Solvang, California

Driving back from dropping Carl off at Cal Poly, we took a quick little sidetrip off Highway 101 to visit Solvang. A laid back tiny little town, it was founded in 1911 by three guys from Iowa, who were Danish and wanted to establish a Danish-style village to promote the arts and traditions of their original homeland. They checked out the area near the old Mission Santa Inez, and were sold on the beauty, the fertile soil, the great climate and the availability of water. So they bought about 9,000 acres and named the town Solvang, which means "Sunny Meadow" in English. They built a folk school and some Danish style buildings and houses and Solvang became another sleepy town on the map. Today, Solvang is surrounded by huge vineyards and a big thoroughbred ranch. The tourists come to town to shop in the dozens of varied stores, and to indulge in a myriad of Danish pastries, cookies and cakes.



The main drag through town is Mission Drive. I am guessing that it eventually leads to the old Spanish Mission. There are Danish flag-style Solvang banners lining Mission Drive.



We parked near this pretty little park, and headed out for the quick stroll through the village.



Denmark's most beloved and famous son is honored and celebrated in Solvang. Here is a profile of the prolific storyteller, Hans Christian Andersen.
I knew that somewhere in Solvang there was a little museum dedicated to the author, and finding it was on my list on things to do, besides finding a place for lunch.



This restaurant is actually one of the original building put up by those 3 Danish Iowans. It served as their school for 3 years, and then the men built a bigger structure on the edge of town and moved out of this little building. It was turned into a Lutheran church until 1929, when it became a Danish restaurant. And it still is today.



We found the Hans Christian Andersen Museum. It is hidden upstairs in The Book Loft, a used book store. After perusing the collection of memorabilia, I learned some interesting things about the man. He was born April 2, 1805, and he left home at age 14 to make his fortune in Copenhagen. His handwriting was really hard to read. He wrote letters to answer his fan mail. And he wasn't instantly successful. After trying his hand at a variety of forms of writing, he discovered that his best shot at success was in the childrens fairy tale genre.Everyone is familiar with his most popular stories, "The Ugly Duckling", "The Emperor's New Clothes", "The Little Mermaid", and "The Princess and The Pea".

Those were just a few of his 160 fairy tales. As a young child, I took some kind of strange pleasure in reading his stories, "The Little Match Girl", and "The Fir Tree" Both of those stories had truly awful endings. And even at a tender age, I was always a realist and appreciated the fact that things don't always end up "happily ever after." Wonder what a shrink would have thought of a kid who liked unhappy endings? Anyhow, the other interesting thing about Andersen is that he was really good at making elaborate paper cutout silhouettes, and he would give them to children. Also, he never got married. He would get these romantic crushes on women, but they never amounted to anything real. And he never really had any true frienships, either. So he lived and died a lonely man. Which may explain his ability to write really sad fairy tales with unhappy endings. He lived to be 75 years old, which is pretty good for those days.



We found a great little restaurant called, "The Red Viking", on Copanhagen Street. They served breakfast all day, along with lunch and dinner. You could get regular American food, or you could order a more Danish-style lunch, which I did. I ordered the Danish meatball lunch. The meatballs were served cold, sliced thinly, on flat Danish bread. They were covered with a mound of sweet pickled red cabbage and another mound of thinly sliced sweet pickled baby cucumbers. It was really good. They also had a Danish All-you-can- eat steam table. I may have to try that next time we visit.

I had to take a photo of Windmill Glassworks, because it was distinct and pretty. And of course right next to the big windmill, was another spot that required a photo:



Here is the Solvang Post office. We walked inside and visited with the window clerk on duty. She told us she is a Part Time Flexible working 25 hours a week. Her husband was a high level Manager, and the re-organization required him to find a regular old supervisor position. She had her fingers crossed and was thinking positive about her future with the Postal Service. She was so friendly and pleasant. And then she offered to come outside and take our photo. We wished her luck in the upcoming "right-sizing" that the USPS is conjuring up as I write this.

I have a feeling this won't be the last time we stop by Solvang for a quick visit. Because we haven't even checked out the Danish Bakeries yet.......

Off to College!

I used to laugh at my elders, not really believing them when they used to say that time flies. While they watched us grow and marveled at the quickness of it all, time seemed to plod on for us young ones. Then something happens. We grow up, get jobs, get married, have kids, and suddenly, time concepts change. And then we discover that Grandma was right: Time flies. I have entered that phase of life too. For it seems like just a few years ago that we were standing in front of our house with a newborn baby, and now suddenly, that newborn is 18 years old, and about to begin student life at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.




I remember this day like it was yesterday. Carl's first day of Kindergarten. I made a tradition of taking his photograph on the first day of school each year in the same spot: On the walkway in front of our house. Back in 1996, there was a fence. On this day, Carl was a little nervous. I was too. After all, I was sending my almost 5 year old boy to a magnet school on the other side of town. I wasn't familiar with the neighborhood or the teachers, and the only thing that made both of us feel better was that his best friend from preschool was also going to be attending the school. Watching that little boy head off towards his classroom was gut wrenching. But, I didn't let him know how I felt. I just watched him go.



Fast forward to September 2009. Here is Carl, now 18 years old, heading off to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Still wearing shorts and polo shirts, and still carrying the shoulder bag, only now it holds a laptop instead of a notebook, pencils, and crayons. The fence is gone, the houses across the street have new people and new paint jobs. As I took this photo, I thought back to that first day of school, and that stomach ache I had as I forced myself to let him go. Now, as I looked at my grown son getting ready to leave his hometown for college life, I had more than just a stomach ache. My heart was actually hurting. But I couldn't let him know how I really felt, so I just kind of joked about it. And I snapped the photo.



There is always lots of stuff to pack for your college-bound kid. Luckily, it all fit in the car. Even George, the T-Rex, given to him from his girlfriend as a birthday gift the day before.



We got up at 5:00 AM Sunday to start packing the car. We wanted to get an early start on our long drive. Craig got up before dawn and came over to see us off. And our next door neighbor came out in her jammies and slippers to take this shot of all of us just before we hit the road.

We arrived after the mad rush of new students, most of whom moved in the day before. That made it really easy to park, unload, and locate Carl's dorm building. We had visited the school over the summer and stayed one night in one of the dorms. Carl was not thrilled with the idea of living in one of those buildings. It was quite a surprise for all of us to discover where he would be living for the next year.



The view from Carl's front door. Could it get any better than this?



The building is like a motel, sort of. Carl's room is on the ground floor, corner unit. He has one roommate. There is a bathroom that they will share with 6 other students. That is much better than the building we tried out last August, where an entire floor of students had to wander around in the halls or stairwells to get to their showers. Carl lucked out. And his roommate seems to be a great guy, too.



So, we brought all his things in, dropped them off, snapped a photo of Carl in his new digs, and then, with my stomach churning and heart aching, we hugged him goodbye and headed back home. Its hard to let go. Because I really thought I would have just a little more time to get used to all this. I can't believe how fast time really does fly.

Golden Colorado

We took a recent trip to Golden Colorado, to visit the Colorado School of Mines. It was one of the many colleges we visited in the Spring of 2009. The school specializes in all kinds of Engineering degrees. It is located in the tiny little town of Golden, not far from the Coors Brewery.



We arrived in February, and got a room at a really nice La Quinta Hotel. It was really cold (at least for us wimpy Californians), and that night, it started snowing. Of course, we had to get a shot of me shivering on the balcony in the freezing night, just so we could have a personalized snapshot of the snow collecting on the ground.


Besides taking the college tour, we planned to spend some time with my Colorado family members. Here is Carl and me with my brother and his son, my sister and brother-in-law, and their granddaughter. The visit was painfully short, because we had to catch a flight home, but it was great to catch up on who's doing what, and to see my brother's son for the first time.



This is the Mountain that looms over Golden. Walking around the beautiful but icey campus while on our tour, my eyes kept wandering towards this gorgeous sight. I think its called Table Mountain. The School of Mines has a great tradition for incoming freshmen. Their first week at school is loaded with traditional activities. One of them requires that they all bring a 10 pound rock from home. They then are expected to scale a tall mountain, up to where the big white M is located, high above the campus. There, they leave their rock, and together they work to give the big M a whitewashing. At the end of their 4 years at Mines, they again scale the mountain to retrieve their rock and take it home with them. For some reason, I really got a kick out of that tradition. It reminded me of when Carl was a little guy. Wherever we traveled, he always found a rock that he wanted to bring home as a souvenir. We've got little rocks from Canada, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and umpteen other places, laying around the front steps at home.



For years, we have been tormented by repeated Sonic commercials. I say tormented, because the commercials had us convinced that we just HAD to drive up and order one of the many great cold drinks that flashed across our TV screen. Trouble was, we didn't have a Sonic to drive to. So when we planned our trip to Golden to visit the school, I googled Sonic to see if they had one there. And they did! You should have seen the look on Carl's face when I told him we were going to finally get to a Sonic. After getting lost, and subsequently driving around in circles due to some bad Mapquest directions, we finally found it. There it was. The Sonic! Here is Carl, finally standing at the Sonic menu.



Now, I have to admit, the food is not so hot. It kind of reminded me of the snack bar food we had at the Midway Drive-in Theater, long gone from San Diego. But the drinks. Oh, the drinks. There were so many to choose from, we actually went back the next day to try some more.



This was Carl's drink. Some kind of Berry slurpee-type of thing. The first time we went, I had a drink that tasted sort of like a grape milk shake. Delicious. The next day, I had a Coconut Creme Pie Milk shake. Even better.



A closing shot of a frosty, freezing fast rushing body of water heading through downtown Golden. The shot was taken at dusk. It was freezing cold with snow flurries, and getting colder by the minute. But out on a big rock in this cold river, barely visible in this photo, a small group of people stood watch while a young couple exchanged wedding vows amid nature's harsh elements. I thought about the venue and the weather that these young people were getting married in. And my conclusion was that these people wanted to acknowledge that life will not be all sunny and warm. That circumstances will test their strength. And they are willing to meet life's tests head on. Together.

Golden is a town full of friendly people. They have a great University, a huge brewery, some famous landmarks like Buffalo Bill's grave, and the cool "Howdy Folks" sign. I wish we could have had another day or two to really explore the area. But, it just gives me another town to put on my "Gotta go back there" list.