After spending six days in Palm Springs, we headed north to San Francisco. We didn’t take the most direct route though.
There were a couple of reasons for that. First, we wanted to visit Manzanar National Historic Site; that meant taking U.S. Route 395 most of the way up the eastern part of the state rather than I-10 and I-5 up through the middle.
Second, we wanted to visit Folsom (just outside of Sacramento) due to one of Shae’s Christmas presents, so that meant heading further north before driving down to San Francisco.
The journey from Palm Springs to San Francisco ended up taking almost a week seeing as we stayed five nights near Folsom. Here’s a roundup of what we did during that time.
Manzanar National Historic Site
When you think of World War II concentration camps, your first thought is likely Auschwitz. Did you know though that the US had ten concentration camps of their own on US soil?
They were all over the country, with one of them being Manzanar in California, to the west of Death Valley National Park. More than 120,000 Japanese Americans were held there from 1942 to 1945 due to the government’s concern/paranoia about those with Japanese ancestry after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
Although these concentration camps weren’t death camps and so weren’t as horrific as places like Auschwitz, the Japanese Americans held in these camps were still treated extremely badly and lost their freedom, homes and jobs for many years.
After being closed in 1945, most of Manzanar’s buildings were taken down and there wasn’t much evidence left of what happened at the site. Thankfully the site was eventually designated as a National Historic Landmark before being redesignated as a National Historic Site. Some of the buildings were recreated to help give visitors a better idea of what life was like for people forced to live at Manzanar simply because of their heritage.
Check out this post for more about this sad but important piece of US history.
Bristlecone Motel
After visiting Manzanar, it was only a short drive to Big Pine where we stayed at the Bristlecone Motel. There aren’t many accommodation options along US Route 395 in that area and even though we don’t normally stay at motels, the Bristlecone Motel had good reviews and no pet fee, so it seemed like a good option.
It was a decent stay for one night; not quite as quiet as we’d hoped, but certainly not rowdy either. It was clean and safe which are pretty much my only concerns for quick overnight stays like this where we leave most of our belongings in our car rather than moving an entire carload in and out of our room for one night.
Something fun and a little quirky about this motel is that you check in at the Chevron gas station next door.
Copper Top BBQ
After booking our stay at the Bristlecone Motel, I checked Google Maps to see if we’d have any dinner options in the area that night or if we’d need to bring something with us to eat.
Big Pine has a handful of restaurants, with Copper Top BBQ catching my eye because a) it’s BBQ, b) it was a short walk from the motel and c) it had great reviews online. After checking in at the motel, we ordered dinner online and walked down to pick it up.
Picking Copper Top BBQ for dinner was a fantastic decision. We decided to go for their two person Big Pine Platter which comes with a selection of meats, two sides, rolls and two drinks. I love platters like this as it means you get to try several different types of meat, with the Big Pine Platter giving you four meats:
- Tri-tip
- Pulled pork
- Ribs
- Butter spice chicken bites
For $34 for two people, it was great value because it included loads of food and was absolutely delicious. From a price/taste standpoint, Copper Top BBQ is probably in my top 5 places we’ve gotten BBQ over the last 4+ years of our road trip around the US. I wouldn’t make it a destination in its own right, but if you’ll be driving along US Route 395 it’s definitely worth a stop for lunch or dinner.
Drive To Roseville
It was a pretty drive to our next destination – Roseville – through the mountains east of Yosemite. It was a ~5.5 hour drive up there and was very cold outside, so we only made a quick stop along the way for a restroom break where we also wandered down to a river to enjoy the view.
Residence Inn Rocklin Roseville
We booked a five night stay at the Residence Inn Rocklin Roseville because the Marriott Bonvoy program has a 5th night free benefit on award stays which means we only had to redeem points for four nights of our five night stay.
Another reason we chose this hotel is because we were able to book straight into a one bedroom suite. The Residence Inn Rocklin Roseville is a new property and so our suite was in excellent condition and was more spacious than I was expecting. The kitchen had tons of cupboard space which was unusual (in a good way) and the shower in our bathroom had great water pressure.
The hotel wasn’t perfect though. Their breakfast options were overly carby, with the hot options being pre-heated breakfast sandwiches each day which meant I couldn’t remove the cheese (I don’t like cheese). The internet was a little dodgy as well, often cutting out at random times. Despite masks being optional, they’d decided to stop offering the evening mixer a month beforehand which is where they offer complimentary drinks and snacks most weekday evenings.
Overall though, it was a solid stay and I’d be happy with staying there again if we happened to end up back in the Roseville area in the future (which is unlikely).
SeaQuest Folsom
The reason we’d gone up to Roseville is because one of the gifts I’d gotten Shae for Christmas was a porcupine petting experience at SeaQuest Folsom.
Unfortunately this ended up being a bit of a bust.
SeaQuest wasn’t quite what we were expecting, with a few of the animal habitats being disappointingly small and/or were on cement with just a sprinkling of dirt/mulch on top. If we’d known that beforehand, that’s not somewhere we’d want to support with our money.
One positive aspect of SeaQuest was getting to feed lots of different animals, including stingrays.
The most disappointing part of the visit was the porcupine petting experience. When we arrived at our allotted time, we were advised that it wouldn’t be possible to pet Quilly the porcupine as she’s still relatively new and so is still getting used to people. We would get to feed her some vegetables though.
Not being able to pet Quilly was completely fair enough – we wouldn’t want to make an animal uncomfortable. However, we were later told by the SeaQuest employee that Quilly had been there for two years. That means that they’ve been selling porcupine petting experiences for the last two years despite not actually offering that experience. That’s awful because it means they’ve made a conscious decision to misrepresent what they’re offering and taking money from hundreds or thousands of people in that time with no intention of providing what’s advertised.
California State Capitol Building
Other than SeaQuest, we didn’t do much in Roseville a) because there didn’t seem to be anything we were particularly interested in and b) we were working all day for a couple of the days we were there.
As a result, we didn’t do anything else until after we checked out of our hotel and started heading to San Francisco. The route took us via Sacramento, so we stopped in California’s state capital to quickly visit the State Capitol building.
San Francisco
Next up was a fun six days in San Francisco. Despite working a couple of days during our stay, we got to explore the city quite a bit so stay tuned for posts about Alcatraz, the Cable Car museum, GoCars, the best places to view the Golden Gate Bridge, a review of the hotel we stayed at and more.
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