Westacular

A couple of weeks back we were at a family gettogether and were discussing with my parents’ pastor’s wife our plans for the RV trip.  She said she had a great suggestion for something to do near San Francisco.  She was right, Mrs. Grossman’s sticker factory is both educational and fun.

The tour starts with a video that explains the history of the company, which is interesting.  The company started on Mrs. Grossman’s dining room table in 1979 with a heart sticker design and now they have a 110,000 sq. foot facility that produces over 15,000 miles of stickers each year.

Then we toured the production floor.  Unfortunatly we were forbidden from taking pictures of the factory so I can’t share that love with you.  We saw machines making a variety of stickers and labels, and it was fascinating.

Next we were given little packets containing stickers and a blank postcard so we could design our own postcard, maybe to send to a friend who couldn’t come with us on the tour.

We learned other neat things, like how they give factory seconds away to charities, how they recycle the waste from the sticker-making process into pellets that are used for heat and energy, how they filter the water used to clean ink from machinery so it leaves the factory cleaner than when it entered…

This was a fun thing to do, thank you Joanie for the recommendation!

This morning once again we left at the crack of dawn, but thankfully this time we experienced no electrical malfunctions.

Jessie received another Elk wish on the road, a herd was actually crossing the highway in front of us and we had to stop for a moment.  I didn’t have the camera out, but it was more exciting the two we saw yesterday.

As you’ll learn in a later post, we had a plan for this afternoon, so I plugged the destination into our Garmin Nuvi and its estimated time of arrival meant we had some time to kill.  That’s always good news when you’d like to find something interesting.  So a little ways north of Eureka I asked Mr. Garmin if there were any landmark attractions nearby and we were directed to the Carson Mansion. This place is amazing!  You can’t go in, but looking at it was really something.

Then we moved on and Mr. Garmin next suggested the Avenue of the Giants, a scenic alternative to Hwy 101 that drives between more of the stunningly large trees.  It was beautiful.

During the drive through the forest we saw a river not too far away so I got it in my head to check it out.  We navigated a road that seemed to head toward the river and then we came upon a one-lane bridge.

We crossed the first section of the bridge then parked on the rocks and disconnected the Jeep.  It was fun to drive on the beach and through the water, and Sarah Michael loved it.  In fact, Sarah Michael had been wathing videos on the iPod on the RV and decided she didn’t want to stop yet, so despite my counsel to the contrary she brought the iPod into the Jeep.

We were cruising down the rocks and sand and I decided it would be fun to splash into the shallow water.  As we hit the water it splashed high all around us and covered the windshield, I couldn’t see a thing!  But my hands couldn’t find the wiper controls quickly so I didn’t see the larger rocks coming.

The rocks we had been driving on ranged in size from sand to golf balls, like you can see in the picture above, but the rocks we found ourselves on after the soaking were probably more like melon or canteloupe-sized.  They didn’t break anything but they were a surprise!

We continued on a little ways down the river then turned back, we had places to be.