'Tis the season! It's Spargelzeit, yo!!
I took the day off work in order to go to the Asparagus Festival. It was a great excuse for a road trip with my man, especially since I have not been more than 72 miles from our home in 2 1/2 years. We got 9 miles further this time! The clouds were the high point of the day. Check them out!!
A pit stop (or as I like to think of it, the opportunity to buy beef jerky and Donettes):
Then on to points of genealogical interest, because mrguy's great-great aunt lived in the red light district of Asparagus Town. In news accounts of the day, she was described as a woman of "the half world". We've been doing a deep dive on local history to learn more about the city's tenderloin, the bull-pen, the red light district and the social history of 1914, in order to understand her life.
She disappeared from a river boat on which she was traveling overnight with a man with whom she'd been living at The Ideal, a hotel in the tenderloin. A red light district abatement law had gone into effect two days earlier, and I have to wonder whether she was working on the boat that night. They arrested the man she was traveling with, and found the woman at the bottom of the river several months later.
We drove into town:
Found The Ideal. Cool to think that she walked through this door at some point:
It seems to be unoccupied at the moment. The ground floor was last a bar, and you can see through the dusty windows that it had white penny tile floors. The bar itself is not there, but the brass rail is still in place.
Then off to eat asparagus. I was worried that the festival would be a super spreader event, but it was sparsely attended in its first few hours (last time we went on a Sunday and it was packed). We grabbed some food (easy peasy) and an asparagus margarita for me, and watched a cooking demo. Very pleasant.
Then we went to see what we could see, which included this unicorn bicycle. Also they have a dirt track for car races, but it was closed. Oh well : )
Best weird sign goes to the one that said "I scream, you scream, the cops come, it's awkward! Have a Snowie shave ice instead!" Note: there are three of those margarita booths in what is a fairly small fairgrounds : )
And finally, a big thumbs up to any booth that sells food whose mascot is the food, but with legs. Hey, mister lemon!
On the way home we started making plans to come back and poke around some more, move to the area, that sort of thing. The drive through the delta was heavenly. More clouds, water that changes color every mile based on the clouds.We stopped to buy cherries on the side of the highway. As we were pulling back onto the highway with traffic at full speed behind us, a tiny gold car with a bashed-in front end and an accordioned trunk lid that was waving in the air drove across the double-yellow from the other direction straight at us. Mrguy said he looked like he was a refugee from the demolition derby. Luckily mrguy saw him in time and the dude veered over to the cherry stand.
That weirdness aside ("yeah, maybe we won't move here") it was a fabulous day out, and we were back home by 3:30 for naps with cats. Mrguy sent me a real estate listing for a nearby town while I was asleep.
Wooo!
No comments:
Post a Comment