My California Adventures: Part Two

Posted on November 6, 2025 by Tara Lynne

In part one of this two-part California Adventure “series” (if you can call it that when it’s only two parts, ha) I talked about the many cool things I did and saw local to the Inland Empire and Los Angeles areas, overnight trips we took, and my jaunts down to San Diego for SDCC. Those explorations were of course tons of fun and I saw and experienced a lot of awesome places and things, but I have to admit that I’m most excited to talk about the vacations – even the shorter ones – that I went on from my California ‘base camp’!

*ACTUAL* ADVENTURES
While I would love to say that I would have gone out of my way to travel to the places I’m about to mention even if I hadn’t lived out in California, the reality is that no, I probably wouldn’t have. But I cannot express how grateful I am that I was able to do so with such ease because I was already there, and I cannot stress enough that all of these trips were beyond amazing and (with one small exception, which I’ll get into) would have been worth it even if I’d had to fly out here to take them.

The first real, true California adventure that I had was actually not until the end of 2023 – I’d recently taken a job with a company that gives employees the week between Christmas and New Year’s off, and because of the way those holidays were situated that year, it actually gave me more than a week straight off work. So I planned a full trip for Dean and I, where we left home the day after Christmas to spend three nights in Sonoma, followed by a full day driving down the PCH from northern California to Solvang, with a night spent there before returning home (at a leisurely pace) the next day.

I cannot truly describe how much I loved, loved, LOVED, Sonoma. The town square, the nearby wineries…but most especially, the Jack London Historic State Park. When I was a kid, I LOVED White Fang and Call of the Wild, and while I’ve since read other books of his (Valley of the Moon, Marftin Eden – neither of which I really liked, TBQH)…and have also read his wife Charmian’s Our Hawaii and The Book of Jack London (volumes 1 & 2), which are definitely skewed versions of their travels and his life…visiting his ranch, which is now a historic state park, was worth every minute we spent there.

We got to explore the grounds and the original house they lived in, featuring his famous desks (one for ranch work, one for correspondence, one for writing) and his bedroom with a recreation of his note papers that he would wake up and write on throughout the night, plus the ruins of Wolf House, which burned down just before it was completed, and the house Charmian built after Jack died that showcases all sorts of items from their life together…I would go back there in a heartbeat and can’t stress enough how meaningful it was to visit these beautiful grounds, even outside of their historic significance to one of the greatest classic American writers (even if you disagree with some of his seriously stilted late 1800s/early 1900s views).

Not to mention the fact that on our first full day in Sonoma, we met a lovely couple on our wine tour and even ended up meeting them for dinner the following evening!

ageeksaga california adventures sonoma pch solvang

While our drive down the Pacific Coast Highway happened on a pretty gloomy, windy, and sometimes rainy (though thankfully just sprinkling) day, that road trip was absolutely something to BEHOLD. We made a couple photo stops as well as some brief pit stops in Monterey Bay, Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, and at Elephant Seal Beach and Hearst Castle. Sadly our drive and previous stops made us too late to actually visit Hearst Castle proper, but we did wander around the little museum and store at the entrance before making the last leg of the drive down to Solvang (a.k.a. “The Danish Capital of America”).

And y’all…I *loved* Solvang. Maybe it’s the Disney person in me, and I KNOW that Solvang is super touristy and kind of cheesy, but just the evening and following morning that Dean and I spent there actually led me to plan a subsequent trip the following year, also between Christmas and New Year’s. That time around it was just my younger stepson Cam and I who were able to go, but we got to explore the town a bit more, ate a lot of good food, and went on the most amazing bicycle tour of the surrounding wine country.

…Also, if anyone ever wants to purchase and send me Sylah Salt Patties from Ingeborg’s Danish Chocolates in Solvang, I will love you forever and always 😉

As for that ‘one small exception’ that I mentioned, this is not in any way a dig on Palm Springs, but the ONLY reason we actually spent a weekend there was because I got lucky and won a raffle at work for three nights at a Wyndham resort…unfortunately I had to use those nights within a month or two of my winning, and at that point I didn’t really have the money or PTO to travel to the other location options (all of which were VERY far away). That said, while I wouldn’t have made a special weekend (or longer) trip to Palm Springs, we had a great time relaxing at a gorgeous Wyndham near Palm Springs, and of course also explored downtown Palm Springs, which is a really neat little place even if it’s not (in my opinion!) worthy of a whole trip to California just to see this one city/area.

Oh, and just like with other trips I took around California, we got to stop at a couple neat little roadside attraction type places that I almost certainly never would have seen otherwise – specifically the Cabazon Dinosaurs and Hadley Fruit.

ageeksaga california adventures palm springs

I don’t really want to say that I “saved the best for last” because it’s basically impossible to decide which was better, mine and Dean’s Sonoma/PCH/Solvang trip or the one I’m about to describe…so I guess it’s more like “last but ABSOLUTELY, certainly not least”: for Cam’s high school graduation, we took him on a trip to Yosemite, and while my type A self regrets not doing more specific planning for said trip, seeing that national park and the surrounding areas over the course of about 3 days was another experience of a lifetime that I’m fairly certain I never would have had if we hadn’t been able to just pack up the car and drive about 5.5-6 hours to get there.

We drove up to the Yosemite area on a Friday, stopped in Oakhurst and had a really good dinner (and beers!) at South Gate Brewing Company, then made our way to the Yosemite View Lodge, which is located just minutes outside of the park’s West entrance. The hotel itself is fine – the rooms are very, shall we say, aged, and the restaurant is okay at best – and the location can be both a huge plus and also kind of, well, meh. Basically on the day we were actually able to get a reservation to get into Yosemite, the ‘main’ (aka South) entrance had an hours-long wait, while we waited just 15 or so minutes to get in via the West entrance. And the hotel’s surroundings are beautiful, as it’s situated right on the Merced River. Plus it was nice having a kitchenette and a HUGE spa tub in our room. BUT…it IS very much in the middle of nowhere – the “closest” town is probably Mariposa and that’s about 40-45 minutes away.

ageeksaga california adventures yosemite 1

Setting aside my [somewhat minor] qualms with where we stayed and the fact that we were only able to get a park entry reservation for one full day of our trip (even with making reservations to get into the park within a day or so after they opened), we at least got to see a lot of the surrounding areas. We took a ride on the Sugar Pine Railroad, spent part of an afternoon exploring the aforementioned Mariposa (which is a historic gold rush town), and were able to enjoy dinner at the Ahwahnee Dining Room in the park.

On our [sadly, only] full day in Yosemite National Park, we thankfully got into the park pretty quickly, though it took us awhile to find a place to park – eventually we had to pull into a small dirt lot that was situated pretty far from any of the shuttle stops, which meant that we unfortunately spent quite a lot of our day just walking to get to and from stops and then later back to the car. At first this did at least allow us to see the beautiful El Capitan Meadow, and we did have a nice easy, quiet hike in the forest from one of the shuttle stops to Bridalveil Falls, but by the time we’d made it from Bridalveil (which was of course gorgeous!) to the nearest stop, waited for a shuttle that had space, and made it up to Curry Village, we needed real food and some time to rest our feet.

ageeksaga california adventures yosemite 2

Honestly, after that brief rest I could have kept going for a lot longer, but as the only one of us who puts in regular workouts I was a lone wolf in that, haha. We decided to check out one more place – the nearby-ish Vernal Falls – and that after that we’d head back to the car. The hike up to Vernal was by far the toughest thing we did all day, so even though it wasn’t a big deal for me, it was understandable that I couldn’t convince Dean & kiddo to keep going after that 😉

(And to be fair, it being a holiday weekend and the shuttle waits being long/those being crowded, combined with the fact that we had a good 15-20 minute walk back to the car from the closest shuttle stop, in the end it was probably for the best even for yours truly that we wrapped up our day when we did.)

While that just about wraps it up for my “actual” California adventures, I did want to at least briefly touch on a few additional trips we took that were at the very least far easier to take from California, and in some cases only happened at all because of how much easier it was to get where we were going…

OUT OF CALIFORNIA…

As these weren’t technically California adventures, I’m not going to go into any great detail, but some of the fun things I ended up doing thanks to living in California include:

Vegas trips! With Vegas being only about a 3.5 hour drive from us (depending on traffic as usual, ha) I got to go there twice for Very Important Events. Those being, we were legally married in Las Vegas, which had actually been something I’d ALWAYS wanted to do – and we celebrated my 40th birthday there as well, which felt kind of necessary considering I had celebrated my 30th there ten years prior 🙂

Honeymooning in Hawaii! Not that this would have been an impossible trip, but being so much closer obviously meant less time wasted traveling and cheaper flights, and even if it hadn’t been one heck of an awesome honeymoon, our trip to Maui was overall practically perfect in every way <3

ageeksaga california adventures out of california

Experiencing the first ever Red Dead-centric event, Tombstone Redemption! I found out about this so late in the game that I didn’t have a ton of PTO left or the vacation funds that flights and a rental car would have added to the cost had I lived farther away…but when we got lucky and were able to snag someone’s canceled hotel room, Tombstone being only about an 8 hour drive meant we could make a weekend out of it, and we made friends and memories that were more than worth 16-ish total hours in the car over the course of three-ish days 😉

What can only be called a ‘trip of a lifetime’…visiting Japan! Both Dean and I had always wanted to go to Japan, and I made it probably my biggest goal of my time in California to take advantage of direct flights from LAX to Tokyo before moving back east…and we finally made that dream a reality in late 2024, spending about 8 days exploring Tokyo and the surrounding areas – adventures that I’ve detailed in two solo travelogue podcast episodes, “Best Laid Japlans” and “TOTALLY Tokyo (& Beyond)” 😀

So yes, while I’m glad to be back on the east coast, closer to my family and most of my friends, I am beyond grateful for so many of the experiences I had in (and because of living in) California, especially those I likely never would have had otherwise. Hopefully I’ll make it back there some day – just for a visit, of course – but in the meantime I can at least treasure these adventures!

My California Adventures: Part One

Posted on October 22, 2025 by Tara Lynne

While I had been to California many times prior to living there – both on vacation and for work – my California adventures REALLY began in early 2021, when I half-moved to California to be with my partner Dean and his kids.

Dean and I had spent just over a year suffering through a long-distance relationship – and I *do* mean suffering, because about three months into our relationship the pandemic hit, which of course messed up so many of our travel/meetup plans. And at the end of the day, him moving to the east coast with a kid who had just entered high school simply didn’t make sense.

I won’t say that the approximately four and a half years that I spent in California, working east coast hours and being so far from my family and most of my friends, were easy. I think that if I had headed out there to live in, say, San Diego, or northern California, my enjoyment of life there would have been far more positive. Not that I hated it; I didn’t, and I certainly like the politics of California far more than those of South Carolina, which is where I have (temporarily, at least) returned to. But the place where I lived out in California is a suburban wasteland, an hour or more from anything interesting (in my opinion anyway). Not to mention the $600+ power bills in the summer, gas being nearly twice as much as it is most other places I’ve lived, and a nearly psychotic group of HOA people in our neighborhood that yes, have made for some hilarious conversations and memories, but who sure as hell will NOT be missed.

All of that said, I have to admit that I was extremely lucky that in my time there I was able to see and experience so much of California that I probably never would have seen or experienced otherwise. And so this blog is going to be about the amazing things that I did simply because I could.

LOCALLY[-ISH]
As much as I didn’t love Rancho Cucamonga as a place to live and certainly never could or would see myself spending much longer living there than I already did, there are some quintessential California experiences that I never knew about until I lived there. First, a thing called “The Pumpkin Patch”, which is a place you can go to in the fall/leading up to Halloween to buy overpriced pumpkins, ride crappy carnival rides or play in gigantic bounces houses (which I never bothered with, but the kids – even being teenagers/in their early 20s – enjoyed), and eat carnival-type food.

Then there’s this whole idea of “going to the snow”. This remains an absolutely HILARIOUS idea to me, mostly because the phrase “going to the snow” is even a thing. And even though we only did it once during my time there, the idea that we could leave RC and drive about an hour or an hour and a half (depending on traffic because LOL everything out there ALWAYS depends on traffic) and go from let’s say 50-60 degree weather to FEET of snow is crazy to me. After all, I grew up in New England where snow was just a constant thing from November/December through March or sometimes even April, and most of my adulthood has been spent in upstate South Carolina, where sure we GET a bit of snow now and then, but if you want to see REAL snow you have to drive hours north in the dead of winter.

Another thing we sadly only did once was taking the pups to the dog beach in Huntington. Another situation where it’s about an hour and a half away *depending on traffic*, it was still fun to see my pups experience the ocean for the first time, since both of them were born and raised (Ellie for 3.5 years, Sokka for 1.5 years) in upstate SC, which is several hours from an actual ocean beach. (P.S. Ellie didn’t care for it, but Sokka LOVED it, and I am honestly sad that they only got to go once.)

Weirdly enough, one of the little half-day trips we took was thanks to a friend of mine from SC, who had told me all about this gorgeous southern California hotel that she and her husband had a little getaway at. Turns out that the hotel she was talking about was the Mission Inn in Riverside, only about a 35-45 minute drive from where I ended up! We spent a long afternoon exploring the inn and grounds and having a delicious lunch, and I only wish I’d made time to go back before returning to the east coast…and I definitely regret that we didn’t wear Red Dead costumes and get photos around the hotel, though we DID do so on another day trip that we took out to Calico Ghost Town (a place that we visited twice in the years I spent in SoCal, though I do regret that both times we visited were basically during summer and it was errrr kind of miserably hot, haha).

We also went to Pasadena a few times (usually to meet up with friends), and got to go to a House of the Dragon exhibit at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, PLUS a Paleyfest presentation in Hollywood, celebrating Amy Sherman Palladino of Gilmore Girls/Marvelous Mrs Maisel fame. This involved us seeing said presentation in the theater where they host the Oscars and having a bit of time to walk around the extremely touristy section of Hollywood Boulevard around that theater. Which to be fair I had visited before, but the ability to do this in an afternoon/evening – and most especially to see the Amy Sherman Palladino presentation – was so great.

Then there were the ‘little things’ – evenings out at a local winery, and, more often, evenings out at local breweries; some local hiking; checking out both Renaissance Faires in the area; experiencing a Golden Girls pop-up followed by a walk down Rodeo Drive; meeting my first WDWCP roommate for dinner at Downtown Disney; and even visiting Golf n’ Stuff of Karate Kid fame! Needless to say, as I’ve been writing this I keep thinking of more fun little Inland Empire and LA things that we did throughout the years and realizing that as much as I might have missed checking off a number of things on my “to do while living in California” list, I also fit a whoooole bunch of really cool experiences in 🙂

Anyway, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my absolute FAVORITE thing about living in RC – or really more so, specifically living in our neighborhood. Because we did Halloween BIG, there. Our neighbors on one side did so as well, and in 2024 our neighbors on the other side picked up on the vibe too, which was so much fun. For my first Halloween here in 2021 we were Cobra Kai themed; in 2022, we went with “Taco Hell”; 2023 was Mario; and 2024 was Ghostbusters. After the first couple of years we became known as a house that would provide not just candy for the kiddos but entertainment and other fun options for older kids and adults as well, and that’s the one thing I will miss the most about living there.

ageeksaga california adventures halloween

NOT-QUITE-DAY-TRIPS
While I suppose some of the things I’ve already mentioned might not technically be truly local experiences, they were things we did in a single day (often less)…and I also got to go on a couple of overnight ‘trips’ to nearby places that almost certainly never would have happened if I wasn’t living so close.

First, I highly doubt I ever would have traveled all the way out to California to run in the Disneyland half marathon. (And to be honest, having run that race, I’m glad I didn’t have to pay for flights and more than one night in a hotel to do so, heh.) Instead we drove in the day before, got a hotel right across the street from Disneyland, picked up my bib and wandered the tiny runners’ convention, ate at Downtown Disney, went to bed early, then I ran the marathon the next morning and we were back home by dinnertime.

A much more fun overnight trip was when we got to meet up with my good friends Rachel and Josh when they came to California for vacation 🙂 We picked them up from LAX and headed over to Venice, where we checked out the touristy beach area, had a touristy lunch, wandered the canals, had more drinks and food, stayed in a lovely little boutique hotel (you can actually see the building it’s in in the video game Dead Island 2, ha), and then walked all the way to the Santa Monica pier the next day – which was a weird culmination of my route 66 trip that began in January 2021 and only finished at the actual tail end of route 66 in October 2023.

ageeksaga california adventures overnight

And then – pretty much JUST before I left California – a good friend of mine, Jonathan, who I hadn’t seen in something like 10? 11? years was in San Diego for a work conference…thanks to proximity and Hyatt points we were able to head down there for an overnight to meet up with him. We had a blast eating at one of my favorite SD restaurants, Bencotto in Little Italy, and visiting the Ballast Point brewery in Little Italy, AND a really cool tiki bar called False Idol, plus brunch the next morning at Werewolf in the Gaslamp (though I would have preferred Cafe 21 in the Gaslamp, sadly that location was closed – at least temporarily – when we visited ::cries::). Dean and I even stopped at Tom’s Farms, a sort of famous roadside attraction, on the way back from San Diego…so basically fun things that I never had the time and/or energy to fit in when I was in San Diego for…

SDCC
I’ll be honest, if I hadn’t been living California during the summers of 2022-2024, I don’t think I would have bothered going to San Diego Comic-Con. The expense long ago started outweighing the benefits when it came to flights alone, not to mention the amount of PTO I had to expend to fly out even for a long weekend. Being only about a 2-2.5 hour drive away (depending on traffic! lol), combined with friends who lived in San Diego who I could stay with, or a hotel room I was gifted one year by some much beloved and truly generous friends, or even paying for a spot in a hotel room last year, was the only way it was truly…well, maybe ‘viable’ isn’t the right word, but certainly the only reason I was willing to spend the money to be there.

And wow did I have some GREAT times at SDCC the past few years. More than worth the drive, any money I spent on food and drinks, etc. Of course I spoke on panels each year, but I also got to meet up with old friends who I hadn’t seen in a long time, got TONS of free books (well, in 2022 anyway), was able to attend a meetup with fellow Red Rising fans, had some absolutely amazing times with my friends Paul and Orion and Fahad, among others…and then last year (2024) even had the privilege of hanging out with my friend Tore (who wrote Red Dead’s History) and the one and only Roger Clark, the actor who brought Arthur Morgan to life and did the audiobook for Red Dead’s History. And listen…if that was my last trip ever to San Diego Comic-Con, it was a GREAT way to wrap up my 9 years of attending that event!

Of course, there is SO much more to California (and to LIVING in California) than the Inland Empire, LA, and San Diego…so stay tuned for part two of my California Adventures!

My Life With Writer’s Exhaustion

Posted on March 18, 2018 by Tara Lynne

In case you’ve missed the very few bits and pieces of my personal life that I’ve shared on…well, I guess just on Twitter…the past four and a half months have been one long struggle for me. Shoot, I’m struggling to write this at all, not because it’s anything difficult to say, but because it’s simply not very interesting.

The thing is, while some things about my life are going very well and therefore keeping me busy (work, Saga Event Planning, The Geekiary), creatively I am in one heck of a rut. I don’t even know if I could call it writer’s block; perhaps it’s more like writer’s exhaustion? In the course of about two and a half months toward the end of 2016, I finished writing my second novel, edited the first draft, and then edited nearly 50,000 words of another book I was working on. That, combined with my writing spurts for The Geekiary (which do unfortunately tend to drain me), have led me to this point where I can barely bring myself to put out an article, let alone pull quality fiction writing out of my completely exhausted brain.

And then there’s my physical health. I’m not getting any younger, but it wasn’t until this past fall that I really started feeling my age. I have a herniated disc in my cervical spine, and the debilitating pain that caused left me – quite literally – flat on my back for most of November and December. I’m still trying to figure out how to live with a herniated disc, because although I haven’t been in that extreme can’t-eat-can’t-sleep-can-barely-function zone for about three months, I also can’t just go back to being physically active in the ways I’m used to. Which is, I’ll be honest, really damn depressing.

So while I’d like to just blame writer’s block, my biggest worry is that I’m just tapped out. That maybe I’m not meant to write fiction but to merely give my opinions of or organize events around others’ creations. I don’t believe that is the case, not really, and I’m hoping that if I shake things up a bit this wall in my silly brain will tumble down. It’s certainly worked before, so hey, keep your fingers crossed for me?

In the meantime, I suppose I’ll keep opening up my latest novel and/or a blank blog post and staring at my computer screen in hopes that this dang wall will start crumbling on its own.