No need to be coy Arroyo: The small charms of Arroyo Grande, California

We had the privilege of working our way down the California coastline back in 2011 and happened upon the charming village of Arroyo Grande in San Luis Abispo County. It was a bright, sunny late morning with very few people about and it gave me the sense of an early 1960s "Twilight Zone" set; pleasant but melancholy. I love small towns like this and seeing them on long trips is every bit as satisfying as visiting the big tent-pole sights like the Grand Canyon or the World's Biggest You Name It. Small but Grande...I like that.

Death Valley's Borax Museum: Chock full of minerals!

Death Valley is an eccentric roadside attraction unto itself. People look at you funny when you say you're looking forward to visiting there, but it's a stunningly beautiful place and home to a really swell offbeat museum. The Borax Museum sits in the oldest structure in Death Valley, a house constructed in 1883 by F.M. "Borax" Smith, founder of the Pacific Coast Borax Co. If I ever decide to have a nickname, I think "Borax" would be a pretty cool one. Borax, or sodium borate, is a non-toxic laundry product that could also clean and deodorize virtually anything in the house. In the late 1800s, a large deposit of it was found in Death Valley by a small-time miner, who made a fortune when he sold it to a San Francisco businessman. The location was so remote and ungodly hot that 20-mule teams were needed to haul the borax to a more hospitable processing location. People of a certain age are familiar with this scenario from the popular radio and TV series "Death Valley Days," at one time hosted by Borateem-pitchman and future president Ronald Reagan. The museum is in the Furnace Creek development of Death Valley and features lots of photos and artifacts and a friendly gal that will tell you all about them. A lot of sweat and toil was put into this product that's mostly forgotten today, but Borax may make a comeback as a green alternative to regular detergents. So stop in and see The Borax Museum... mule be glad you did (and that's not an empty pumice).

Friday night arrives without a suitcase: A too-short visit to the Madonna Inn and other sights of San Luis Obispo, California

This is what we didn't see: any of the 110 outlandishly decorated themed guest rooms. This was shot by photographer par excellence Tom Meinhold. Visit his website, whydon'tcha.

 We didn't make it inside the spectacular Fremont Theatre, either...

 ...or the Sunset Drive-In. Oh, well.

 Pepe has a cool old sign...

 ...and we did do some laundry at the Launderosa, probably my favorite laundromat name of all time.

Back in 2011, we took an incredible cross-country trip from Rhode Island to California. The original plan was to visit San Francisco for a few days and then head to Yosemite National Park. Even though we arrived in S.F. in mid-May, Yosemite was snowed in to the point of only one road to the park being open, leading us to change our plans on the fly, which can be both disappointing (No Yosemite? Boo!) to exciting (let's go down the Pacific Coast Highway. Yay!). We visited the extraordinary Hearst Castle in San Simeon and then decided to head a bit further south to Pismo Beach (and all the clams we can eat), looking for a motel for the night along the way, which happened to be in the sunny central California coast town of San Luis Obispo, which translates to Saint Louis the Bishop for all you non-Spanish speakers like me. We wished we had the correct amount of time to spend seeing this wonderful place, especially the Madonna Inn, known the world over for its eccentrically over-the-top decorated guest rooms. After checking in to our hard-to-acquire motel (the entire area was booked because of a big wine festival weekend), I drove around just to see what I could in our all-too-short stay and was able to wander around the lobby and coffee shop of the Inn, both of which did not disappoint this eccentric roadside attraction fan. This place will have to be a tent-pole destination for some future trip for us. S.L.O. has not one but two retro movie delights, as well: the Fremont, a 1942 palace saved from the wrecking ball due to public outcry, and the Sunset Drive-In. We hope we make it back here some day, but in the meantime nos vemos en nuestros sueños, San Luis Obispo.*

*I used an internet translator so hopefully this means we'll see you in our dreams San Luis Obispo and not something like bite the wax tadpole.

Happy birthday James Dean

Today would have been James Dean's 83rd birthday had he not been tragically killed in a car accident on September 30, 1955 at the young age of 24. Back in 2011, we stopped at Blackwells Corner in Lost Hills, California, which was the last place Dean stopped before his fatal accident. We found a modern gas station and gift shop memorializing the historic nature of the place. Click here to read our previous post.

California dreamin': Roy's Cafe of Amboy, California

We're feeling particularly chilled on this bone-cold winter's day in Rhode Island and I can't help but dream of some faraway place that's not just hot, not just really, really hot, but California desert hot. And that would be Roy's Cafe on Route 66 in Amboy, California. We were lucky enough to visit this awesome top-10-in-my-book-of-eccentric-roadside-attractions place back on a 98-degree day in 2011, so here's a rerun of what we had to say:

In the Mojave Desert of eastern California sits the town of Amboy, a once-prosperous stop along Route 66 where weary drivers could gas up, get some grub and spend the night before heading out the next morning on another lonesome stretch of the Mother Road. Roy's Cafe and gas station was opened in 1938 by Roy Crowl, who owned the whole town of Amboy (not a very big place, but impressive nonetheless) with his wife Velma. The Crowls' daughter Betty married a Herman "Buster" Burris and together they expanded Roy's and made it a booming post-War success. And then, as was the case with most Route 66 establishments, the Interstate came along and dried up all the local business. Buster sold the town in 1995 to a party that then went into foreclosure and then Buster's widow bought it back in 2005 and sold it to its current owner, a Mr. Albert Okura, who promised to keep the yesteryear ambiance and reopen Roy's in the future. When we were there last spring (2011), the gas station was pumping $4.99/gallon gas, the cafe had cold soda and souvenirs and a busload of European tourists were milling about the place. The motel cabins were deserted but graffiti-free, like a well-preserved ghost town. The awesome decaying Googie sign reaches for the sky like a skyscraper in this hardscrabble no man's land to all fans of dilapidated roadside nostalgia. It was 100 degrees when we stopped by, a little chilly for these parts, but it was worth every bead of sweat to see such an amazing eccentric roadside site. Roy Orbison, Roy Scheider, Roy's of Amboy...there's a lot of greatness in the name Roy.

Sweating Bullitts: Driving Divisadero Street in San Francisco, California

 "Bullitt" has what's considered the best car chase ever filmed.

 Steve McQueen drives a hopped up 1968 Mustang...

 ...in pursuit of a boss Dodge Charger.

While trying to get to the south of the city, we wound up on  Divisadero Street...

 ...which looks like this...

...but felt like this (that's us in our Subaru Forester. Catch us if you can, Steve McQueen). 

Our previous blog post mentioned the fun of seeing famous movie locales while travelling. We had another such outing in San Francisco, although it was unintentional. We were visiting Bodega Bay, about 60 miles north of S.F., and wanted to get to our next stop, a hotel near the San Francisco airport south of the city. Normally when you're on the outskirts of a big city, you just hop on the interstate and it will loop you around the urban area. Without really scrutinizing the map, we assumed this would be the case in S.F., too. Au contraire. The city population didn't want to wreck their awesome landscape with super highways, so the way to get from north to south is to go over the glorious Golden Gate Bridge and then be dumped off right in the thick of the city. Mrs. Eccentric was driving (white-knuckled at the wheel) and I was "navigating" ( I use that term loosely) and we found ourselves going up and down those famous mountainous S.F. avenues like you used to see on the old Rice-a-Roni commercials. I noticed the street we were on was Divisadero, and I was about to say, "Hey, honey! Guess what! I think we're on the street where they filmed the "Bullitt" car chase!" but I thought I'd better keep my mouth shut, at least until our hearts were out of our throats. Sherry did a Steve McQueen-worthy job of driving and we made it to our hotel slightly damp from the flop-sweat but in one piece. Turns out the "Bullitt" car chase was mostly filmed on Fillmore and not Divisadero, and people drive these streets every day and it's no big deal if you know what you're doing. In fact, by the time we left S.F. four days later, we (and by we, I still mean Sherry) had those city streets down pretty good.

Now about that driving trip through Monaco...