Day Trip

Guess where we were.

Yep, Solvang. If you've never been, Solvang is a little town that was settled by Danish immigrants about 100 years ago. It's southeast of Pismo Beach, about an hour's drive away.

One of the days--I think it was Tuesday--Irene, Imelda, and I decided to head down to Solvang for a little tourism and to search out a couple quilt shops. The quilt shop near Solvang was closed on Tuesdays, but we found the Solvang Needlework shop, right on the main road into Solvang.

Although you can't see it very well in the above photo, it's the shop with the blue door, I think. We thought they might have some hand embroidery patterns, but we didn't really find anything of that nature. We DID find things we needed, like embroidery floss, tiny scissors, etc. My friend Imelda spotted a DMC floss display case--three drawers in a wooden box--that the owner was selling for a good price as she was phasing out that type of floss display. And what did I find?

I've never really done cross stitch as an adult, but I thought these small Christmas ornaments were cute and perhaps a good place to start. I thought I could take them to the office to work on when I stay in at lunch and don't have anything else to do. I may well make a hash of them, but the investment wasn't so great that it would matter very much.

After Solvang, we stopped at JoAnn's and a couple other quilt shops on our way to Nipomo. What's in Nipomo? Not only did Nipomo have a cute quilt shop with several things we needed to have, but there was an excellent "gift shop" next door that carried just about every craft supply a person could imagine. But the real reason we went to Nipomo was because Imelda's husband sent us there. We went because of Jocko's.

First of all, Nipomo is about ten miles or so south of Pismo Beach, so it's not far. I think, from now on, whenever I visit Pismo Beach, I'm going to have to visit Jocko's, and I'm definitely going to have to take Hubby there next time we go.

Jocko's is located in a really ugly building (which is just across the street from the quilt and gift shops). Inside, it's just about as ugly. The photo above was taken in the bar--yes, it's the kind of place that displays mounted dead animals. But darn! The meat--specifically the steaks and hamburgers--are about the best around.

Imelda thought she might want a filet mignon and we talked about splitting it. For an additional $7, Jocko's will provide a second diner all of the side dishes, so although the filet mignon was $32, for less than $40, we'd both have a steak dinner with salsa, a relish dish, salad, beans, a baked potato (or fries), and ice cream for dessert. The only drawback I could see to splitting a filet mignon was that I was visualizing the typical sized filet--you know what I mean: something that's about the size of two decks of cards stacked on top of one another. Nope! That's not what Jocko's portions are like. Jocko's filet mignon is huge. Half of a filet is still huge. So that's what we did. Irene thought she didn't want as much food, so she ordered a steak sandwich. What she got was a split roll or bun--hard to tell, really, because the steak sitting on top covered the whole thing. The steak was a man-sized hunk of beef and its only resemblance to a sandwich was the fact it was served on top of bread.

We arrived at Jocko's at 4:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, and we had to wait an hour for a table. And based on the familiarity between the customers and the servers, customers just keep coming back. I will too now. And if you're ever in the area, eat at Jocko's. You'll like it, unless you're a vegetarian.