Final Thoughts on California

Never in my life would I have thought I should plan a trip to Northern California.  It's just not a place that has ever piqued my interest.  However, with COVID restrictions keeping us from the places we know and love, and with Glo insisting that a visit to her mission would be something wonderful, I figured "why not?"  I mean, it was a cheaper flight than Hawaii, and it allowed me to feel the excitement of visiting someplace new.

I LOVED IT!  Everything that I had ever heard about it was completely wrong, and I now have a cache of beautiful memories that might motivate me to someday return.

Aside from the myriad homeless people, and aside from the fact that I have absolutely no clue how to dress like a Californian, every part of every place we visited was delightful.  There are some pretty funny Kennedy-esque moments that I want to record because I don't believe they will stand the test of time in my memory like Alcatraz will ;-)

1.  Grocery Market Bargain Outlet.  Believe it or not, that is the name of a grocery chain in Northern California.  Glo first told us about it when driving around her mission because it was a place where she and her companions would occasionally shop.  She told us that the prices are amazing, but the products are not.  It's basically the store where food goes to die.  Most food has an expiration date within a week, and it's all the food nobody wants.  For instance, pumpkin-flavored Lucky Charms (from October) being sold in March.  Or pumpkin yogurt...again, sold in March.  She also told us about the theme song that is played every fifteen minutes in the store, announcing some crazy sale that you don't want to miss.  So, like an ohrwurm, we were constantly singing "Grocery Markey Bargain Outlet" or any permutation of those four words (seriously, they all worked in any order in the tune).  

Monday night, we knew we needed to do laundry, and despite having passed a million other regular stores over the past three days when we didn't stop, we found a GMBO in the middle of San Francisco that was closing in 15 minutes.  As we drove up, two workers were starting to close the metal gates, but I barreled my way in and yelled out the window that we were fast shoppers.  There were three things we needed:  scissors (to cut my KT tape to size), anti-bacterial wipes (for COVID prevention), and laundry detergent.  I couldn't walk in because my foot was in pain, and honestly, somebody needed to stay in the car, but I figured the three of them could disperse throughout the store to find the three items we needed.  Like champs, they came out seven minutes later, but the results were truly unexpected:

• Scissors.  Not only scissors, but on the same tool, a bottle opener AND a nut cracker.  And all for $2.99!  Granted, trying to cut my KT tape was like sawing a log with those "scissors", but we felt peace knowing if we needed to open a cold one, we were well prepared ;-)
• Wipes.  Oh, these wipes.  They weren't wipes for body parts, but they were wipes for cleaning.  I rolled my eyes in exasperation, but you know what? By the end of the trip, John had freely offered the wipes to the kids in different situations, and they were GONE!  And as he said, all with a "fresh, lemony scent".
• Laundry detergent.   Hallelujah for recognizable brand names! Hannah said she saw "All" laundry detergent and snapped it up.  I was so thankful!

2.  Clifford, the big red van.  When we first pulled up to our selection of mini-vans, we were pretty dang excited to see a Toyota.  However, I told John that we should have a sniff in each of the five proffered vans, and sure enough, the Toyota reeked of cigarette smoke.  After that, the best option was the one we had initially rejected: a red Chrysler mini-van.  As the designated driver for the trip, I got to know that van pretty dang well, and it was a hot mess, especially for only having 19K miles on it.  First off, what van actually has a display screen but no Apple Car Play? As a result, I had to prop up my phone in front of the speedometer for navigation *cue eye roll*.  Second off, Markie said the captain's chairs had these sharp metallic protrusions at the shoulder level that made it crazy uncomfortable to sit.  He said he needed to actually call up his brother-in-law who works for Fiat-Chrysler to tell him to have a look at those.  Third, it felt like Clifford had been ridden hard and hung up wet.  There were times when we were climbing Lombard street in San Francisco (seriously, it's not exaggerated in movies, and it's not for the faint of heart), and I wasn't sure Clifford's transmission would hold.  Or when we ascended 5,000 feet of elevation in just a few short miles going into Sequoia.  But, like the Little Train That Could, we made it every time. And Clifford got us there.  I sold the last of our mini-vans the moment Ethan threw his cap into the air at his high school graduation and I've never looked back, but man it was fun having everyone under one roof, all crammed into the back seat with fortune cookies, and GMBO wipes, and Sister Edwards' cooler, and Glo's new guitar.  It was a good time.

3.  California is a country unto itself.  Ethan told us some crazy statistic that if California was its own country, its GDP would be fifth largest in the world!  And I'm not surprised.  Just as we drove around a little bit of Northern California and dipped our toe into the northernmost side of central California, it felt like we had hit several different states.  The Mediterranean climate of Napa and its vineyards, the chaparral biome of San Francisco (only found there and Italy), the grasslands surrounding Fresno, and the taiga and coniferous forests of Yosemite and Sequoia.  My jaw dropped numerous times as we drove just an hour and the landscape changed within minutes.  It was unbelievable, and I can see why SO MANY people want to live there.  In fact, when we were in Fresno, I told John that I could easily retire there, and I wondered where the closest temple was located.  Encyclopedia Cheese did a quick search and told us IT WAS FIVE MINUTES AWAY.  IN FRESNO.

Anyway, it was a trip to see so many companies headquartered in California.  In fact, just a short jaunt up Hwy 101, we saw multiple companies in which we have stock! Apple, Zynga, and some other one I can't remember at the moment.  And it was pretty fun to see a SunMaid Raisin building near Fresno.  Turns out (Mark looked up this one), SunMaid is a co-op run by California farmers.  Waaaaaay cool.

4.  Encyclopedia Ethan.  I'm not sure Ethan was aware of this before our trip, but he has a *bit* of an obsession.  He needs to know anything about everything.  If we had a question, he was looking up the answer within seconds.  This comes as no surprise, seeing as his job IS being an analyst, but I think it did surprise him how difficult it was for him to NOT reach for his phone if he didn't know the answer.  He might have felt subconscious about it, but he didn't need to--we always appreciated him doing the research for our benefit.

5.  Driving across the bridges.  It's one thing to see the Golden Gate Bridge pictured over my lifetime in movies, tv shows and screen savers, but it's another thing to drive over it and actually walk it.  And we crossed the Bay Bridge as well several times.  I mean, it feels like they should be pieces of art and not actual transportation links.  I usually get very nervous driving across bridges (it has something to do with me imagining my tire blowing, losing control of the steering, and plummeting over the edge....for real), but I felt no fear driving over those.  And the views from them were spectacular.

6.  Plantar fasciitis.  I hate to admit it, but it was a very large, looming part of the trip for me.  It was the most miserable timing to come down with just three weeks before we left on the trip.  I could seriously hardly walk at all, but by some miracle, I made it through the alleys and streets of Chinatown, the five miles over Alcatraz, the three mile hike up to Vernal Falls, and the two mile hike to Miro Rock.  But holy smokes, no amount of taping, or soaking, or inserts could really relieve me of the pain.  Hannah sure gave it the old college try though, rubbing the heck out of the knot in the bottom of my foot.  Otherwise, I didn't make it much of a point, and the family didn't need to worry about me, (although I did have a bit of a mental breakdown after the third day of walking/hiking several miles) but now that I'm sitting on the other side of the trip and making a fast recovery, I give myself a gold star for gritting it out.  Really.  I was a champ.

7.  John's generosity.  We decided to pay for everyone on this trip (minus the boys' plane tickets).  The biggest expense was two hotel rooms each night which came out to just under $3,000 for the ten days.  We also ate out once a day.  Thankfully though, we kept saving money here and there, mostly through John's proverbial question, "Do you have a military discount?"  John and I gambled when the Hertz line had ten people in it, so I sent John over to Alamo and he got Clifford for $150 less than Hertz had quoted us.  John got a national parks pass for free with the military designation on his driver's license.  But even if he hadn't gotten the myriad of discounts, John was so generous with his money.  I never heard him complain once, and if and when I tried to apologize, he always reassured me with "Aris, we haven't been on a trip in over a year.  It's all worth it."

8.  Having a Core Kennedy trip.  Seriously, we weren't trying to exclude the daughters-in-law and the grand babies, but just being together as the six of us again was super fun.  It gave us a chance to explore the core relationships from years past with no distractions (I mean, those grand babies are only distracting in the BEST of ways!).