Apple Park, Computer Museum, A Boat & Food Prices! Oh, & A RECIPE!

Before we got evacuated on March 10, we had reservations for March 26-April 16 at Morgan Hill, CA. Well, that one was also still closed due to flooding so we had to make other plans for those three weeks. Morgan Hill is close to San Jose and we thought we would have time to explore San Jose and San Francisco. Before we moved to the replacement campground near Sacramento, CA, we decided to drive to San Jose for a day and do some highlights.

Now, you might say I am an “Apple fan-girl”. I like everything Apple. Kevin is pretty close behind. We drove to Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, CA. Thankfully, I knew ahead of time from researching that visitors can’t go inside. Otherwise I would have been greatly disappointed! But there is a visitor center. We were able to find parking easily. The building feels clean, bright, happy, and sunny. Tons of windows brighten up the entire rooms. We started at one end where we saw a long display of the Apple offices that is a huge circle. A worker brought over an iPad for us to use. You hold it up to this display and the iPad shows you inside the grounds and buildings. It was a fun and neat way to see inside. Although I would have liked to be able to go in or at least walk the grounds. Kevin reminded me of all the secrets there and that made sense to me.

On the other side of the building was a coffee shop.

We hadn’t had breakfast and I thought it would be fun to have something from there. Kevin’s coffee had the Apple logo in foam. So neat! I had white hot chocolate that tasted dreamy and creamy. It was only $5.00. We took it up to the roof top and there we had a good view of the Apple circle and lots of trees. HAHA I wanted to buy something like a mug or water bottle or something but they don’t have anything like that. They had about 5 shirts to pick from and a canvas bag. We didn’t buy those. It was a thrill for me to be there were such literal earth-changing, universe-changing, things happened.

Next we drove a few miles over to Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. I had read reviews and Trip Advisor recommended 1-2 hours. One person wrote that he was there 5 hours. Another person said he needed 2 days. HAHA We got there at 11:30am. It starts way back in time with the abacus, moved to slide rules and finishes with current computers, robots and Artificial Intelligence.  One sign said, “Pixar initially produced medical imaging hardware, creating short films only for demonstration. But hardware sales faltered, and Pixar saw that profits lay in making movies.” Wow! Pixar made Toy Story, Cars, and many other movies. Around 1:00pm a worker came around and said there was going to be a demonstration. We went to it. They had punch cards and everything from typing to printing. It was the first time we had seen a demo like this. At the end we were able to type in our name and then watch our card go through punch card readers and then the printer. All on the IBM 1401. They gave us the punch card and the big print-out.

We went back to where we were in the museum and continued on…for 5 hours! 🤪 Not kidding! By this time we were half starved, having only had our drink treat at Apple. We found Wagon Wheel BBQ from Apple maps and it was close by. It was the best smoked brisket ever…or perhaps it was awful and we were just starving. HAHA Nah, we would go there again. Happy with full bellies, we drove over to Cisco Systems. The campus is massive – we saw 20 buildings just along the road. It was a very nice day.

Travel Day: we got packed up and left Casa de Fruta, Hollister, CA around 8:00am. A beautiful clear day. It was cold, though, and the ground had some frost on it. Headed east through the canyon and then north on I-5. The roads were pretty rough and some places had deep holes – Kevin said they were 8-10 inches deep. Terrible! I am always so worried about breaking a wheel, axle, or something inside HOWE (our name for our Home On WhEels, 5th wheel). It was about a 3 hour drive to Lake Minden RV Resort, north of Sacramento, CA. Saw a huge container ship at Stockton and what a surprise! I always wonder what is planted in the fields along the roads. My soapbox is the farmers need to post a sign what is planted…it should be a law…we want to know! 🙂 Somewhere south of Stockton we saw a rectangle board with two posts that said “oranges” and were we thrilled! Then, those trees look different, but they must be “oranges” because there isn’t a new sign. Right? Every tree we see – short, tall skinny, fat, all colors of trees are now “oranges” until we see a sign that tells us differently!!!! HAHAHAHA We pulled into Lake Minden RV Resort at 11:00am. They don’t use the guard shack you just go to outside of the welcome center and get your welcome packet off the wall. It works well. As we started watching our Sunday night tradition YouTube, Kevin asked if I wanted pizza. Yes! I had been thinking the same thing. Looked up pizza, ordered it and drove up to Linda, CA. On the way back we went through the tiny, I mean… 5 building town of Nicolaus. (Population 124).I was gazing at a two story house that looked really old and I started wondering if it used to be a hotel. I was so deep in thought that I wasn’t paying attention to Garmin GPS RV 1090 (we had turned the sound off because it doesn’t always say the right directions that it displays) and we drove right past our turn. That made Kevin laugh hard because that hasn’t happened before. I am always have an eye on the map. 😉 Next, yep, right past the entrance of the campground less than a mile away. That one wasn’t my fault, though, Garmin GPS RV 1090 was taking us to the back entrance. It was so funny to go around the bend and…”that was our turn” again.

Another day: Lots of rain this morning here and snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains that we can see. After work I suggested we drive to a post office. A little drive would be nice and I had several cards I wrote this morning. We saw the Nicolaus post office is 0.7 miles away. It is in a small building that has a for sale sign outside. Wonder where the PO will go. We decided to drive on a little bit. Soon we were driving the road on the Sacramento River levee. It was neat to see! Large river on one side and farms of orchards (“oranges” – see above words about this) and pastures on the other. The road was narrow and the banks steep. Soon we saw houses that had stilts! The water was under a lot of them. It was crazy. We thought that was only in New Orleans area. At first there were pretty worn down houses but a ways farther they were huge and fancy. We past an old paddle boat that was on the side of the river. It has signs all around saying keep out. I had to get out and take pictures. We wonder the story about it. It looks like a show boat. Got home to HOWE and looked it up. You should too. Google: The Spirit of Sacramento. Built in 1942. Even JOHN WAYNE used it for a movie!

On a Saturday we drove 30 minutes south to Old Sacramento State Historic Park. I was glad to have read about this place the other day because it gave great directions on where to park; option of two parking garages. This day was glorious sun and warmed up to 70°. Yes! Old Sacramento has several large blocks of old buildings (or redone old buildings) with lots of shops and restaurants. In fact, I only saw 1 or 2 empty stores. We think that is neat when the old buildings have new life in them. We walked the few blocks to Old Sacramento History Museum. What a delight! The thing I enjoyed the most was a huge wall called “Acorns to Avocados” and talks about Gold Rush Grub to present day. I spent a long time reading it. The Gold Rush prices? 1851 prices with equivalent price in 2019: butter $660.00 lb, cheese $625.00 lb, coffee beans $8.26 lb, eggs $97.94 each, oranges $8.25 each, rice $269.11 lb. Can you believe that????! 

The WORST is this: “Recipe for raccoon from 1853 Life on the Plains and Among the Diggings: First catch your coon and kill him, skin him, and take out the entrails; cut off his head, which you throw away; then if you have water to spare, wash the carcass clean. Parboil an hour, then roast it before the fire on a stick.” Oh my gosh!!! If you have water to spare? I can’t stop laughing and being totally grossed out. HAHA. A sign from The Blue Ribbon Cook Book “Sauces accompanying various meats should increase its palatableness.” HA After reading all this, we were hungry…but not for raccoon! 🤪 We asked the gals at the front desk where to go and they both recommended LaTerraza Mexican Restaurant. We walked there, took the elevator to the second floor and got seated since we were the first ones there at 11:10am. The guacamole we ordered tasted homemade as well as the not-spicy salsa.  We rated this place: Once A Week. Then we went back to the museum. The lady had told us our receipt was good for the whole day. We learned that Sacramento added levees to keep the water in the river. But in 1863, there was so much water that it was trapped on the other side of the levees and stayed in Old Sacramento for more than 3 months! The water was 230 miles long and 20-60 miles wide. That is a lot of flooding! The city started raising the buildings between 1861 and 1873.

We walked to Sacramento River and we saw the bridge turn so that a boat could get through. That was so cool to watch. Then we walked along the streets of Old Sacramento. It was quite busy; the line for ice cream was too long for us to get any. Next we went to Sketchers Outlet and got Kevin some new shoes. McDonalds drive through for drinks and ice cream and then we headed home to HOWE. Very nice day.