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!
