. Something Unusual Not on the List - This was a keeper. It was in a place not well traveled - Cut Bank, Montana. The Cut Bank area does figure prominently in the Lewis and Clark chronicles as the north branch of the Marias River traveled by Meriwether Lewis is the present day Cut Bank Creek. I don't think Lewis and Clark would've ever envisioned a 20-foot plus tall statue of a penguin in northern Montana. We had to double back in the rain to get this photo. Totally caught us off guard.



Well, that's it for our road trip scavenger hunt. Naomi is the only member of our family that made into each of the above 20 photos - what a trooper!

Overheard on Our Road Trip...

This year's travels took us to Nevada, Idaho, Oregon and Washington in addition to our stops within the Golden State. In total, over the course of two road trips we covered almost 4200 miles with our minivan. We travel pretty much low-tech, except for the iPod touch that the kids have finally discovered. Ryan is a good napper in the car so that'll sometimes buy us an hour or two. Naomi usually finds some way to entertain herself like by reading, although she has to be careful with that now that we've learned that she gets motion sickness. We've managed by having her wear Sea-Bands, bands worn on the wrist that work on the principles of acupressure. Ethan can spend hours in the car and not sleep. He has no problem with motion sickness. Often times, it was only me and Ethan who were awake in the car.

We participated in a road trip scavenger hunt though the Contra Costa Times for the third time. We scored all 20 items for the second time, with the mime being the most difficult find. We learned that miming is a dying art. A friend told us about a mime outside Anthony's Seafood Grotto in San Diego, but we weren't able to make it that far south. Another friend told me about mimes that she saw in Boston, but driving to Boston wasn't an option. We thought for sure there would be a mime some place in Hollywood, for sure on Hollywood Boulevard, right? But there were no real mimes in sight. So we tried asking the clerks in what must be the busiest souvenir shop on Hollywood Boulevard opposite the Grauman's Chinese Theater about even photos of mimes. Surely they must have one photo of Marcel Marceau, the most famous mime of them all. We mostly got blank stares, or "Marcel who?" It was sad.



There were unexpected finds like the rainbow. We were all set to find a Double Rainbow ice cream shop or similar establishment with a rainbow in its logo, but we found a spectacular rainbow in Montana on the drive from the Kalispell area to Florence, Montana on Highway 93. Good thing that 93 has driveways. We were able to quickly, safely pull over and get a shot!



The first leg or our road trip took us through Sacramento, Ikeda's California Country Market in Auburn, Reno/Carson City, Winnemucca, and Elko where we found our obscure historical marker. The Elko Airport was the terminus of the first air mail route in 1926 from Pasco, Washington via Boise, Idaho to Elko, Nevada. The 460-mile flight was made by Varney Air Lines which was sold to Boeing before merging with United Airlines.



We continued onto Idaho through Jackpot, Nevada having not lost a single dollar in Nevada (of course, we never wagered a single dollar either). Our only night stay in Idaho was in Twin Falls which is located adjacent to the Snake River Canyon made famous by Evil Knievel's attempt to jump the canyon on a motorcycle. We drove out of town on Highway 93 across the Perrine Memorial Bridge that offers incredible views of the Snake River Canyon.







We only hit one stretch of roadway on the entire trip where we lost cell phone coverage. This was on the stretch of I-15 spanning Idaho and Montana. We completely lost our cell phone signal from north of Spencer. Idaho until Lima, Montana. These are just places on a map mostly. We were talking with our friend John. When we reconnected in Lima, I had to explain that we did not hang up on him. We all got a good laugh.

We passed through Dillon, Montana and onto Butte, birth place of Evil Knievel and Levi Leipheimer. Levi is one of the top American cyclists going today. Levi's jersey is on display at the Butte Visitor Information Center. After Butte, the next stop was Deer Lodge to visit with Mrs. C. The kids had a vague memory of her two cats Dell and Ned, but there was no sighting of the two cats as they stayed down in the basement for our entire visit. So the kids made themselves at home and played with the cat toys. Mrs. C. demonstrated the use of an old fashion oil lantern that the kids thought was neat. It was a short, but sweet visit.





Our next stop was Glacier National Park. The weather was not that great so the mountaintops stayed shrouded in cloud cover for our entire visit, but incredible vistas were plenty. How can they not be, when the drive is on a road that is essentially carved out on the side of mountains with roadside snow in July!



Our last stop in Montana was the home of Mr. Bruder. I hadn'r seen him maybe since high school or maybe a little after that, but had kept in touch all these years. He looked the same, except for the white hair. We spent one night with him and his wife in what was a quite a roomy, comfortable house. He had a walking trail on his property that the kids hiked twice. The trail had at least seven creek crossings with bridges that Mr. Bruder had built. There was a tree that had been clawed up by a bear. There were wild turkey sightings. It was quite a different experience for our kids.

2009 Summer Road Trip - Part II

Here's a compilation of photos from the second half of our trip. Again, the slide show includes more items for our scavenger hunt.

2009 Summer Road Trip - Part I

The following is a compilation of photos from the "to Seattle" leg of our trip. This slide show includes a few of the photos for our scavenger hunt. How many can you spot? Some are marked, but others are not.

Good luck in spotting our "finds!"

Road Trip Scavenger Hunt

The local paper ran a scavenger hunt for summer road trips. The hunt ends on August 26, but we've completed our search and have submitted our entries. The following are the items that we were to find over the course of our road trips this summer:

1. Town mascot
2. Gas station adapted for different use
3. Professional fisherman with catch
4. Town square clock
5. Headstone inscribed with date before 1800s (bonus point if before 1700s)
6. Double-decker bus
7. Dog on the beach
8. Traveler from your team assisting street performer
9. A real outhouse (no portable potties allowed)
10. Red barn
11. Sign with Mother's, Mom's or Ma's on it (or foreign equivalent)
12. Cobblestone street
13. Oversized animal sculpture
14. Outdoor pay phone
15. Statue or art made entirely of edible food
16. A sign that is intentionally or unintentionally funny
17. A camel (bonus point if not from a zoo)
18. Town sign with population of 100 or less
19. A former jail
20. Something unusual not on the list

We had to have a photo of each of the items above with one of our travel party in the photo. The photos could not be from locales in the Bay Area.

The places we visited to collect entries for the hunt included items found at or near the following places:

California: Redding, Hilt, Dunsmuir, Humbug, and Truckee
Oregon: Grants Pass, Florence, Newport, Riddle, Wolf Creek, Canyonville, and Winston.
Washington: Seattle (Fisherman's Terminal, Pike Place Market, and Lake View Cemetery)

So as you can see we had an adventurous summer once again.

Great Road Trip Scavenger Hunt - Items 15 to 20

Item #15: An odd drive-through service

We thought that a drive-thru pharmacy to be an odd service, but guess what? Now such services are making their appearance in the Bay Area. This picture was taken near ojiichan and obaachan's place in Kent, WA. This pharmacy with its drive-thru window has been in business for several years now.



Item #16: The travelers playing a miniature golf course

The miniature golf course that we played was at the Seattle Center. Ryan didn't quite get it as he insisted on playing the same hole over and over and then thought it was a good idea to try to collect all the golf balls.



Item #17: Smokey Bear

Did you know that there's not a single National Park in the state of Oregon? This is what we learned during our search for Smokey Bear while in Oregon. We have to give kudos to the very friendly volunteers at the visitors' center in Medford, Oregon who directed us to the Oregon Department of Forestry building on the outskirts of Medford. A call was placed to verify that they had cut-outs of Smokey Bear. Not only did we get cut-outs, but also coloring books.



Item #18: A menu or sign selling root beer floats

This photo was taken at an A&W in Kent, WA. The place even had drive up service where you could place your order while parked in a parking space. No waiters on roller skates, but still retro. We couldn't think of such a drive-up restaurant near our home.



Item #19: Something very unusual not on this list

We had our choice of items that we could use just from the Fremont district of Seattle. The Fremont district of Seattle is the self-proclaimed Center of the Universe. There's the giant troll under the bridge.



Or the statue of people waiting for a bus (I think that's what this is).



But the unusual item that we submitted with our entry was the statue of Lenin. The story goes that the statue was rescued from Slovakia by a man from the Seattle area. The statue is believed to be the only one of Lenin surrounded by guns. The more usual statues show Lenin as an intellectual, carrying a book or two. The statue is now actually on sale for $250,000 by the family of the man who brought the statue back to the U.S. The proceeds of the sale are set to go to community art activities in the Fremont area.



Item #20: Farm machinery in a field

We had a great time hunting this one down. We got several photos of farm machinery, but what made this one unique was that the person driving the farm machinery in this case was a woman. We waved to her and she waved back!

Great Road Trip Scavenger Hunt - Items 13 & 14

We had lots of fun with the next two in different ways.

Firefighters having a meal in a fire station. In hindsight, we really didn't have much to worry about. The winning entries had photos that were not much different than ours. There were a couple photos that showed a table full of firefighters sitting down for a meal, but more often the pictures were like the one we took.

Our photo was taken with Fire Captain Paul Eckstein of the South Lane County Fire and Rescue station in Cottage Grove, Oregon. He almost looked lonely in the fire station as most everyone else was out on calls. We pulled up to the station mainly because we smelled food.

Turns out the Fire Captain was at the station working over a BBQ. So we had food on the grill but no crew to eat it. We didn't have a lot of time either so we improvised. That's how we got the photo.

Before getting the photo, we toured the station. The grill in the back "yard" of the station was a giant Weber appropriate for a fire station. Off to the left of the garage was a narrow hallway leading to a room where all of the chairs were lazy boy recliners. The recliners were lined up facing a wide screen flat panel television mounted on the wall. Immediately behind this room was the kitchen counter and in the kitchen were two fridges side-by-side. It was not fancy, more functional and had a feel that it was a boys' place.

What they say about fire fighters being really generous turns out to be right on the mark.



So what do you picture when you hear "merry-go-round"? Here's what we found.


The photo was taken at a local park in Albany, Oregon. I think we were trying to find farm machinery that we had seen from the freeway when we found the park. It's not often that you see an old-fashioned merry-go-round in parks these days. I can't think of any parks where we live that have such a play structure, but when we were kids it was one of our favorite.

Great Road Trip Scavenger Hunt - Items 10 to 12

The next three items were each: one that would be easy to find, a second that was a head scratcher, and a third that was "what is that?"

The one that would be easy to find was a machine that flattens pennies. Our kids have a very large collection of such pennies from several places in Japan and the U.S. On this trip we documented our find at the Seattle Center in the shadows of the Space Needle. Lianne, Yuki's daughter, joined us for the photo.


The next one was a real head scratcher. A vehicle unique to the region that we would be visiting. We thought, "maybe we need to drive to Pennsylvania so that we could photograph ourselves with Amish driving horse and buggy." The best we could come up with were triple trailers. Triple trailers are illegal in most states. Oregon is the only state on the west coast that allows triple trailers. The other places where triple trailers are allowed are: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana Toll Road, Kansas Turnpike, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio Turnpike, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Utah.

The photo is one that Dorothy took during our drive on the road to Portland, Oregon. I'm in the foreground of the picture because one of the requirements of the hunt was that a member of our traveling party needed to be in each photo. We ended up with this moving photo because for some reason the only place where we could find triple trailers were while we were on the move. At the truck stops where we stopped, we found only single and double trailers. We wondered, "Do they have other stops just for triple trailers?" Fushigi datta (Japanese for "it was a mystery").


This next one was maybe the one for which we did the most research. We only had vague notions about phosphates. The scavenger hunt only said, "An old-fashioned soda shop that serves phosphate."

We did most of our research only after we had reached Seattle. We could not find any soda fountains serving phosphates in the Seattle area. The closest locale that held some promise was a soda fountain in Wenatchee, the apple capitol of the world in central Washington. We thought about driving there, but then we found two possibilities in Oregon.

The first one in Albany was a strike out. It turned out to be a candy shop in Albany called The Velvet Touch. Would we really find a soda shop in a place called The Velvet Touch? Sounded more like an adult entertainment establishment. It turns out they had great ice cream. So there we were at 10 in the morning eating ice cream. It was not a total loss.

The Grants Pass Pharmacy was our last chance. This was not our first visit to Grants Pass. The last time we found statues of dogs dressed up as batman and robin in front of a motel. This time it was all of the bear statues on the downtown street corners. San Jose had their shark statues. Seattle had their pig statues. Santa Rosa, home of Charles Schultz, has the Peanuts character statues. And Grants Pass has their bear statues.


The pharmacy did have a real soda fountain. It was a small soda fountain right in the middle of the pharmacy. And it did serve phosphates! The price was right, too. Twenty five cents. We pulled up to the counter and asked for a phosphate. The soda jerk said, "what flavor?"

"What are the flavors?"

"Anything on the board."

There were something like 20 flavors (coke, diet coke, Dr. Pepper, sarsaparilla, sprite, diet sprite, root beer, orange, grape, cherry, etc.) on the board. We had no idea.

The soda was made by mixing flavored syrup, soda water and what I assumed to be phosphoric acid. We ordered grape. It lasted just like a regular grape soda pop.