Day 4: You Know, Maybe It Isn't Dead
Our saga last spoke of an upcoming trip today. Myra took one last stop at the beach - and failed her saving throw against tidal forces by an even wider margin. She comes back with wet ankles. She asked me if she smelled bad - I said she smelled "earthy". She laughed, but only a little. We showered, lathered in sunblock, finished a second bear claw (yum!), and loaded up for a day's photographic adventure. And...
WE GOT JACKED. AGAIN.
Now the only club cart outside our room is the one plugged into the wall. So we sigh, we grumble, and we get in. Oh look, only one bar out of - what, eight? TEN? Sheesh. (Some of the reviews for Sanctuary Resort say that people just drive the golf carts around - sort of the seniors version of joyriding. This is most certainly NOT true, as the resort layout is sort of a knot of twisty ramps and roads that mostly look alike. And so I credit the folks next door as not only arrogant snobs, but I'm also calling them so stupid that it took them 90% of a club cart's batteries to get from the front of the resort to the back.
Anyway, we turn over the tired old cart and I shrug off the frustration, because I'm on a quest for pasalubong! We're on our way to the Winchester Mystery House. It's a famous mansion built in the early 1900s by the widow of the owner of the Winchester Arms Company - the company that made the Winchester Rifle that either won the West or killed it, depending upon your point of view. Anyway, to make a long story short, she took a six-room farmhouse and built it up over thirty years to make it 160 rooms - many of which aren't finished. (Yes, that's the factual story. There are a lot of explanations I could go into, but a lot of them don't make much sense to most folks.) I ran a campaign of the Mage RPG set at the Winchester House, and it was very cool when Myra started talking about a vacation in California and suggested that we could go to the house itself. It's only an hour's drive north from Monterey, so it's a good day trip.
Oh, wait - there's one obstacle left to surmount - the route. Specifically, California Route 17. Um, this road is just stupid. It's clearly a logging road that someone decided was safe for public use. It's really not. It's a roller coaster on the freaking ground. Or rather, it's a piece of pavement spaghetti that's probably four times as long as the distance between start to finish. Myra had offered to drive earlier in the morning, but I declined - seeing how comfortable I was in the adjusted cockpit, there was no reason. Midway through Route 17, Myra took that back. Apparently, she was still a bit off-put by Wednesday's boat ride, so she got a little queasy with all the twisty turns. But at the same time, we had dawdled a little bit on the way out of town, so she alternated sharing my "oh dear lord, who BUILT this" moments with "drive faster!" communiques. Not the best drive I've ever had, by any means.
However, this ordeal was not forever - and we eventually emerged into the sunny city limits of San Jose. A few wrong turns later and a few correct turns after that, we arrived safely at our destination. (Note - if the Verizon Navigator voice says "Recalculating route," or "Make the next legal U-turn," you as driver or passenger are legally allowed and obliged to tell it to go screw itself, because you already know you messed up.) We took some shots of the big sign by the road (kind of in a step-right-up circus font), and then went to the entrance to this historical site.
Wait. There's a sign up on the entryway that talks about season tickets. We stop and stare at this sign, both commenting on it. There are two reasons to do so. Firstly, the house is open every day except Christmas. So what season? The schedule of prices on the website has five time slots for the schedule of when the house opens and closes, but those are three three-month periods, one one-month period and then the rest of the year. But there's only one season pass price. So what happens if you buy one on September 10th - is it 1/3 off? But far more importantly, I can possibly see going on the tour (the only part you have to pay for) twice, just to get the details down. But it's a LOT of walking. If you're taking the tour three times, you're taking a friend who hasn't gone, and you're doing a lot of yawning. But who in their right minds is gonna go on this for three months?!? Um, if you go on the Winchester Tour five times - you're crazy enough to go off and build your own. So, after this mental stun, we enter the grounds. We stop briefly at the Winchester Gun Museum (pretty darn cool, but sorta creepy to hear a dad telling his son "Yeah, that one's cool - it's a double-barreled one." Sit in the gardens for a bit, and then our tour begins. There are technically two tours to the house, one is the house tour, and the other one is called 'Behind the Scenes' and purports to talk about Victorian plumbing, architecture and building technology.
Our tour is called, and it begins. I'll try not to give you the whole tour myself here, but just some of the highlights.
We start out in the stable area, where coaches would arrive and drop people off (workers, as she had no visitors). They have displayed the last picture ever taken of Sarah Winchester, which I immediately recognized from my own research. They also showed me something that taught me the first thing I didn't know about Sarah Winchester. To wit, she was really, really, really short. 4'10", to be precise. The stables had a door built around that frame, and it was a somewhat ugly omen to 6'1" me to wonder what perils the house would offer. (I could have relaxed, though - apparently having a house under construction implies having a lot of wide walkways and rooms.)
We visit what the house calls the $25,000 Room - because it contains original Tiffany stained glass windows that were appraised in 1922 after Sarah's death. Of course, now these windows are appraised at (I think) $1,500,000. They go over the specifics of the money that Sarah Winchester received, in addition to her significant interest in Winchester Arms - a flat payment of $20,000,000, and a daily stipend derived from investments and such in the neighborhood of $1,000 per day. (This translates from 1922 dollars to 2009 dollars as a lump sum payment of 243 million, and a daily income of 12 grand. So it's pretty competitive with today's CEO payment schemes.)
Mrs. Winchester had crippling arthritis towards the end of her life, so she had several of the stairs gutted and replaced with what are called "easy risers" - basically stairs that are about a foot from front to back and go up about two inches each step. So the stairs got turned into basically really long and winding ramps. Kinda nice to not have to sweat a staircase, actually.
That guy! Oooooo, that guy! Just knock him over for me, will you? Seriously. (There was a young man with what looked like a semi-pro camera, trailing at the end of the tour group the entire time. I think basically both of us were looking to get pictures of rooms without the people in them. So every time I waited for most people to clear out to get a shot of this room or that - there he was! That guy in the yellow jacket! Arrrrgh. I tell ya - that is why people get season passes. They want to get one dang tour where they can just take pictures. (I wonder what the guide does when they get the season ticket holder alone on a tour - they just say "Hey, you know the stuff" and walk around quietly with the guy?)
You know, really a lot of this is visual. I'll share my own pics soon, but for now, let this fine collection tide you over. But after the first coupla rooms, it's really just a matter of soaking up what the guide is telling you, and just oohing and aahing at all the weird architecture. Doors opening into walls, doors opening ten feet above sinks, doors opening on the second story of the house right out over the lawn. It's just as crazy as you always imagined.
There are thirteen bathrooms in the house. All of them have nice wooden doors - with big windows in the upper half. After seeing a few of these windows, I surmised that Sarah Winchester was so paranoid that she had those put in so that even if she were using the rest room, she could see outside the hall. Myra questioned this, suggesting that the windows were put in so us humble lookie-loos can look into said loos. It turns out later that I'm right, yet wrong - the windows were put in so that Mrs. Winchester, paranoid old soul, could keep an eye on her servants. (Maybe she was an anti-smoker.)
The tour was just about an hour and a half, and it was a lot of walking. Myra joined me for a period of sitting down - all four feets was hurtin'. The next tour starts separately from the first - and we discover the rendezvous point after Myra almost takes us all the way around the house to the front door. Hmph. We get back with a moment or two to spare, and our tour guide takes us to the stables to get our hardhats. Yep - hardhats. Apparently, we'll need them.
But really, we sorta don't. And this is supposed to be a tour more focused on Victorian architecture - but it sorta isn't. We spend a lot of time wandering around the various buildings on the grounds. The other main thing I learned about Sarah Winchester that I hadn't known before was that she was running a huge (160 acre) orchard. She shipped dried prunes and apricots nationally and internationally, and did well at it. (In addition, let's take this opportunity to remind our readers that fifteen years after she inherited control of Winchester Arms from her husband, her mother-in-law bequeathed her more shares in the company after her death. So in that fifteen years, her mother-in-law was convinced that while her passion for building strange houses was somewhat offputting, her business acumen was still very much alive and well.
We tour a plumbing supply house, we take a look at the water tank tower (where the water tank itself apparently burned down in a fire), and we check out the front gardens and the front door. Another interesting point - the Winchester House has around three different guest parlors, but there was only one person may have ever approached close enough to being called a "guest". That would be Teddy Roosevelt, who was a fan of the Winchester Rifle and (according to the story, which may be unsubstantiated) wanted to meet the owner of the company. However, apparently a worker thought Mr. Roosevelt was applying for a job, and told him to go around to the back like everyone else. He was completely insulted and immediately left - the only potential visitor rebuffed before he even got to the door.
We finally get to the house, to go into the basement. The hardhats are now on! We walk through a few cement floor rooms and halls, take a look at some of the furnaces and the foundation, and hear an obligatory creepy ghost story. Oh, and we're out again. The hardhats are now off. Boo. One more story about the front porch not being finished and the tour sorta ends with a whimper. News alert - if you go to San Jose, don't go behind the scenes. There really isn't much to look at behind the curtain.
We raid the gift shop (not gonna spoil things here, but got some pasalubong). They've closed the cafe, so it's pretty much right out the door. We have one stop before dinner, however - I did some research earlier and picked the name of a good game store in the area. And it was indeed good. VERY good selection, clean store conditions, good game room. Heavy miniatures presence, but still has a good selection of RPGs, collectible games, and board g-
Wait. That's Ticket to Ride NORDIC COUNTRIES. I can't even find that at my own local game store any more. Gimme that! And there's a seven-card expansion to Monty Python Fluxx! And there's a caramel Big Kit Kat! And a- what?
Myra wants me to buy a giant 20-sided die as a gaming souvenir. Awwwwwwww. This is just the yummiest day ever.
The cashier (a young lady with purple hair and a nose ring) is surprised - shocked, I tell you - when I mention I'm from Illinois. And then she mentions that they have open board gaming on Wednesday. (Me, I think I enjoyed the whale-watching more. Nobody has the dramatic daring to toss their cookies during an up-and-down game of Puerto Rico.)
But we leave Game Kastle with a smile on our faces and head to dinner - a local Asian-centric food service cafe called Goldilocks. I have to this moment never received a satisfactory explanation on why a restaurant that primarily offers Filipino food (but also Chinese and other Far East cuisines) chose as their symbol a fairy tale about a very picky young Caucasian girl who steals things. It makes no sense in about five different ways. But their adobo is quite comparable to the recipe Myra's mom uses (except hers is less sweetened and doesn't have -yuck- an entirely intact hardboiled egg disguised as a potato in it. But it's a yummy meal and a good close to the day in San Jose.
Then Myra falls to the allure of Haagen-Dazs mango sorbet and we stop at a Safeway. And I discover that, much to my almost-horror, that there are exactly TWO differences between this store and the Dominicks I shop at in Palatine or Lake Zurich - the integrated bank is Wells Fargo, and there's an in-house Jamba Juice in addition to the Starbucks. But everything else is near-identical, and they even take Myra's phone number for the frequent buyers' program. It's a strong testament to the homogeneity of the American shopping experience. But on reflection, I am comforted - for it speaks to a lessening of cultural divides in the future. One grocery store, one world.
Back to the resort to unload the day's haul of pasalubong, and-
Oh.
My.
GOD.
I don't believe it.
This is just ridiculous.
W-E G-O-T J-A-C-K-E-D A-G-A-I-N.
The space we parked our cart in is once again empty. This is not just stupid - it's becoming downright insulting that the resort permits this. Myra goes in, and she gives a more polite version of WTF to the desk clerk. The desk clerk can't discuss how to compensate us for all this idiotic grief - "the manager will be informed as to your dissatisfaction". Whatever. It's like a freaking used car lot in here, stolen cars and all.
We get our third cart, drive back to the room, and set down to a fine late night dessert of sorbet and letting our feet cool off. We pack a bit, sleep a bit, and then wake up again. We bid Sanctuary Resort a fond farewell. Fond for the memories of what we did and saw, unsullied by what arrogant snobs did in their careless indifference. Myra's gotten her blue sky vacation, and I've gotten a week off of work and one of the most relaxed vacations I've ever taken (as I was more involved in the planning this time, it didn't involve ten different stops per day or getting up at 6AM).
Last entry will be short - spending Friday just flying home. Thanks for keeping an ear out for what I've wanted to share with you.
WE GOT JACKED. AGAIN.
Now the only club cart outside our room is the one plugged into the wall. So we sigh, we grumble, and we get in. Oh look, only one bar out of - what, eight? TEN? Sheesh. (Some of the reviews for Sanctuary Resort say that people just drive the golf carts around - sort of the seniors version of joyriding. This is most certainly NOT true, as the resort layout is sort of a knot of twisty ramps and roads that mostly look alike. And so I credit the folks next door as not only arrogant snobs, but I'm also calling them so stupid that it took them 90% of a club cart's batteries to get from the front of the resort to the back.
Anyway, we turn over the tired old cart and I shrug off the frustration, because I'm on a quest for pasalubong! We're on our way to the Winchester Mystery House. It's a famous mansion built in the early 1900s by the widow of the owner of the Winchester Arms Company - the company that made the Winchester Rifle that either won the West or killed it, depending upon your point of view. Anyway, to make a long story short, she took a six-room farmhouse and built it up over thirty years to make it 160 rooms - many of which aren't finished. (Yes, that's the factual story. There are a lot of explanations I could go into, but a lot of them don't make much sense to most folks.) I ran a campaign of the Mage RPG set at the Winchester House, and it was very cool when Myra started talking about a vacation in California and suggested that we could go to the house itself. It's only an hour's drive north from Monterey, so it's a good day trip.
Oh, wait - there's one obstacle left to surmount - the route. Specifically, California Route 17. Um, this road is just stupid. It's clearly a logging road that someone decided was safe for public use. It's really not. It's a roller coaster on the freaking ground. Or rather, it's a piece of pavement spaghetti that's probably four times as long as the distance between start to finish. Myra had offered to drive earlier in the morning, but I declined - seeing how comfortable I was in the adjusted cockpit, there was no reason. Midway through Route 17, Myra took that back. Apparently, she was still a bit off-put by Wednesday's boat ride, so she got a little queasy with all the twisty turns. But at the same time, we had dawdled a little bit on the way out of town, so she alternated sharing my "oh dear lord, who BUILT this" moments with "drive faster!" communiques. Not the best drive I've ever had, by any means.
However, this ordeal was not forever - and we eventually emerged into the sunny city limits of San Jose. A few wrong turns later and a few correct turns after that, we arrived safely at our destination. (Note - if the Verizon Navigator voice says "Recalculating route," or "Make the next legal U-turn," you as driver or passenger are legally allowed and obliged to tell it to go screw itself, because you already know you messed up.) We took some shots of the big sign by the road (kind of in a step-right-up circus font), and then went to the entrance to this historical site.
Wait. There's a sign up on the entryway that talks about season tickets. We stop and stare at this sign, both commenting on it. There are two reasons to do so. Firstly, the house is open every day except Christmas. So what season? The schedule of prices on the website has five time slots for the schedule of when the house opens and closes, but those are three three-month periods, one one-month period and then the rest of the year. But there's only one season pass price. So what happens if you buy one on September 10th - is it 1/3 off? But far more importantly, I can possibly see going on the tour (the only part you have to pay for) twice, just to get the details down. But it's a LOT of walking. If you're taking the tour three times, you're taking a friend who hasn't gone, and you're doing a lot of yawning. But who in their right minds is gonna go on this for three months?!? Um, if you go on the Winchester Tour five times - you're crazy enough to go off and build your own. So, after this mental stun, we enter the grounds. We stop briefly at the Winchester Gun Museum (pretty darn cool, but sorta creepy to hear a dad telling his son "Yeah, that one's cool - it's a double-barreled one." Sit in the gardens for a bit, and then our tour begins. There are technically two tours to the house, one is the house tour, and the other one is called 'Behind the Scenes' and purports to talk about Victorian plumbing, architecture and building technology.
Our tour is called, and it begins. I'll try not to give you the whole tour myself here, but just some of the highlights.
We start out in the stable area, where coaches would arrive and drop people off (workers, as she had no visitors). They have displayed the last picture ever taken of Sarah Winchester, which I immediately recognized from my own research. They also showed me something that taught me the first thing I didn't know about Sarah Winchester. To wit, she was really, really, really short. 4'10", to be precise. The stables had a door built around that frame, and it was a somewhat ugly omen to 6'1" me to wonder what perils the house would offer. (I could have relaxed, though - apparently having a house under construction implies having a lot of wide walkways and rooms.)
We visit what the house calls the $25,000 Room - because it contains original Tiffany stained glass windows that were appraised in 1922 after Sarah's death. Of course, now these windows are appraised at (I think) $1,500,000. They go over the specifics of the money that Sarah Winchester received, in addition to her significant interest in Winchester Arms - a flat payment of $20,000,000, and a daily stipend derived from investments and such in the neighborhood of $1,000 per day. (This translates from 1922 dollars to 2009 dollars as a lump sum payment of 243 million, and a daily income of 12 grand. So it's pretty competitive with today's CEO payment schemes.)
Mrs. Winchester had crippling arthritis towards the end of her life, so she had several of the stairs gutted and replaced with what are called "easy risers" - basically stairs that are about a foot from front to back and go up about two inches each step. So the stairs got turned into basically really long and winding ramps. Kinda nice to not have to sweat a staircase, actually.
That guy! Oooooo, that guy! Just knock him over for me, will you? Seriously. (There was a young man with what looked like a semi-pro camera, trailing at the end of the tour group the entire time. I think basically both of us were looking to get pictures of rooms without the people in them. So every time I waited for most people to clear out to get a shot of this room or that - there he was! That guy in the yellow jacket! Arrrrgh. I tell ya - that is why people get season passes. They want to get one dang tour where they can just take pictures. (I wonder what the guide does when they get the season ticket holder alone on a tour - they just say "Hey, you know the stuff" and walk around quietly with the guy?)
You know, really a lot of this is visual. I'll share my own pics soon, but for now, let this fine collection tide you over. But after the first coupla rooms, it's really just a matter of soaking up what the guide is telling you, and just oohing and aahing at all the weird architecture. Doors opening into walls, doors opening ten feet above sinks, doors opening on the second story of the house right out over the lawn. It's just as crazy as you always imagined.
There are thirteen bathrooms in the house. All of them have nice wooden doors - with big windows in the upper half. After seeing a few of these windows, I surmised that Sarah Winchester was so paranoid that she had those put in so that even if she were using the rest room, she could see outside the hall. Myra questioned this, suggesting that the windows were put in so us humble lookie-loos can look into said loos. It turns out later that I'm right, yet wrong - the windows were put in so that Mrs. Winchester, paranoid old soul, could keep an eye on her servants. (Maybe she was an anti-smoker.)
The tour was just about an hour and a half, and it was a lot of walking. Myra joined me for a period of sitting down - all four feets was hurtin'. The next tour starts separately from the first - and we discover the rendezvous point after Myra almost takes us all the way around the house to the front door. Hmph. We get back with a moment or two to spare, and our tour guide takes us to the stables to get our hardhats. Yep - hardhats. Apparently, we'll need them.
But really, we sorta don't. And this is supposed to be a tour more focused on Victorian architecture - but it sorta isn't. We spend a lot of time wandering around the various buildings on the grounds. The other main thing I learned about Sarah Winchester that I hadn't known before was that she was running a huge (160 acre) orchard. She shipped dried prunes and apricots nationally and internationally, and did well at it. (In addition, let's take this opportunity to remind our readers that fifteen years after she inherited control of Winchester Arms from her husband, her mother-in-law bequeathed her more shares in the company after her death. So in that fifteen years, her mother-in-law was convinced that while her passion for building strange houses was somewhat offputting, her business acumen was still very much alive and well.
We tour a plumbing supply house, we take a look at the water tank tower (where the water tank itself apparently burned down in a fire), and we check out the front gardens and the front door. Another interesting point - the Winchester House has around three different guest parlors, but there was only one person may have ever approached close enough to being called a "guest". That would be Teddy Roosevelt, who was a fan of the Winchester Rifle and (according to the story, which may be unsubstantiated) wanted to meet the owner of the company. However, apparently a worker thought Mr. Roosevelt was applying for a job, and told him to go around to the back like everyone else. He was completely insulted and immediately left - the only potential visitor rebuffed before he even got to the door.
We finally get to the house, to go into the basement. The hardhats are now on! We walk through a few cement floor rooms and halls, take a look at some of the furnaces and the foundation, and hear an obligatory creepy ghost story. Oh, and we're out again. The hardhats are now off. Boo. One more story about the front porch not being finished and the tour sorta ends with a whimper. News alert - if you go to San Jose, don't go behind the scenes. There really isn't much to look at behind the curtain.
We raid the gift shop (not gonna spoil things here, but got some pasalubong). They've closed the cafe, so it's pretty much right out the door. We have one stop before dinner, however - I did some research earlier and picked the name of a good game store in the area. And it was indeed good. VERY good selection, clean store conditions, good game room. Heavy miniatures presence, but still has a good selection of RPGs, collectible games, and board g-
Wait. That's Ticket to Ride NORDIC COUNTRIES. I can't even find that at my own local game store any more. Gimme that! And there's a seven-card expansion to Monty Python Fluxx! And there's a caramel Big Kit Kat! And a- what?
Myra wants me to buy a giant 20-sided die as a gaming souvenir. Awwwwwwww. This is just the yummiest day ever.
The cashier (a young lady with purple hair and a nose ring) is surprised - shocked, I tell you - when I mention I'm from Illinois. And then she mentions that they have open board gaming on Wednesday. (Me, I think I enjoyed the whale-watching more. Nobody has the dramatic daring to toss their cookies during an up-and-down game of Puerto Rico.)
But we leave Game Kastle with a smile on our faces and head to dinner - a local Asian-centric food service cafe called Goldilocks. I have to this moment never received a satisfactory explanation on why a restaurant that primarily offers Filipino food (but also Chinese and other Far East cuisines) chose as their symbol a fairy tale about a very picky young Caucasian girl who steals things. It makes no sense in about five different ways. But their adobo is quite comparable to the recipe Myra's mom uses (except hers is less sweetened and doesn't have -yuck- an entirely intact hardboiled egg disguised as a potato in it. But it's a yummy meal and a good close to the day in San Jose.
Then Myra falls to the allure of Haagen-Dazs mango sorbet and we stop at a Safeway. And I discover that, much to my almost-horror, that there are exactly TWO differences between this store and the Dominicks I shop at in Palatine or Lake Zurich - the integrated bank is Wells Fargo, and there's an in-house Jamba Juice in addition to the Starbucks. But everything else is near-identical, and they even take Myra's phone number for the frequent buyers' program. It's a strong testament to the homogeneity of the American shopping experience. But on reflection, I am comforted - for it speaks to a lessening of cultural divides in the future. One grocery store, one world.
Back to the resort to unload the day's haul of pasalubong, and-
Oh.
My.
GOD.
I don't believe it.
This is just ridiculous.
W-E G-O-T J-A-C-K-E-D A-G-A-I-N.
The space we parked our cart in is once again empty. This is not just stupid - it's becoming downright insulting that the resort permits this. Myra goes in, and she gives a more polite version of WTF to the desk clerk. The desk clerk can't discuss how to compensate us for all this idiotic grief - "the manager will be informed as to your dissatisfaction". Whatever. It's like a freaking used car lot in here, stolen cars and all.
We get our third cart, drive back to the room, and set down to a fine late night dessert of sorbet and letting our feet cool off. We pack a bit, sleep a bit, and then wake up again. We bid Sanctuary Resort a fond farewell. Fond for the memories of what we did and saw, unsullied by what arrogant snobs did in their careless indifference. Myra's gotten her blue sky vacation, and I've gotten a week off of work and one of the most relaxed vacations I've ever taken (as I was more involved in the planning this time, it didn't involve ten different stops per day or getting up at 6AM).
Last entry will be short - spending Friday just flying home. Thanks for keeping an ear out for what I've wanted to share with you.