…then tried to eat them
Critter Con 14
Day One, Part 1: In which we do not have to go very far to see our first attraction.
We departed the house at 6:30 and I drove for about an hour and 15 minutes until getting to Galt, a small, though not nearly as small as it was when I was a kid, town south of Sacramento. By then, everyone else was awake and performing their morning wake up rituals, including connecting to the android bodies our NHT folks needed.
When we got off the Bus at 8:15, I revealed that our first attraction was also our breakfast destination, The Train World Cafe. Everyone seemed impressed.
The TWC was first the dream of Mr. Tom Simmler, who started laying out the tracks in 1958, then his grandson, Jay, who decided in 2010 that the fruit warehouse that housed the by then enormous setup would make a good diner.
Grandpa Tom, age 82, is still there, running the trains with the help of some of his model railroading buddies from a nifty tower in the center of the place. Down below, Jay, his wife Dana, and a couple of employees serve up a limited, but delicious breakfast and lunch. No dinner, because they close at 3:00 pm.
Folks, this place has 40 miles, yes, MILES, of track. At any given time, there are 6 trains running through every kind of terrain and town you can imagine, all populated by little mechanical people and animals. At you table, you can choose to watch any of the trains run from several camera angles, including passenger, engineer, caboose, front of engine, above in the tower or on top of the train. We mostly watched a train go across Sub-Saharan Africa, and it was very cool.
The food was delicious and plentiful. Around 9:45, we all left very full and happy..
On any given weekday morning, about 80% of the customers are old train guys, so you can hear some great stories. The place opens at 6:00 AM, 7 days a week.
Since our next destination was a couple of hours away, I put Sweetie on auto-pilot and we all sat around talking.
At this juncture, I should talk about Cakes and her guinea pigs. As we all know, exposure to sapient Non-Human Terrans has the effect of causing sapience in non sapient NHT, IF they can become sapient. Guinea pigs do not fall into that category. However, it has become known that sapient NHT do cause their companion animals to become more intelligent than normal.
This is why, after several months of being around Mommy Cupcake and Auntie Tucker, these three young female guinea pigs are about as smart as the average non-sapient dog.
Cakes showed this off by having the girls do tricks, including walking in a row and turning/stopping on cue, squeaking when she asked each one if they loved her, fetching little toys, and doing stuff like sit, stay and roll over. It was very impressive.
After that, besides talking, we played a couple of card games and I fought off questions about the next attraction.
More trip reportage later.
Critter Con 14
Day One, Part 2: In which we see the first of this trip’s two Giant Jesus statues, we see large assorted critters, and Sasha & Sam meet an old friend.
Our next stop was actually a good ways off Highway 99, clean over on the eastern side of Merced, but just off the Yosemite Highway.
That’s where you’ll find the First Gospel Church of Jesus, along with a 58 foot tall statue of Big J kneeling next to the highway, his arms spread in a greeting/blessing.
We all got out to take a look, along with photos and videos. As giant Jesus’ go, this one was very photogenic. He’s built from fiberglass over a steel frame and the sculpting is excellent. Very realistic. They also have some great plantings of flowers around him.
There were several other people there, waiting to go up into the statue and look out through his eyes. This is a big deal with Giant Jesus statues and the people who visit them, at least, the religious sort of people. Some of them get positively swoony when they see what the statue is looking at. “Nearer my God to thee”, I guess.
We all went upstairs in groups of 5, after giving a $5.00 donation each, and spent a couple of minutes looking at the scenery, reading Scripture on the walls, or getting filled with the power of Christ, as the case may be. Then it was back down to where we could buy t-shirts, bumper stickers, and postcards. We bought some of each, but declined an offer to go into the church to get saved.
It now being 1:00 pm, and us being way east of 99, we decided to just take local roads that would be heading in a general southwesterly direction. I figured we’d be back on 99 within an hour or so. I was off by a few minutes.
See, as I drove along, conversing with Mary and Spike, we saw a whole field full of plywood animals. Well, if that didn’t call for an unexpected stop, I don’t know what would!
As luck would have it, a couple of young gents were setting up a 7 foot tall otter as we drove up the driveway of the farmhouse next to the field. They did not seem surprised when we all piled out of the Bus and asked if we could look around. They said it was okay, because it happened all the time. As I chatted with them, I found out that their grandfather had been making and painting up these flat critters for the last 40 years. They had piled up in the barn and now that grandpa was retired, he decided to put them all out for folks driving by to see. He is also apparently cranking out new ones.
There were 87 animals in that field, and we were told that there were 25 or 30 still in the barn. They were all very well done and lifelike. I made a mental note to come back by here in a couple of years.
No t-shirts or anything for sale, but the two young guys, Jeff and Rob, said their mom & dad were considering it.
Twenty minutes after we left there, we were back on 99 and heading toward our first night’s stop in Bakersfield. Actually, just south of there at the Lucky Star RV Park. Our fluorescent tie dyed bus got a lot of disapproving looks from the no doubt politically conservative RVers already there, but those looks were soon turned to wonder when 8 full sized adults and 3 guinea pigs on cute little leashes got off a short bus only 15 feet long.
We wandered around a bit, but since it was about 100 degrees out, we got back on the Bus and spent the hours until bedtime talking (including video chats with old friends around the world), playing games, eating a great meal, and reading.
Around 9, I went out with Sasha and Sam, in their dog bodies, to have a look around and let them do their business. As we rounded a corner, Sasha sniffed the air and said, “No way! Queenie?”
From the next space up, we heard a female voice say “Sasha? Sam?”
From there it was about 20 minutes of three old dogs catching up on the last couple of years. Queenie is a 14 year old standard poodle and her humans moved out of our neighborhood just over two years ago. They had both retired and bought a huge RV. Queenie said they had been traveling all over, but spent the winters in Arizona. They were only in California in the summer for a wedding.
Now it’s 10:30 and everyone has gone to bed. I’m doing a few last minute things, then I’ll be sacking out. Tomorrow, we hit attractions in Long Beach and San Diego.
Starting Destination Sign: Lemuria
Ending Destination Sign: Hill Valley
Radio Station: KFRC, the Big 6-10 AM, San Francisco, 1967
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