Traveling in 2022? Let's Think About That...

We like to travel, as you can see by browsing our site, but let's get one thing straight...we travel to have fun. If it turns out to be more of an ordeal, we'd rather skip it.

So, what about travel during this post-Covid year of record travelers to the world's destinations? I think we'll pass for this year and here's why...

It seems that everyone wants to satisfy their travel urges and want to do it right now! At the same time, airports, airlines, car rental companies, hotels, and more are having staffing shortages and trying to train new hires while this travel boom is going on.

I can't think of one friend who's traveled recently that didn't complain of long lines, serious delays, lost luggage, no car available for their reservations, and more. Add that frustration to someone who has to travel in a wheelchair and that doubles the pain.

We've already heard stories of people waiting for hours on a plane waiting for the access crew to show up and get them off. Or booked, confirmed, and guaranteed accessible hotel rooms given away to someone else before you showed up (this has happened to us several times in the last couple of years).

Let's also add to the equation that we're experiencing the highest levels of inflation in four decades plus fuel costs have skyrocketed beyond belief. Travel...in addition to being more of a pain than fun...has gotten rediculously expensive.

On the other hand, we don't want to just hunker down in our house until these hard time are over so we've come up with some other strategies, starting with finding fun things to do in our own neighborhood.

Within an hour of our home are several county fairs...Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado, Sacramento, and San Joaquin Counties...plus the California State Fair where we can go out and have fun in a carnival atmosphere for a day. 

In addition, there are several other festivals to attend...the Ragin' Cajun Festival in Valley Springs, the Grape Festival in Lodi, the Smokechasers Fair in Plymouth, the Italian Picnic in Sutter Creek, the Homecoming Festival in our local town...where we can see great local exhibits, eat great food, and have a drink while watching a great local band (if you're counting, that's 10 weekends right there...almost enough for an entire summer).

(While we are concentrating on Northern California, you can find a fair or festival near you here)

Speaking of music, we also support local live music as much as we can. We follow local musicians on social media and find where they'll be playing...often for free (but make sure to tip your musicians)...notably a local winery, brewery, bar, restaurant, etc. This makes for a very inexepensive and fun outing.

(See Tim's take on our local music scene)

Beyond fairs, festivals, and local concerts there's always just getting outside and enjoying nature. Take a walk along the beach or go for a hike. No matter where you live, there's certain to be some public space like a state park nearby which will probably be free or have a minimal entrance fee.

(Need information on accessible hiking trails in California? Check it out at hiking at The World on Wheels)

Even with so much to do near home, we do also want to get away and see some new scenery now and then. While we'll be avoiding the crowds at major destinations and flying, we'll still do getaways. For us, in 2022, that means it's the age of the road trip.

Let's talk more about that next time.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2022 - All Rights Reserved

Jailbreak! Escaping the Coronavirus for a Few Hours with a Sanity Drive

(Please read our Covid 19 Statement first - Ed) No, we're still not advocating you travel anywhere right now as that Covid 19 Statement you just passed would state, if you clicked on it (see what you missed?). And, no, we're not advocating you violate any social distancing guidelines in your area. But we do advocate doing some things that are safe but might be a tad out of the box for some shelter-in-place (SIP) warriors.

Here in California, our SIP order allows us to go outside and recreate. You can go for a walk, ride a bike, go birdwatching, etc., as long as you keep your distance from others (members of your own household do not need to social distance).

You are not allowed to go out where crowds would be like the obvious venues such as theaters, concerts, and sporting events. Some gray areas, like beaches and state parks, have been closed because of overcrowded conditions that don't allow for social distancing.

In between what's allowed and what isn't is a gray area that is pretty much undefined...while all state parks parking lots have been closed, many of the parks still remain open. Non-essential driving is discouraged but gas stations remain open (with bargain prices!) and many chambers of commerce...and even some local police departments...encourage people to shop at what few businesses remain open.

In our house, while we've been walking around town and I've been handling the procurement of the necessities, my wife and son have really been on lockdown. Neither have even been inside our car or outside of a few blocks from our house for over 30 days and it's starting to wear on them. 

The cabin fever needs a dose of outside medicine to relieve the symptoms.

With that in mind, I remember that wineries are still considered essential in our state. The wine club I belong to up the hill in Plymouth has a box for me that they'd like me to pick up. I'll bring Letty and Tim along and we'll take the 'scenic' route home.

It's a quick stop at Amador 360 to get my wine while Letty and Tim wait in the car. A few squirts of sanitizer on my hands, then back in the car. Away we go...

6 miles later, we're taking in the air at the tiny hamlet of Fiddletown on our way up to a loop through the Sierras. Letty masks up and and buys a tin of English toffee from a shop here who is also giving away a cloth face mask with each purchase.

There's an auditorium here that houses a fiddle competition each fall. It'll probably be dark this year.

We wind our way up into the mountains, making a wrong turn at one point, then it's back downhill along the curvy Ram's Grade Road into the old Gold Rush town of Volcano where we stop just long enough to point the camera out the window to capture a little scenery. 

We've got plans to do a further story on this fun little town once the SIP order is lifted. There are several forks in the road here...turn right to go across the mountains to Sutter Creek, left to go to the mountain town of Pioneer...where we go straight to climb up to the town of Pine Grove along California's Highway 88.

There's a burger spot here that we really like, Giant 88 Burgers, which is attached to, and owned by, a large Italian restaurant nextdoor.

They were open and doing take out business out of a side window with a sanitizer machine.

We got three burgers, went across the street to an empty but open park, and had a delicious picnic.

One more thing to see before heading back down the hill to home...we'd heard some wildflowers were in bloom along the Mokelumne River not far from where we were. 

Electra road runs along the river on our county's (Amador County) side. We were not disappointed. Thousands of orange poppies interspersed with purple lupines covered the hillsides. It's not a well known area so there were very few other people and it was easy to keep far away from each other.

On the way back into the town of Jackson, an even more impressive sight of several hills covered with millions of the orange blossoms greeted us.

Just a quick pullover to take a few pictures and enjoy the view. Like the river, not many people were here. This hill was on the news last night but, thankfully, they refused to divulge the location to keep the hordes away. It worked and there were just a few people, widely spaced apart (that's since changed and now this place is too crowded on weekends...PG&E closed Electra road. The bloom will soon be done, though, and the crowds will disappear - Ed).

Spirits lifted and rejuvenated, we went back home to go into our shelter in place quarantine which will hopefully end soon.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2020 - All Right Reserved

A Day Out: In Search of the 'Superbloom' East of Los Angeles

Even mega-sprawls have an end to them and the seemingly endless sprawl of Los Angeles comes to a halt at the corner of Euclid and Chino Avenues in the Inland Empire. Ontario on one side, Chino on the other. Tract houses at one corner, dairy farms and truck depots across the street.

Maybe a strange place to start our search for wildflowers...as civilization ends, barnyard smell and oil stains take over.

I'd heard about this mythical steakhouse that supposedly sits on this corner where delicious 16 ounce ribeye dinners can be had where the pricing is a dollar for each ounce of meat.  All I see, however, is a windowless little block of a building with a certified truck scale on the side.

What's left of a little sign on top, in addition to advertising it's weighing service, says Taylor's Cafe and, somewhere in there, 'steaks.'

A couple of ugly brown doors at each end of the building have stencils of a cow, pig, and chicken with a logo..."Animals Taste Good." Inside, a few families chow down on a noontime breakfast at long tables made up of shorter ones pushed together.

A group of men, one with a big but docile Doberman, play a bar dice game.

Yeah, technically, this is a Basque restaurant but not in the traditionally famous 'family style' of the more famous Basque dinner houses. It's also heavy on Mexican influence...the owners are a husband of Basque ancestry and his wife who is Mexican.

That wife asks us where we'd be comfortable when we walk in. We pick a table by the wall.

Menus provided, we go to order. I want the ribeye plate. The waitress asks how I want my eggs..."it comes with eggs?" I ask. The menu hadn't mentioned that. Like any good Basque place, yes...it does...just because they say so.

My wife gets their Saturday special, which is a couple of slabs of very tasty tri-tip, along with eggs, home fries, beans, and a pretty fiery salsa.  Glasses of red wine are provided to wash it down (the traditional meal beverage of the Basque, or at least it seems that way at all the Basque restaurants we've been to).

Tim gets a hearty and delicious chicken soup with a leg bone sticking out of it.

It's obvious we're the newcomers in this room full of regulars but the staff goes out of their way to make us feel welcome.  After we're done, the server comes up with a plate covered by a couple of big slabs of tri-tip.

"I want you to sample our tri-tip."

I do, it's delicious as was the 16 ounce ribeye I just polished off. My wife couldn't finish her platter, neither could Tim his 'small' soup so we pack it up to take home where we had some great tri-tip sandwiches with chicken soup on the side for dinner the next day.

After that fabulous and filling meal, we get back on the 60 freeway and keep heading east to Gilman Springs Road, just past Moreno Valley. The Theodore Payne Foundation wildflower hotline said there was a big bloom of wildflowers going on in the area where this road meets Soboba Road in San Jacinto.

While there were a few yellow daisies here and there, mostly all we saw was green grass.  Not much of a 'superbloom' that we'd been hearing about in the news.  We did see the big Scientology compound here with it's faux castle movie soundstage and golf course. No signs of Tom Cruise or John Travolta, though.

Strangely, there is a row of rotting, falling down houses along the compound's golf course.

We continue on until we reach the end of Soboba Road at the Indian casino there and turn around.  It's time for 'Plan B.' Luckily, we can go to Oak Glen. It's about 30 minutes away from our current location and, even if there are no flowers, we can still get some great scenery in.

"...and they have pie," Tim reminds me.  That's right, Oak Glen is a famous apple growing region and pie is on every menu.

"Do you think we can get donuts on the way home?" Tim asks.

"Tim, you just said you wanted pie."

"Oh yeah."

We make it up to the Wildland Conservancy's Oak Glen Preserve (formerly Los Rios Rancho apple farm) where wheelchair accessible trails wind through apple orchards and Morane forests.

Finally, we see some flowers. They're apple blossoms and not wildflowers but at least there's a lot of 'em.

It's a chilly, fall-like day even though it's early spring.  Jackets are needed today.  I grab a map from an unmanned visitor's center adjacent to the handicapped parking.

We take a short hike to the preserve's duck pond, seeing this woodpecker in a nearby tree, looking for more wildflowers.

It's just not happening today, Superbloom hype notwithstanding.  There are some other spectacular view and lots of lush, green landscapes...just not much blooming besides the fruit trees.

Back in the parking lot, we go to the former packing shed where we get some hot coffee and Tim can get his apple pie before heading back home.

Darryl Musick
Copyright 2017 - All Rights Reserved