So where was I? Ah yes, that night, we stayed at a bed and breakfast in Muphys called Dunbar House. It was built in the 1880s. I forgot to take a picture, so here is one from the hotel’s website:

There isn’t a lot of reliable information on the Internet about staying in gold country if you don’t want to stay at a Best Western or something, so I feel it’s relevant to add that Dunbar House is a great B&B. Marcia and I stayed in an attic room with a private bathroom and an adjoining private deck. It was clean and adorable and full of cushy antiques. There is an English garden surrounding the house, which is where we had our breakfast–soufflé, basil scrambled eggs, and fresh fruit. They also gave us complimentary coffee, wine, beer, a snack plate, cookies… whew! Quite a value, plus the owners are very nice. It’s perfect for a couple on a romantic weekend getaway.

The next day, we were refreshed and ready to continue on. The first stop was Moaning Caverns.

This is a cave where people apparently like to risk their life. It has a drop 165 feet. They offer you two options to go down the drop to the bottom of the cave. One, you can climb down a rope into the black hole. Or, you can take the 240-some stairs to the bottom of the cave.

So which tour did I take? Are you kidding? The stairs. Let me describe the tour for you. You and 30 other people, many of whom are overweight, crowd into a little room. Then a teenager tells you the history of the cave, explaining all the numerous people who have fallen to their deaths throughout the cave’s ancient history. On one side of you is a pit with ropes disappearing into it, which is decorated with signs warning you about all the ways you can die if you make a mistake on your rope. On the other side of you is a glass case full the bones of the people who had died in the cave. The teenager is particularly proud of a skull of a 7-year-old Asian girl who fell down the hole 1,700 years ago. You start to get the feeling that the cave is a Venus flytrap for people and you wonder if it was smart to pay $14.50 for a ticket.

Then the teenager leads you through a narrow passageway full of narrow steps, and awhile, all you can see is a wall and the people around you. Then you step out on a platform and are confronted with a dramatic, plunging cavern, with no end in sight. To your left is the stairs you are supposed to go down. It is a long spiral staircase surrounded by a tube-like cage. The stairs are rickety and made of wood. Here is a picture:

And now you start to realize what you are in for. Because, cage + 240-something steps + lots of overweight people + spiral staircases + extreme heights + rickety stairs = not something I want to do. Ever.

I actually would have gone if it weren’t the mental image of being trapped in a cage with all those people. If there had been fewer, I would have braved it, but as it were, the stairs did not sound fun to me. If it does sound fun to you, wear exercise clothes, because it looks like a lot of work.

So we left the cave and went to the town of Columbia. If is a fully functioning National Historic Landmark, with all of the original buildings and people walking around in period clothes. It is the kind of place where people make candles:

Or sit around wearing sunbonnets:

There was an ice cream parlor, a decent museum (much better than Coloma’s museum), a bookstore, Western shops, pretend blacksmiths, a hotel that you can stay in, and of course, stagecoach rides:

Marcia and I decided to ride in a stagecoach. It’s $6 to take a 10-minute jaunt around the town. Money well spent. The stagecoach is really bumpy. Riding one all day would be exhausting, but it was great for 10 minutes.

Halfway through the ride, we were accosted by a masked bandit:

Luckily, he didn’t think we had anything worth taking.

After Columbia, Marcia and I drove back home. It was a fun trip. I saw all the historical stuff I needed to see for my research, and also, I saw a deer:

ETA: The whole trip, “The Wells Fargo Wagon” from The Music Man kept running through my head. And not just the tune, but specifically Ron Howard’s part, complete with lisp.

Yeah…

Last week, Kyle went to some conferences in Las Vegas and I dragged Marcia along on a road trip to the gold country. It was for research on a project I’m working on. Suddenly I found I needed to check out historical gold-rush sites, so we piled in the car and got some road-trip food:

We got beef jerky because that seemed like something pioneers would eat. The cheetos, well… I don’t know what it is about road trips that makes me want to eat cheetos.

The first stop was in Sacramento at Sutter’s Fort. Built in 1839 by Swiss pioneer John Sutter, it was the first non-Native American building in the Central Valley. It was a common stopping place for pioneers once they got to California. In fact, the fort was where the Donner Party ended up after they were rescued.

(Part of Sutter’s Fort)

Sutter also owned the sawmill where his foreman James Marshall discovered gold. I was surprised to learn that Sutter was swindled out of this discovery. Somehow, despite owning the land where gold was discovered, Sutter didn’t just not make any money on the gold rush, he lost his entire fortune in the process. Marshall, likewise, never earned a dime from the gold rush and died alone in a cabin a bitter, sad man.

Anyway, at the fort, we saw a covered wagon and I learned that most pioneers walked the 3,000 miles. I had always thought they road in their wagons, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. They hooked a team of oxen to the wagon and walked alongside. Sounds hard! I am glad I have a car and cheetos for road trips.

(Man teaches people how to use a gun at Sutter’s fort)

After Sutter’s, Marcia and I drove to Coloma, which is the town where Marshall discovered the gold. Here is a replica of the sawmill where they found the gold:

Honestly, as important as this site should be, if you’re interested in history, you can skip it. The museum doesn’t have much in the way of information, unless you want to see statues of Native Americans surrounded by taxidermy. The town was hot and unpleasant, you can’t go into any of the buildings, and it was boring there. You don’t get anything from walking around Coloma that you wouldn’t get by driving by it. Skip it and go onto Columbia, which I will talk about tomorrow.

After that, Marcia and I drove through gold country, looking at little towns and the scenery:

She also indulged me and let me look at some of the abandoned Gold Rush buildings that have been left on the side of the road to rot. For example, this place, which a sign informed us was once called Butte Store:

And we also saw whatever this was:

In both cases, the ruins were by themselves in a field, a weird testament to the fact that at one point, there was a town there. How strange.

Tomorrow: Murphy’s, Columbia, stagecoaches, and scary caves! Stay tuned!

Two weeks ago, Marcia, Kyle, and I drove up to my old home of Portland, Oregon and spent a few days there. Kyle went to a Linux conference and Marcia and I hung out. Here are 10 things we did:

1. Went to Powell’s Bookstore. My favorite bookstore, ever. It is the biggest used-and-new bookstore in the world. I brought some books to sell with me and ended up with $50 in credit for the store, which I was happy to use.

2. Stayed in a very noisy hotel. We stayed at the Ace Hotel. I do not recommend it. While it has a nice atmosphere and good location, the rooms are so stripped down, it feels like you are camping, what with the sink in the main part of the room and the mattress as hard as a rock. More importantly, it is the noisiest hotel I have ever stayed at. Not only can you hear everything your neighbors are doing, every morning at 5 a.m., some men come in front of the hotel and empty garbage for about an hour into their trucks. So you are awakened to engines roaring, bottles crashing, and men shouting. We couldn’t figure out what they were doing every morning, but it was loud!

3. Drank awesome coffee. Stumptown Coffee, man. Why can’t Petaluma have a coffee shop like that?

4. Went wine tasting. Marcia needed to do a little work while we were in Portland, and since she writes for a liquor site, she wanted to check out wine tasting in Oregon. Verdict: Grape vines look pretty anywhere.

5. Went shopping. Three words: No sales tax.

6. Ate fancy food. The best place we ate at was Paley’s Place. Among other things, they introduced me to properly cooked escargot. Turns out the other time I had escargot, it was badly done, i.e. rubbery. It turns out that snail protein is very delicate and turns rubbery when overcooked. In the hands of a good chef, escargot is pretty darn delicious.

7. Saw the tip of Mt Hood.

(I like the shadows in this picture)

8. Ate flaming cheese. We had a big lunch at a Greek place and had lemon-drenched cheese that was lit on fire. Hurrah!

9. Visited Lewis and Clark and Reed Colleges. Marcia had heard a lot about these schools, where I spent a lot of time when I lived in Portland, so I showed them to her. They are very different from Sonoma State University.

10. Went on an awesome hike. After seeing the tip of Mt. Hood, Marcia and I went on a hike to a lake. Along the way, we passed butterflies, berry bushes,

wild rhododendrons, and views of Mt. Hood. The lake at the end was very pretty:

The water was incredibly clear and there were butterflies and dragonflies all over the place. And then we saw a crawdad.

On the way back, we also saw a chipmunk.

It was a good trip.

(More pictures in the gallery.)

I’m back from a trip to Portland. It has been so hot around here this summer that I half-intended to move to Portland so I can remember what rain is like, but I’m over that now. However, we had a great time in my former home. Kyle, Marcia, and I drove up there together, and then Kyle went to a Linux conference while Marcia and I hung out. I will put up a bigger post on the trip later on, but wanted to share this picture of Kyle by Shawn Powers.

That is a maple donut with bacon on top. Yes! Bacon! On a donut! Luckily Kyle had his “Bacon is a Vegetable” shirt on, so he was prepared for the event.

He said the donut was good. I kind of believe him.

The last day in Puerto Rico was jam packed. We went swimming in the ocean, a new one for me, and I could float on my back in it and look at the clouds. Then we drove all the way down the side of the country and had a picnic on another, wilder beach, eating giant grapes and pineapple juice and Puerto Rican pastries. I saw the Caribbean Sea. We went to a lighthouse and saw old sugar plantations. It was a swell time. Pictures!

Typical scenery out the car

I kind of liked this picture

A lagoon off the beach

A local’s car

Bamboo driftwood

What happened to the top of those trees?

Beach from the lighthouse

An incredibly aerodynamic bird.

That’s it! I have officially told you about my trip. Voila!

The next day was the most chill day. We spent a lot of time in Old San Juan where we bought a silkscreen from the poster artist Eduardo Vera and people watched.

Puerto Ricans playing cards

The side of Morro Fort

People strolling on the street

Some buildings

We also went to one of those fancy beaches that celebrities go to, you know, one of those hotel beach fronts where people sit around in bikinis. We sat on chairs underneath some palm trees and looked at the ocean for awhile. Here is our view:

I got quickly bored and took a lot of pictures of the beach people. Here is a lady reading a book:

After that we came back to Old San Juan and spent more time eating food and walking around. More pictures:

Along the water there are literally hundreds of stray cats. Luckily, they feed them and keep them from getting too mangy.

Building right before sunset

Statue on the church by our hotel. We later watched a beautiful wedding go on here, one of those fancy $80,000 weddings where everyone goes on a Caribbean cruise together.

The bride walked right underneath the balcony where we were sitting.

It was a relaxing day.

Oh you’re still here? I know, both you and I thought I was done with Puerto Rico travelogue but I am not!

In fact, I haven’t told you about the best part of the trip, which there are no pictures of: night kayaking through bioluminescence. It is caused by these tiny critters that light up when they are moved. We went through these channels of mangrove trees into water black as ink, and the darker it got around us, the more the water sparkled when it moved. First, it looked like bubbles coming off the oars. When it got darker, you could dip your hand in the water and watch sparkles slide down your arm. Then a fish would dart by, its body outlined by sparkles. By the time we were out into a lagoon, the waves were sparkling and all these fish–tilapia, sting rays, and so on–were swimming around us, glowing as they swam, jumping up and hitting the water. It was like you could see every fish that came up to the surface of the water, including entire schools of sparkling, glowing fish. It was one of the coolest things I have ever done.

All this took place in lagoons surrounded by mangrove trees. Kyle and I had taken a nature hike through the lagoon during the day. Mangroves are fascinating plants. They grown in shallow salty water and have mechanisms for filtering the salt out of the water. We saw a lot of nature, including dozens of crabs, a mongoose, iguanas and their eggs, dark green hummingbirds, and termite nests the size of basketballs. Here’s some pictures from the hike:

Beach

Mangrove trees with their weird roots in the water.

Close up of the roots

A dried up lagoon. I liked the weird pattern of the sand.

Crab

On day four, we had breakfast in the hotel. I had fresh fruit and a Puerto Rican pastry. That was something that surprised me about Puerto Rico–they have good pastries. Maybe even great pastries. Really, this is a country that understands all the important aspects of good cuisine: pastries, fruit, tomatoes, garlic, coffee, peppers, seafood, and lots and lots of fried pork. Can’t beat it.

My favorite dishes were fried pork chunks (that is what it was called on the menu) and also shrimp in a creole sauce that wasn’t really creole–too much lime, not enough Tabasco, but delicious anyway. Kyle had a fillet of an unidentified freshly caught white fish in the same sauce that was awesome. We also ate a loooot of plantains and yucca. A common dish is mofongo, which is deep-fried mashed plantains with pork and tomato sauce. And of course, there are sandwiches like the Cubano to be enjoyed.

So the food in Puerto Rico is great, although A. expensive–it is hard to have dinner for under $50–and B. better when simpler. We ate at a few fancy restaurants and were unimpressed. The food we really got into were the dishes from cafeteria-like places filled with Puerto Ricans and no tourists.

That day we did the Bacardi tour at its headquarters. I have to say: skip it if you ever go to Puerto Rico. Imagine a Disney ride mixed with a liquor advertisement and you’ve pretty much got the idea. They built a fake distillery to give the tour in, so you’re standing among pretend barrels and stills–which for some reason you can’t take a picture of–while they pipe in recordings of steam and hammering sounds. Then they make you watch a video of Latin models dancing and pouring rum over their heads and let you smell chemical approximation of their different rums. Clearly, some PR person ran amok in the making of that tour.

After that we hiked in a rain forest! This was another first for me. It was El Yunque National Rain Forest, filled with hundreds of different plants and birds. (And not much else. There are only four snakes in Puerto Rico, none of which are poisonous, and very few indigenous animals. Lots of lizards though.)

It was misting in the rain forest, but while that obscured the view, it also meant no other tourists were around and we had the whole forest to ourselves. It was really cool. I have never been in a forest like that before. There were so many plants and the birds make the coolest sounds. We stayed there until nearly dark just looking at the plants and listening to birds while the mist blew over us. Pictures:

Giant waterfall with me in front of it.

Leaf on the ground

Lookout tower

Plants

Me hiking in a rain forest

After all that, we went back to the hotel and smoked a cigar. Scandal! Here is Kyle with a cigar. He looks tough.

The next day, we decided to go to a limestone cave because it was raining. Everyone I have talked to about rain in a tropics has said that it’s not a big deal–there’s a little sprinkle and then it clears up. I beg to differ:

Of course, it didn’t rain like that the whole time. The rain came and went with confusing frequency. I am used to clouds pulling in, settling over an area, raining steadily for a long time, and then going away. The clouds in Puerto Rico appear suddenly, pee on you, and then disappear. It’s disconcerting. It would be sunny one moment and then pouring the next. Kyle and I got soaked more than once.

So we went to a cave. To get there, we rented a car and drove. I have never been to Hawaii or any other tropical place–unless Forida counts–so I had never seen a landscape like Puerto Rico before. It is the first place I’ve been that is prettier than Sonoma County. There are giant flowering bushes everywhere you look: trees covered in what look like hibiscus blossoms, orange magnolia-like plants, pale-pink jacarandas, bright yellow crepe myrtles, and so on. This is in the middle of tons of palm trees. I saw coconuts and breadfruit and other weird fruits all over Puerto Rico. It would be impossible to starve there. A typical hillside might have a maga tree, a wild cotton plant, a fruiting plantain, palm trees, and vines. In the middle of all this tangle, a horse may be grazing, or someone might be holding up a land crab for sale at a roadside stand.

I took hundreds of pictures of the countryside, but not many came out because Kyle couldn’t pull over for me to take pictures. That is because Puerto Ricans drive like maniacs. They don’t signal, they cut across lanes, they swerve around you for no reason–they basically do exactly what they want at any given time. It made a sense to me because that is how I would drive if I weren’t oppressed by the possibility of traffic tickets. However, it was a little scary at first. This is the best I could do with pictures on the way to the cave:

Typical countryside that in no way illustrates how pretty it is there. That is a maga tree to the right, I think. Imagine it covered with red flowers.

Pretty girl with her schoolmates

A large, but typical, house

Fruit stand

The cave was closed because the generator was dead and there was no power. I knew this was a possibility, so we went to the largest telescope in the world, which was a few miles away. It’s the Arecibo Observatory, owned by Cornell University. It’s a giant satellite, the kind that takes pictures of galaxies and the close-ups of Mars.

It was humongous. It’s built on a giant sinkhole, and really my pictures don’t get the size of it very well, so here’s an aerial view from Wikipedia:

Imagine if they took the girders and cables off the Golden Gate Bridge, strung them across a crater-sized hole of aluminum grids, and you’ve got the observatory.

I wanted to go up in the satellite, but we weren’t allowed. It made me wish I had gone into sciences.

Morro Fort was begun in 1539. It’s actually the second fort the Spanish built in Puerto Rico. The first one was taken over several times by other countries, so they began this fort to keep better control of this particular Rich Port. And this fort is made for war–even more than they usually are. It’s a very logically laid out place with lots of little staircases and corridors and tiny entryways for soldiers to quickly get to their killing posts. Walking around, you can imagine the life of these soldiers living, breathing, and practicing war. I wonder how many of them had to fight, and if those who didn’t were disappointed?

Pictures:

One of four sentries

Old cannon

Wider part of the fort

No Kyle don’t eat those!

The oldest part of the fort

A gutter, which was also wide enough for a man to crawl through

The inside of the main courtyard

The ocean