Last weekend a very good friend celebrated a milestone birthday, which she wanted to commemorate by having a “crafternoon” at her family’s cabin. Melissa gathered years’ worth of craft materials – pounds of buttons, miles of fabric, bags of saved mint tins, boxes of old maps, mod podge, glue guns, scissors, scrapping paper, paint, etc., etc., etc. – and several years’ worth of friends, and we crafted our hearts out.
The cabin is in Groveland, California, which is just outside Yosemite, so it was about four and a half hours each way to get there, but it wasn’t as bad as I worried it would be.
Part of the reason my drive was okay was I had fairly detailed directions. I’m a reluctant driver when it comes to venturing outside areas I’m familiar with; if there’s a word that conveys the opposite of “adventurous,” that’s me.
The first part of the drive – really, to Stockton via Highway 12 – I’ve been on at least twice, so I could picture that. The turn towards the foothills and across the valley was completely new, and then navigating roads and highways that were somewhat vague in their official-ness made me a wee bit anxious, but I got there just fine.
It’s stuff like being both CA-108 AND CA-120 that makes me flutter. If a highway has South in the name and I’m driving any portion of it in another direction I get really stressed. I may have chanted a few turns to make sure I got there okay (“Exit 472, exit 472, exit 472”) but it worked.
Having the new car helped, too. Our new-to-us Honda CR-V is an adorable gray color and her name is Gracie and I love her. There’s a GPS system, which I was not yet confident to use to plot directions on (I’m still a printed-out-paper gal), but I could see the labeled highways and reassure myself that I was heading in the right direction.
Gracie also has a CD player and a trial period of Sirius satellite radio, so I was entertained in between chanting exit numbers and such-and-such highway turning into so-and-so highway. The ride up was mostly ‘80s music, and once I got to super familiar roads on the way home I put on a book on CD I had borrowed from the library.
I also was diverted by place names and pondering how they came into being. Copperopolis, for example. I assume there was copper mining involved, but who thought to add “–opolis,” and who agreed that that sounded good?
Farmington – I assume it was because it’s farmland and the “ton” ending was a variation of “town,” but it could have been some early settler’s name, too.
Rio Vista is straightforward – Spanish for River View – and I’m pretty sure I remember that Stockton was a stockyard for shipping cattle way back when.
Some local roads seemed to be to honor area bigwigs or historically important personages: O’Byrnes Ferry Road (which inexplicably turns into Obyrnes Ferry Road, with the apostrophe left somewhere in the rolling hills) was probably for some long-ago person named O’Byrne who had a ferry.
Some stretches of highway and bridges had names, which I guessed were to honor law enforcement officers, but that got me to thinking and wondering if there is a database of all the names and information on who they were.
Anyway, aside from the drive, the weekend was lovely. I crafted and laughed and visited for over 12 hours on Saturday, and I have a sizeable amount of goodies to show for it. There are six coasters with portions of maps on them, and another three with pretty scrapping paper on them.
There are seven bookmarks, an ornament made out of buttons, and a darling key chain for my new Gracie. I created three decorated tins – one for needles in my sewing box, and two for gifting cards to special people.
Finally, I have two rocks decorated with paint and words, to be used as paperweights or décor. (We also crafted gorgeous and delicious mai tais, but I have nothing to show for those works of art.)
To birthdays, and crafting, and surviving road trips – Cheers!
Juliana LeRoy wears many hats, including wife, mother, paraeducator and writer. She can be spotted around Windsor gathering material, or reached at [email protected].
