A Vegan Vacation or Two Psychos Take a Hike

Psycho boy and I took a vacation last month. We currently take a break two times a year. Since Veganville usually gets slammed from September through mid January, a vacation was now or never, or then or never, since vacation is over.
We have a lot of changes coming down the pike, but we couldn't even think about changing anything up until we took some down time.

Psycho Boy and I are Woody Allen type New Yorkers, who have never camped or followed a trail or a mountain anywhere too rural. I take that back. Psycho Boy did quite well as a Boy Scout until the scoutmaster trusted him with some matches. Needless to say I was never a Girl Scout, but when I was in 6th grade I went away with scout friends to a dude ranch for a weekend. I never saw a horse because I spent the entire weekend in the rec room gambling.

Several friends suggested we go to the Russian River which is just an hour and half away from Oakland, Ca. They told us that the trails and Redwoods were beautiful. We decided to brave the great outdoors so I packed my allergy meds, Psycho Boy took 2 weeks of psych meds and some mosquito repellent. I threw out his matches. Life is to be embraced and besides we could always turn back unless of course Bigfoot ate us first. (cancel cancel)

We yelped Vegan restaurants and decided to stop and eat lunch at the Sunflower Center in Petaluma on the way. The Sunflower Center's menu is mostly raw, all vegan and the ambiance is cozy and comforting.

Crazy Boy (aka Psycho boy aka Larry) had the Mediterranean wrap. It was filled with eggplant, a spicy tomato sauce, and Larry said too few kalamata olives. The wrap itself was more like a Spinach Injera. I am surprised Larry liked it all given his immense dislike for the Ethiopian sponge bread.

PB also got some weird ass gluten free spinach muffin. I think it was called a "spuffin". Tasted like a door stopper to me. Not that I go around licking the floor or anything. It was paired with a very thin miso gravy, something you might eat at a Thanksgiving from hell.
That is a hemp chocolate shake behind the spuffin. It had the same consistency as the gravy, but Crazyboy liked it. I think he just liked the idea of hemp.

I have a love affair with kale and cashew cheezes and avocado. I think we broke up after this lunch though. Yes, it was beautifully plated. There was nothing inherently bad about the dish, just basically flavorless. I was a little disappointed but just so happy to be going somewhere, that I ate quite a bit.

That's me running for dear life because I heard a bird chirp.

That's Crazy Boy in front of the Twisty Tree, explaining to passersby that the Twisty Tree is what the synapses of his brain look like without meds. He then asked some German tourists for matches. Haben Sie einen matches.

Here I am pretending not to know the little matchboy.

We loved our cottage efficiency at Creekside Lodge and had a wonderful time there. The health food store in town was exorbitant but we were lucky enough to stumble upon a Farmer's Market one day where we picked some fruit and veggies to accompany one of the best breads we ever had. Raymond's Bakery is not exclusively a vegan bakery but they do have a garlic rosemary vegan round bread that wowed us. After a day at the River we picked up some hummus in a nearby grocery store and ate it with the fruits and veggies and bread.

Here we are so happy to have braved the unknown and to have outrun Sasquatch. All in all it was a great vacation where no one gambled and no one lit anything on fire.