Relax, young Grasshopper. The title will become clear if you are patient…

This morning I set out from Benicia on the trusty Speedmaster

After a pleasant ride skirting the top of San Pablo Bay and cutting up through the wine country, I joined US 101 (or, as my southern-California-reared wife calls it, “the” 101) at Petaluma. Petaluma (pop: 60,000) seems to have a penchant for public art. Take, for example, this 1920s-era PG&E substation. I really appreciate this kind of public art–whimsical, approachable, understandable. Kudos to you, Joel Jones, who conceived and designed the thing!

Close by the substation is some more public art, this time at Petaluma’s historic freight station building, which has been converted to an “arts center”. The effort here seems to be shooting for edgy. Which is another way of saying “head-scratchy.”

Not long after leaving Petaluma, US 101 narrows down to a couple of lanes. The countryside is open and green. There’s an old set of Northwestern Pacific Railroad tracks that run along the east side of the highway, but no train has run on these tracks since….well, probably since that Petaluma arts center was still a freight depot.

Finally I arrived at Ukiah (pop: 16,500), which is technically the beginning of the prefab road trip that Ian sent me. The first stop listed is the Grace Hudson Museum and Sun House (cost: $4 senior admission). Grace Hudson (1865-1937) was a California native who became an accomplished artist, working mainly in painting portraits. In 1911 she and her husband built a craftsman-style home they called “Sun House,” which was donated to the City of Ukiah by her heirs. I toured it today. It’s a pleasant, comfortable house, and notably it feels as though Grace just left this morning. It’s full of her furnishings and personal possessions.

Next to the Sun House is a museum that includes a number of examples of Grace’s work, including this self-portrait done when she was a teenager.

The museum also has a temporary exhibition called “Artistic Reflections on the Back to Land Movement.” I’m not sure what that means; it mainly seemed to show a bunch of naked hippies.

The docent (Janice) tried to educate me about these things, but I’m too much of a Philistine to understand. However, in the course of our conversation she mentioned she’d once worked at the nearby Buddhist monastary called the “City of 10,000 Buddhas.” Now that sounded interesting. It’s not technically part of this road prefab road trip, but I figured I’d drop in on the monks. And I’m glad I did!

The moment I entered the grounds I felt relaxed and at peace. Large open spaces, plenty of trees, winding paths, almost no cars. Peacocks roamed about and didn’t seem concerned about an approaching visitor. I’m not making this up.

Now, I should mention that when I lived in Palos Verdes, our street was overrun with peacocks. And let me tell you, they are noisy, dirty, creatures. But you can’t deny that they’re also beautiful.

As I strolled through the campus, every so often I would pass a monk (at least, someone I assumed to be a monk), and he would bow while steepling his hands. It all seemed so mellow. Even the street signs were positive, with names like Joyous, Sincerity, and Mindfulness.

In the center of the campus is the Jeweled Hall. It is here that the eponymous 10,000 Buddhas reside.

The City of 10,000 Buddhas was founded in the 1970s by Hsuan Hua, a Buddhist Monk who wanted to bring Buddhism to the West. The site had been the Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane since 1889. The “city” sits on about 500 acres of land.

As I was getting ready to leave, I found that one of the peacocks was taking an interest in my motorcycle.

I was ready to shoo it away, but the guy seemed so calm…so Zen. These peacocks seem to be so much more pleasant than the ones I remember from Palos Verdes. Or am I just becoming more at one with the world?

With resignation I left this refuge and re-entered modern society. I got back on the highway and headed north to Willits (pop: 5000).

My road trip guide tells me the Mendocino County Museum is next. It didn’t look like much from the outside, but I dutifully went in and paid my $5.

How can I put this? The place didn’t really burnish my Buddha. It might be because I’ve been to a lot of museums at this point in my life. I mean, how many sets of old-timey dentist tools does a person need to see? They had the usual stuff: A recreation of the town soda fountain, old household appliances, a lot of photos. The one thing that did catch my interest was the display on the racehorse Seabiscuit. It tuns out that Seabiscuit was bred on a farm right here in WIllits. Who knew??

And the other fun fact is that Charles Howard (who owned Seabiscuit) also owned a dog he called “Wee Biscuit.”

Willits, by the way, is the western terminus of the Skunk Railroad, which runs from Fort Bragg. I inquired at the station and learned that a collapsed tunnel still hasn’t been repaired, so the rail journey has been indefinitely suspended. You can read more about it in this post from last year.

Next I headed up the highway toward Leggett (pop: 77) and its “world famous drive-thru tree.” But before I got there, I saw this sign on the road:

I pulled off the road into this compound of brightly painted, old buildings.

Given the sign at the road, I assumed this was something open to the public. So I walked around a bit, taking in the “scene” (as they say). Soon I was facing “John-boy” (as he called himself).

John-boy was an interesting chap. He wasn’t unfriendly, but he really wasn’t overly friendly either. He dutifully answered my questions about the place, which is supposedly a “venue.” When I asked him what kind of event is coming up next at this venue, he said “Uh, there’s something next month, but I don’t remember what.” (A later Google search informed me that the place is an old gas station site that now is a medical marijuana farming collective.) There is a statue of the Virgin Mary and other religious icons. Then I noticed a Buddha:

Now I was up to 10,001 Buddhas for the day! I asked John-boy about its significance, and he told me “It’s where we hide our money. We wrote it off for tax purposes.” I’m still not sure what that means. When I told him that I’d just come from the City of 10,000 Buddhas, he pointed to a rock fountain and said “that’s a lady who used to live at the City of 10,000 Buddhas.” He said when she died her ashes were scattered around the fountain. He also said she claimed to be a psychic named Anastasia, “but I think she was just a busy-body.” And yet, this skeptic about psychics also told me that the world was controlled by aliens ever since our 1940s-era atomic tests ripped a hole in the space-time continuum. I decided it was time to go.

Within half an hour I was at the famous drive-thru Chandelier Tree (cost: $15 for cars, but only $10 for motorcycles). It’s a 276-foot-tall coast redwood that’s estimated to be about 2,400 years old. The hole was cut to make it a tourist attraction in the 1930s. Attentive readers will recall that I drove through this once before, but that was at a time when this blog was just a series of homemade Word documents emailed to a select few folks. So there’s no record of it here on WordPress. Now there is.

So, I’m now in the thick of the 1950s-era roadside attractions. I passed a “tree house” attraction, but didn’t stop as it was starting to get late and it wasn’t on my pre-fab list. But what was on my list was Confusion Hill.

Confusion Hill is a quintessential roadside tourist attraction with food, a kids play area, restrooms, souvenirs, penny-smashing machines, etc. But it also has a “gravity house,” which is an old shack built at odd angles to create optical illusions. They play up how gravity doesn’t work properly at this spot due to various theories about meteorites, aliens, etc. My dad took the family to one of these in Santa Cruz (“The Mystery Spot”) when I was a kid. It was fun, but Dad (ever the engineer) got into an argument with the tour guide over the proper use of a level to measure angles.

Anyway, at Confusion Hill I asked how this place differed from The Mystery Spot. “Ours is authentic” came the response from the woman behind the counter. She was Carol Campbell, the owner of the place.

Carol also told me that there’s a third place — The Oregon Vortex — which was exposed as a fraud on The History Channel two nights ago. I paid my $5 and checked out the gravity house. It was exactly like the one I remembered from my childhood visit to the Mystery Spot. But I have to admit, the place feels fun and welcoming and good-natured. It’s well worth $5.

There are various other roadside attractions in this area, mostly tree-related.

My prefab trip does include a second drive-through tree. This one is called the Shrine Tree. I drove by, but it was getting too late. Besides, who needs to drive through two trees in one day? That said, the Shrine Tree only costs $8 for motorcycles.

Now it was time to drive through the Avenue of the Giants–a 32-mile scenic highway to wends its way through various groves of ancient redwoods….some of which are well over 1,000 years old. It was a beautiful drive that returned me to the Zen state I felt when at the City of 10,000 Buddhas.

And suddenly, it was all over! I had spent $76 (including food and gas along the 130-mile drive). So yes, you can do it for under $100!

I checked into a cheap hotel in Fortuna, and will head back to Placerville via a circuitous route tomorrow. I may make another post if I encounter anything notable. But otherwise, I’ll leave you with the:

BREW OF THE DAY

The BOTD was a Palace Porter from the estimable Ukiah Brewing Company.

It tastes like a dry porter. For a porter this one is pretty heavily hopped (particularly on the finish, which is positively bitter). It has the roasty, malty notes you expect in a porter, but there’s not much complexity beyond that. Maybe I taste a little burnt toast on the front end. It’s got a creamy head, and nice lacing on the side of the glass.

It weighs in at 6.7 ABV. It’s perfectly serviceable, but nothing to write home about. 3.5 out of 5 stars.