Holtville Carrot Festival - 02/01/13 - 02/10/13

Dawn Wells would be proud.

Holtville Carrot Festival

Holtville, CA

My love for carrots stems (ha!) largely from an old episode of Gilligan's Island in which Gilligan discovers a crate of radioactive vegetable seeds. The plants grow suspiciously fast and are oddly misshapen, but the castaways devour them, like anyone else would after a steady diet of coconuts and...more coconuts.

The vegetables give each character "super powers": Gilligan's spinach intake renders him uncanny strength, Mrs. Howell becomes hyperactivity personified thanks to sugar beets, and the beloved Mary Ann is able to see for hundred of miles after eating radioactive carrots.  Young and impressionable, I thought the whole carrot thing might work for me, too.

Fast-forward to the 21st century, and I'm slightly less gullible.  I still dig carrots, though, as do the residents of Holtville, the self-proclaimed "Carrot Capital of the World".  The people have been celebrating this popular root vegetable for over six decades with cook-offs, parades and live entertainment.

Indulge in carrot cake and carrot ice cream, congratulate the Carrot Festival Queen, and tip your hat to Sherwood Schwartz for steering you away from Twinkies and Ho-Ho's for at least a few minutes.

La Brea Tar Pits

Sometimes, you end up in a sticky situation...

La Brea Tar Pits
Los Angeles, CA

Celebrity gossip isn't the only thing they're digging up in L.A.  There are mastadon fossils, too!

For tens of thousands of years, crude oil has seeped up through the earth because of the Salt Lake Oil Field beneath Hancock Park, forming pools thick enough to trap even the largest animals.  The tar preserved the bones, and of the bones that have been excavated, cleaned, studied and recorded, the best are on display at the Page Museum.

Fossils of bison, mammoths, ground sloths and condors can be found inside the museum, along with fossilized plants, insect and more tiny organisms.  Walking through the museum tells a fascinating story of prehistoric creatures that once roamed the area before shopping and double-decker buses took over.

Be sure you don't miss the informational short film detailing the history of the pits and the ongoing excavation of 23 large wooden boxes and 327 bucket of material taken from a site where fossils were found while constructing an underground parking garage.  With several years' worth of material for paleontologists and volunteers to dig through and document, no doubt will the collection at the Page Museum be an ever-evolving story of creatures who did just fine for thousands of years without a Starbucks on every corner.

Mendocino County Crab, Wine & Beer Festival - 01/18/13 - 01/27/13

Get crackin', but keep your shell shards to yourself!

Mendocino County Crab, Wine & Beer Festival
Various Locations in Mendocino County

To those who believe crabs feel pain, and therefore refuse to eat them because they consider plunging lives ones into boiling water to be inhumane, I have the following to say:

"More for me."

This festival is a culmination of crustacean celebrations including a crab cake cook-off, cioppino dinner, various crab feeds (naturally) and a winemaker's dinner.  Local restaurants, hotels and inns participate by offering their own specials to draw crowds to what Coastal Living magazine named one of America's Top 10 Seafood & Wine Festivals. Enjoy local whale watching, browse art galleries and enjoy incredible sunsets while you sip your favorite vintage.

Discover what real crab tastes like, then vow to boycott Long John Silver's forever...or at least until your next craving for 99-cent fish tacos.

Casa de Fruta

Riding in circles is fun!

Casa de Fruta

Hollister, CA

Oh, Casa.  You are, indeed, the "Best Place to Stop For a Pee Break". You are also likely a blessing to anyone driving with children; they can work off some energy on the carousel and train, the effects of which will knock them out for a good couple of hours as you continue to head down to L.A. or up to Sacramento or even further up to Portland or Seattle (to that I say, "UGH").

Casa de Fruta's roots began in the early 1900s, and it remains a family-run business which has expanded to include separate "casas" for wines and sweets as well as an on-site restaurant, fruit stand and RV park. Children can enjoy the duck pond in the playground area.  Parents can unload their bladders, then unload their wallets on an unlimited number of treats such as chocolate-covered dried fruits, hot and spicy nuts, or...mesquite flour.  Yeah, mesquite flour!

A tip for y'all: some of the snacks are displayed in open barrels and bins, so dig from the bottom.  Just sayin'...

Pippi's Longstockings

Sock it to me!

Pippi's Longstockings

Fort Bragg, CA

I never thought I'd be desperately shopping for socks during the summertime until I arrived in Fort Bragg, forgetting that beach areas can drop to nipple-protruding temperatures once the sun goes down.

Pippi's offers a colorful array of socks, tights, legwarmers and related accessories, although I was disappointed not to find any Pippi Longstocking merchandise.  I practically wore out that cassette tape each time I checked it out from my public library growing up.  Yep, I said library.  At any rate, you can't go wrong here if the goal is to keep those little piggies toasty; you'll find everything from soccer socks to fishnets to Hello Kitty knee-highs.

Stock up early on those birthday or holiday gifts.  Is it weird to stuff stockings into Christmas stockings?...