Weekly Ephemera #174

These 'weekly' posts are starting to be more like 'weakly' posts.

• While it's still cool here, I started preparing things for summer.  Our AC has been inspected and is ready to go.  I also tackled a leaky toilet.
• On the television front I finished "The Repair Shop".  I checked to see if there were more seasons and discovered that the host of the show is fighting rape charges so ... not sure there will be any more.
  
  After finishing "The Repair Shop" I watched a bunch of crappy Sci-Fi/mystery anthology series from the 1950s through the 1990s.  Frankly, the earlier stuff is better produced than the newer stuff.  I fall back to anthologies when I don't want to have to think too hard while watching television.
• I walked on and off since my last Weekly Ephemera post.  I walked seven times totalling 50.3 miles (81.0 km).
• May is starting to look like a busy month for the Wife and I.  
• We have a Hot Shops open house next Saturday.  It's been a few years since we've gone to one.
• Before mid-month I have to schedule my semi-annual blood draw.  It will be interesting to see if my A1C has gone down.
• We will be attending the confirmation of three of the Wife's cousins in Minneapolis.
• During Memorial Day weekend we will probably go to Brownville, NE for their semi-annual flea market.  Brownville is a nice little, Missouri river town with lots of history.  It's been a while since we've gone to one of these too.

2026 Southwest Meander - Magnet Edition

We purchased seventeen magnets on our Southwest travels.  Some were catch-up for places we'd been before but didn't have a magnet like Ventura and Cambria, CA.  Here are a few of of my favorites:

A blown glass rose from Harmony, CA.

A Ventura butterfly.

A Dia de los Muertos magnet from Olvera Street in Los Angeles.

A sand painting magnet from the Kanab, UT area.

We now have around eight hundred fifty three magnets and I promise you, there will be more to come.

You can see all our magnets in the Travel Magnets tab at the top of the blog or in my 2006 - 2026 Travel Magnets Google Photos album.

2026 Southwest Meander - Days 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, And 13

The last six days didn't have any shows or planned activities.  It was just a visit to our old haunts in California.  While the first week of this trip was fun and interesting, the second half was like slipping on a favorite pair of socks.

Day 8 and 9 - Chinatown, Olvera Street, Oxnard, and Ventura.

We left Las Vegas and headed into California.  We didn't have any activities planned for the rest of our road trip except for destinations.

Our first stop was Chinatown in Los Angeles, CA.  We hadn't visited here since we left California in 2008.  Sadly, a couple of stores we remembered shopping at were no longer there.

From Chinatown we walked to Olvera Street.  Olvera Street was just like we remembered.  We stopped at a shop and bought Marys and magnets.

From Olvera Street we went to Simi Valley to visit a friend of the Wife.  We met him at his school and we talked as he showed us his school.

We ended up in Oxnard where I'd spent twenty years of my working life.  We drove by our old house and were sad that the new owners had torn out all our trees.

Channel Islands Harbor outside our hotel room.

We visited the Rudder Room, a dive bar the Wife used to visit with her coworkers.  As you walk into the Rudder Room you walk through a long hallway, passing by the bathrooms.  The hall reeks of urine.  Apparently the smell hasn't changed since 2008.  One of my old coworkers was in the bar but he didn't recognize me.  We hadn't seen each other for over twenty years so I decided not to approach him.  We never had been close anyway.  The Wife and I had a beer and diet soda sitting on the beach behind the bar.

We ate at In-and-Out Burger for dinner that night.  If you haven't eaten at In-and-Out Burger, you should try to find one.  Worth the trip.

The next day we were going to visit with a couple more of the Wife's friends but, due to bad timing, we were not able to meet with either of them.  Instead we went out for breakfast at Mrs Olson's, a restaurant we used to frequent for breakfast.  The Wife was a bit disappointed that they no longer offered Bubble and Squeak.

We then drove to downtown Ventura and walked the main street that was converted into a pedestrian way during COVID and has remained so.  We bought a few things in our favorite stores.  We ended the day with dinner at BJ's where I had a pizookie ... of course.

Day 10 - Harmony, CA, Cambria, CA and elephant seals.

We left Oxnard and drove north up the coast.  Our first stop was the tiny town of Harmony, population 18.  We'd visited the town several times over the years and we've watched it change.  Originally it only had a post office and a pottery shop.  Restaurants and a chapel were closed.  A few years later the post office closed, but the small wedding chapel reopened and a small glass blowing place opened.  Now, the glass blowing place has grown larger, a wine bar and coffee shop has opened, and a small house that had always been at the entrance of this tiny town is now an AirBnB.

An elephant seals sunning himself.

Next we drove through Cambria.  Cambria is our happy spot.  We used to visit it when we just needed to get out of town for a day when we lived in California.  It was too early to eat so we headed farther up the coast to see the elephant seals.  There weren't as many as before but I think the population of seals varies depending on the season.  It was nice that there were wild life people there to answer people's questions, something that hadn't been there before.

We returned to Cambria and ate at the Main Street Grill that serves very good tri-tip sandwiches.  We eat here every time we visit Cambria.  I bought a t-shirt.  Then we walked through the town and shopped at garden stores, boutiques, and artist's store fronts.  We bought clothes and magnets.  I bought an african bowl made from woven electrical wire, an interesting mix between traditional weaving and modern materials.  The weather was perfect for our Cambria meander.  We stopped for some ice cream before we headed to our hotel to check in.

The Moonstone beach boardwalk.

We crossed the road in front of our hotel and walked the boardwalk along Moonstone beach.  We walked out on the rocks and found anemones in tidal pools.  It was windy and cold along the boardwalk.  I suspect it is always windy and cold along the water here despite the town main street being warm and inviting.

A tide pool anemone.

Day 11 - The World Famous Clown Motel

We left Cambria and drove across California, through a foggy central valley, through the desert, past Manzanar, before taking a windy, twisty-turny, road through the mountains that had drops that made your stomach float up in zero-G.  It was fun ... and a bit harrowing, frankly. 

The destination for the day was the town of Tonopah, NV.  There were two reasons to stop here.  First it was on the way to one of the Wife's students, which we hoped to visit.  Unfortunately their schedule prevented us from visiting.  Our luck with meeting friends on this trip was abysmal.

The second reason was the World Famous Clown Motel ... America's scariest motel. We stayed in the Exorcist room.  I'd wanted to stay here since I first heard of it years ago.  It was a weird place which, naturally made it an awesome place to stay.

The Exorcist Room.

Day 12 and 13 - The drive home

Our last two days were long ... nine to ten hour drives.  The last day, when we left Rawlins, WY the weather was terrible and the highway was icy .  We crawled along with traffic passing several semi trucks in the ditch .

In Nebraska we saw sandhill cranes during their yearly migration.

We were ready to get home after thirteen days on the road but we saw some cool things along the way.  We are starting to get a bit old to be in the car that long but we did this trip well.  Except for the last two days, out drives were reasonable.  The Wife and I tried to split the drive evenly which worked out great for both of us.  The next planned trip will be an international one in late July – Capetown, South Africa.

Weekly Ephemera #173

• Had an MRI of my prostate.  Not much has changed from the one taken a year ago which is good.  I'm scheduled for a biopsy in June to see how things have changed since the last one I had last year.
• I walked 38.8 miles (62.5 km) since my last Weekly Ephemera post.  This last week I actually managed to walk three times which has been a struggle this year.
• I finished the second season of "Fallout".  It was ok.
• We've started to plan out our 2027 travels.  We are looking at a loose festival theme that would include Holy Week in Spain, Dia de los Muertos in Oaxaca, and San Diego Comic-Con.