November 29-December 4, 2013 Red Bluff to Chico, California

It has continued to be warm. High 60’s to low 70’s. We are loving it.

My little basket is coming along, it is 4 and a half inches tall and 6 wide. Being tiny makes it harder to get inside and to attach  the coils on the outside. These two birds, nuthatch and nuttall’s woodpecker are both seeing their reflections in the bus windows and flying to the windows and pecking at them.  This spot is great for birdwatching, they hang out in the tree right outside the window, and all over the ground and hold still long enough for me to look up what they are.

The basket almost done. It has to dry and I  still need to shellac it. Lovely oak tree in evening light on our hike  this evening.

I am working on my costume for the fruit cake festival. The theme is 20,000 fruitcakes under the sea. I am going to dress as a mermaid. I bought this ugly dress with fabulous fabric for my mermaid tail at a thrift shop. All embroidery and sequins. Stay tuned for the tail. Sunset from our dinner at the picnic table tonight.

The bus at the Almond Tree RV park in Chico, Calif today. The pool at the RV park is quite nice.

Too bad there were not any pirates in the 20,000 leagues, this pirate is perfect for John. We went to the National YoYo museum today. They had every kind of yoyo. I was embarrassed that I didn’t know what kind we had as kids. This huge yoyo is a replica of the worlds largest wooden yoyo. It weights 256 pounds and is 50 inches by 32. They had a picture of them trying it out with a crane. The International yoyo championships are here in Chico in October every year.

The Sierra Nevada Brewery at sunset. It is supposed to be open till 6pm, with tours, a taproom and restaurant. except that today they closed early for a holiday party. Boo. They have a bunch of these huge brew tanks, and lots of plumbing underneath them- thru the window. Maybe tomorrow we will get there when they are open.

The Yoyo museum was in the Bird in hand shop,  I bought a nice warm weather Christmas decoration for the bus. The next night we went back to the Sierra Nevada brewing company and they were open. John tasted beer and we had dinner. A couple of fancy pizzas. The booth they seated us in had this round seat that spun around. Ken the owner of the brewery saw some in Belgium. They were designed for people who did not like to get up and let people out of the booth. At least they didn’t think we were too old and decrepit to sit there.  John is drinking out of the IPA glass that Ken also designed. It is designed sort of like a wine glass you can get the full aroma of the hops in the IPA and it has a thinner ribbed bottom half that keeps the head on the beer.

The Sierra Nevada brewery had these cool copper sinks in the bathroom. The next day we went to Oroville, Ca to see the Lantrip Ashtray museum. The museum was established in 1994 by Dean Lantrip who collected ash trays. He had over 10,000 ashtrays. He passed away last year and in the spring of this year the family gave his ashtrays museum to the city of Oroville and they created this museum.

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The collection was believed to be the largest displays of ashtrays  in one setting in the world, featuring many one of a kind ashtrays. They didn’t have all 10,000 ashtrays on display, but they had some very cool ones.

After the Ashtray museum we went to the Bolt’s Antique Tool Museum. The tools were collected over the years by Mr. Bud Bolt, who was a Snap-on tool salesman.  He started the collection in1957 and spent 50 years collecting tools. Many people have donated more tools since. There are 12,000 tools on display. They claim this is the largest collection of antique tools in the world. There are  blacksmith tools, railroad tools, farm tools, monkey ,pipe , ignition, and alligator  wrenches,sockets, vehicles brand tools, hubcap tools, kitchen tools, medical tools and many many more.  It was pretty mind boggling.

After all that excitement we went to the Western Pacific Brewing which is housed in the old railroad depot. We tasted beer and had lunch in the Side Car Lounge.