I have plenty of stories to write about California because we've vacationed there four times in the last five years, albeit only for about 10 days to two weeks each time, but we always managed to pack a lot of sightseeing into that short time.
Our choice of California as a vacation sight was based on the fact that one of our daughters, Debi, lived there with two of our grandchildren, Linsey and Haley, and her husband.
The list of places we visited almost seems endless. Prior to our trip Debi reserved a condominium in Yosemite National Park and that was the highlight of our first trip to California in the 90s. We had been there quite often years before while stationed in Arizona. Yosemite is beyond description, especially if you go during spring run off. There is one picture of Yosemite on this page and several more on the next page. Each picture is almost like a post card, they are so beautiful.
I'll just list some of the places we saw over the years. San Francisco at least a dozen times. So many interesting places to go, including the Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate Park, Fisherman's Wharf, Alcatraz, Treasure Island Naval Air Station, Candlestick Park (now called Three Com Park (Whoopee)), Chinatown, the Japanese Gardens in Golden Gate Park, Lombard Street the crookedest street in the world. See photo below where I'm standing in front of the flowers at the bottom, and a big favorite of my dad's the cable cars. I can still remember my dad hanging by one arm out over the side of the car.
Some of the other places that we went to: The Redwoods in Muir Woods and the Giant Sequoias near Yosemite, San Quentin and Folsom Prisons; I guess we wanted to see places where we hoped not to end up. We also made trips to Lake Tahoe in Nevada plus Reno and Squaw Valley; San Simeon where Hearst Castle is located; what a fabulous drive that was along Route One and the Pacific Ocean. (I thought that Route One in Maine along the Atlantic Ocean was fabulous until we drove along the cliffs of California, there is just no comparison).
Another time I spent the entire day driving around Sacramento with a list of sports card shops to see if I could find a few cards to complete sets. Took in all the sights of Sacramento and made notes to return to them when the rest of the family was along. It's also a nice city to visit but nothing like San Francisco.
"Do you know the way to San Jose?" Well we went there also. Unfortunately our timing wasn't the greatest and we hit San Jose at rush hour. What an experience coming down out of the hills in all that traffic. I don't have any other comment about San Jose except that if you don't like listening to the song you can click it off just below. Of course our experience at THE MYSTERY SPOT didn't help our mood at the time either. It's not that THE MYSTERY SPOT wasn't a unique and nice place. It was all it advertised to be, however we purchased tickets and were told the next tour would start in 10 minutes. We went and visited the gift shop for 10 minutes only to be told it would be about 5 more minutes. 45 minutes later we were still waiting for our group to go on the tour.
Debi lived just about 15 minutes from Travis Air Force Base and as luck would have it on one of our visits there was a card show on the base. I found some really neat cards for my collection that day. I was able to find the last two cards I needed to finish up my 1966 Topps set. Besides the show at Travis, I went to about 30 card shops in the Fairfield, Vallejo area and even had one shopowner call me back in Maine to tell me he found a card I was looking for. I wish I still had the name of the owner of that card shop because he went way beyond what was expected and it would be nice to give his card shop a plug.
Scandia Amusement Park was the favorite place to go in all of California according to the kids. The adults didn't mind going either as they had an 18 hole miniature golf course that was enjoyable to play. The network of tunnels and tubes was the best I've ever seen and my knees and elbows always ended up being sore from the hours of crawling through them even with the protective pads. I made it a point to go down the slides as much as possible because I didn't need any extra padding there.
On one drive to Scandia from Fairfield we were using a deluxe van we had rented while visiting because my brother Ron was there along with son Doug and his family (a rather large contingent). Ron was driving unaware that the radio could be controlled from the back of the van. Before we arrived at Scandia everyone in the van was in stitches because Ron couldn't figure out why the radio would not stay tuned to his station. Then on top of that we whipped his butt at miniature golf. Unfortunately the only camera we took to Scandia was the video camera and I don't have any still shots to show of their beautiful amusement park but the GOLF GRUDGE MATCH is recorded for posterity. I found that S C A N D I A Family Center has a web site so I'll put in a little advertising for them since it was such a great place.
