Spring Break Trip

For the past few years, UC Davis has not had a full week for spring break like most schools do. Being on the quarter system, spring break usually is a week between the winter and fall quarters, sometime during the end of March. Unfortunately, lately it has been nothing more than a four day weekend.

This year we got a whole week off! Not that graduate students are supposed to get a whole week off. But I figured I'd take my week since my mom was feeling well enough to go for a road trip. So we went up to Tacoma, Washington to see my cousin and his little family.

It took us two days to get up there and we spent one night in Roseburg, Oregon on the way after eating lunch in Weed at a cute little place called the Hi-Lo Cafe. It was super yummy and we even ordered homemade cobbler and pie to go for that night in the hotel. But on the way into the hotel I dropped mine on the ground. Oh well, I'm sure it would have been delicious.
At some point not too far into Oregon we stopped at an attraction called the House of Mystery/The Oregon Vortex. I have no idea what was actually going on there (it is probably just a visual thing), but the effect was pretty neat. Everything looks warped. This house, however, really IS warped because it slid down the hill in a mudslide a long time ago.
We spent only a day and a half in Tacoma because of my mom's chemo schedule. But the time we had was great--my mom was delighted to just be driven around by a native of the city (Delonna, my cousin's wife) to show her all the historic buildings and old houses. We even got to go into Delonna's 4th grade classroom. You can tell she's a great teacher because all the kids swarmed around her. My little cousin, almost-2-year-old Conrad is super cute, even though he had a bad ear infection while we were there. I can't wait to go back when he's a little older and the weather is a little warmer. And when I'm not pregnant so I can enjoy a good beer or glass of wine with my cousin.

Here's my cousin, Mike, sitting with us in the rose garden that his wife's (Delonna) great uncle designed when he was the head gardener there.
And here's big boy Conrad:
Too bad I don't have a picture of Delonna!

On the way back down to California, we stopped in Crescent City to meet up with Dave and the doggies. We stayed in a cheap hotel, ate good seafood, hiked around to see some of the big redwoods.
The first trail we went on was really short and flat so we figured my mom could come with us. But then the sign at the trailhead said that no pets were allowed--not even on a leash. Boo! My mom offered to stay with the doggies at the trailhead while Dave and I made the loop. If you know Ruby at all, you know that she's the bigges mama's girl EVER. She always always always wants to be near/with me. So the WHOLE time Dave and I are on this trail we could hear her yipping and doing her anxious high-pitched bark that means "Mama! Come back!" At one point a lady stopped us and asked if those were our dogs up there. I sighed and immediately began apologizing for how noisy Ruby was being in an otherwise peaceful outdoor environment. The lady looked so surprised and she just said she wanted to tell us how cute they are. So when we got back to the trail head we found Ruby tugging on the leash trying to drag my poor mom down the path towards where she knew we'd gone. It was so funny. (She does this same thing whenever I got into a store and leave her outside with someone else. She's surprisinging well behaved, though, when she just gets leashed to a pole.)

The highlight of Crescent City, however, was this place called the Trees of Mystery. This place has a gondola that carries you about 600 feet above the trees and up to a viewing platform on the ridge. We weren't up there for more then a minute (literally) before the fog rolled in and we lost our view. It was still totally worth it though...and you wanna know why?

Because they allow pets throughout the entire attraction! Yes, even on the gondola.
We had to carry Ruby onto the gondola and she was not amused by it at all. Potatoes, on the other hand, was totally okay with being on it on the way back down the mountain. He spied a chipmunk in the dirt under the platform and was staring it down right before we boarded. Being the weird dog that he is (read: sorta dumb) he boarded the gondola carriage absentmindedly and stared out the doors the whole time looking for that chipmunk:

People going the other way on the gondola were so surprised to see the dogs that several of them wiped out their cameras for a quick picture.

Us on the gondola:
This attraction is very "hippy" and had bizarre redwood carvings placed all along the 1/4 mile trail up to the gondola. (My mom took the complimentary shuttle but we walked there and back with the dogs.) We had fun posing Ruby and Potatoes with some of the statues.
On the way back to Davis, my mom decided to take her own car so she could make some stops along the way. Dave and I took 299 from Arcata to Redding and stopped at the Sundial Bridge for a picnic lunch and a swim for the dogs. People kept stopping us and commenting on how cute our dogs are--we love it when people do this. And we always think to ourselves, "well duh, they're perfect!" When people ask us where we got them we always say "from Heaven" in very serious tones. My favorite response to that was from a lady in Davis a few months ago who said "oh, of course, that's what I figured." Then she just walked away. Most people giggle or roll their eyes and then wait for my real answer (which is from the Northern California Border Collie Rescue Foundation).