For a long overdue adventure, Sarah and I drove up to Jack London State Historic Park
on Saturday. I’d read about the place on Atlas Obscura
and it sounded worth the drive. So we Yelped a burger place in Santa Rosa
(pretty tasty, little pricey) and hopped in the car…

…right into some classic California oh-shit-rain-means-drive-5mph freeway traffic. It took a while to get there and, to be honest, it’s been so long that I was a little nervous about driving in the rain myself. But we made it there eventually!

Right after paying our eight bucks for parking we saw the sign saying the lot closed at 5:00 pm. It was 3:30, so we had to hustle. Fortunately, there was a kindly (if awkward) old docent with a golf cart who carted us around and protected us from the rain.

I won’t bore you with all the details, but ol’ Jack was into progressive farming. He tried growing spineless cactus as a type of livestock feed. It didn’t work out too well: the cacti needed more water than they were worth and some of them grew their spines back.

This whole field used to be full of ’em. Now there’s just a few. With some old-timey ranch fencing to keep them at bay.