California Dreamin’
Okay, it’s not a winter’s day but I did go for walks…close enough…
So I decided to knuckle down and bang out some details for the potential San Francisco road trip in September. I started off by looking up hotels in Eugene, narrowed the choices down to 6, and then thought I’d work on the Navigator’s Clipboard to see what hotels were closest to the things I wanted to do.
Remember the 4 things I mentioned in ‘Cashing in on Some Karma’? Yea, all four of them went bust – hard and fast.
The Air and Space Museum I mentioned? They close at 4pm every day and all they have is some airplanes sitting around.
The Public Market closes at 7pm and doesn’t seem to have a single shop I would be interested in.
The Hot Springs are not actually in Eugene – they’re 54 miles east of Eugene in point of fact.
And Theatre Sports, that which I was most excited about that I took as a blessing from above that this was the right trip to take and the right city to stop in? If it ever existed it must have been in 2005 but even then I can find almost no evidence that it ever existed beyond a couple advertisements placed that year.
Sigh.
So I regrouped and thought maybe Salem would have something worthwhile. Nope. Salem makes Eugene look like a party town.
Experience has taught me Portland’s a dead fish. The only thing not completely embarrassing to happen to me in Portland was to buy a used book and get a haircut - glorious, no? It’s a pretty city, nice people, dick all to do.
So completely frustrated with Oregon I felt I needed a pick-me-up and decided to move on to California.
First stop, Vallejo - pay dirt.
Vallejo’s on the list for one reason and one reason only: Six Flags Discovery Cove…er, Kingdom…I’ll get that down eventually. This makes life much easier to plan: find a cost effective place near the only destination. Not only did I find exactly what I was looking for, it’s practically within walking distance – a little closer than Universal Studios was to the place we stayed at in Orlando in fact.
As if that wasn’t enough, it’s the cheapest place to show up on my radar in ages. Too good to be true I thought, so I ran to Trip Advisor to make sure it wasn’t a hole. The most recent reviews (Dec ‘08, May ‘08, July ‘07) were all fairly complimentary, the last negative reviews were from April ’07 and Aug ’05 and were somewhat crazy (lots of yelling, complaining about silly things like wrinkled sheets) and came from questionable sources (one anonymous and the other only posted 3 reviews ever and all on the same day).
So then I thought, “as I recall San Francisco is one of the most expensive places for hotels, I wonder what the price would be for a second night?” The answer: 8 dollars less. I haven’t begun to seriously look into San Francisco proper but if we go with Mindi’s go-budget-except-one-night option this could be the place for the bulk of our trip! Sure, it’s outside the city but so was the cancer-giving place Jon and I stayed at near the airport in 2002 so that’d be nothing new…except, you know, hopefully sans cancer.
It might be time to start seriously thinking about pinning down some dates so I can lock down this excellent price. Note that I’m not telling you where it is exactly until I’ve done so – don’t need the competition. But I will say I’ve wondered about staying at this place since I first saw it 7 years ago.
