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Travels with CALI...


CALIgula

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After trying that little sampler, we wanted to do some more walking and take in the sights...i saw this and dragged my girlfriend in there...

 

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the place had a few train enthusiasts running the model trains.

 

this is a video of the UP line...you can see the box cars and autoracks...if they really wanted to make it realistic, they'd have some pieces and whole cars painted on them!..

 

warning: shitty quality at first, but gets better halfway through

 

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Southern Pacific line with hopper cars and oil tanker going to the right at the same time amtrack going to the left...

 

 

more..

 

Thanks for sharing the vids of the running layout

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Thanks for sharing the vids of the running layout

 

No, thank you for viewing and commenting in this thread.

 

No Caligula you have to continue with the thread.. lots of good stuff in there. I just haven't been anywhere that warrants big time photos like a festival otherwise I'd be posting stuff like this!

 

Thanks man.

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Well, so the thread continues because there seems to be a few people enjoying it (thanks for the support ya'll)....

 

On Saturday (May 16th), my girlfriend and I made the trip to one of the festivals we had never been to, and one that I was kinda looking forward to....we went to the Oakdale Chocolate Festival in Oakdale, CA....

 

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Since this was about 80 miles away and we knew it was going to take us about an hour and a half to drive there, we actually woke up pretty early, and im glad we did. We were using an app called "waze" to keep us up on cops hiding and waiting to give out speeding tickets...waze actually fucked us up and we missed our exit....we switched to google maps two exits later and were rerouted onto some crazy country road in the middle of nowhere, but we eventually made it to Oakdale....

 

welcome to oakdale water tower...

 

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welcome to oakdale sign...

 

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sorry about the shitty quality pictures...i was trying to drive and use my camera at the same time....lol...the drive actually ended up taking us almost 2 hours.

 

more..

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So tickets were only $6 per person, but we had actually bought presale tickets online and we only paid $4 per person....$8 total..yay! lol

 

we pulled up into town and realized that the event was being held next to a neighborhood that was ghetto as fuck...but we found a spot in the shade next to a sketchy ass park and said "fuck it" and walked up to the entrance...

 

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no gang attire or colors huh?....but no metal detectors...sure feels safe man.

 

first thing I see when I get into the event is a little carnival area for the kids....not my thing!..im here for the mothafuckin chocolate man!...

 

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margaritas & beer in an air-conditioned lounge on a passenger car..looks legit man...maybe later...

 

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more...

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even though we got there by noon, it was apparently still pretty early because there weren't too many people there yet...we walked through this vendor alley where people were trying to sell shit....

 

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one thing that EVERY single festival we have been to so far is that they all have had at least one toe ring booth.....wtf?!...a couple of the festivals have even had 3 or 4 toe ring booths....my girlfriend even said something along the lines of: if i see another fucking toe ring booth, im going to stab someone.

 

we walked to the next little alley, which was the food alley and there were more people over there buying food...

 

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at this point im like, "yo, where the fuck is all the chocolate at?"

 

so thats why I was happy to finally see this sign...

 

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more..

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we finally made it to the area they called "chocolate alley" lol....

where we walked around a little bit....

 

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we saw frozen hot chocolate..some designer chocolate stands...even the stand to the right on the picture above had chocolate filled churros.

 

we walked around chocolate alley until we had seen everything...thats it?!!??!....there were maybe a total of 7 chocolate vendors total! (and 7 is being generous)....i thought this was supposed to be the fucking chocolate festival!!!

 

funny thing is Hunt Ketchup has a plant out in Oakdale. Hunt is owned by ConAgra foods company. ConAgra also makes the snack-pack pudding cups...and they had donated TONS of pudding to the event...lol...so they were passing out free chocolate puddings with whipped cream...haha....i might not be a huge pudding fan, but im a huge fan of free....

 

 

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my girlfriend didn't want any pudding (even though it was free), so I told her to just go and grab me one....the pudding guy (not seeing me) was trying to flirt with my girlfriend by giving her pudding...lol....it had an eerie Bill Cosby feel to it....apparently, he gave her two pudding cups to take home and opened one for her and put on extra whipped cream....lol....and apparently he said "ay girl, take a couple of these puddings home witchya" like he was trying to "hook her up" and at this point seeing what was going down, i walked up just in time to hear him say, "you know, this isn't what i usually do....im just fillin in fo' someone here."

 

is this guy really trying to put the moves on my girl?....walk up and he notices that im with her, opens up a pudding puts some whipped cream on it and just says "here you go sir"....we get our puddings and leave the pudding stand...haha.

 

more..

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So, that was it.....we pretty much had seen most of it after the first half an hour of being there....so we were walking and eating chocolate pudding, and decided to walk down the row of cars they had there for their car chow...i never really got into cars like that...i actually like lowriders and slow moving cars...some muscle cars are cool, but i dont geek out like most people do over them...

 

i have actually never even seen any of the fast and the furious movies...back in the day before the fast and the furious movies even came out and all my high school friends were going to the illegal street races, i was into graffiti and not really into cars like that....but my girlfriend loves muscle cars...she actually is always talking about buying a camero and fixing it up...

 

so the next set of pics is going to be old school cars....i wont do any talking about them and let the pictures speak for themselves....

 

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more...

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so after eating chocolate pudding and looking at the cars, we decided to do some more walking around..

 

went to the petting zoo area....this horse had a mohawk...

 

 

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there were kids riding horses too...

 

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they even had a mechanical bull....

 

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more..

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So, you guys are probably wondering what the small little city of Oakdale, CA has to do with chocolate, and why they even have a chocolate festival here in the first place, so im going to drop some history...Oakdale was the location of a Hershey Chocolate plant that closed a few years back. The Hershey company closed the plant and moved it to a new location...Mexico.

 

from Oakldals'e wikipedia page:

 

The Oakdale economy centers on agriculture, food manufacturing, and tourism.

Oakdale was the home to a satellite plant of Hershey Chocolate, but the plant closed in January 2008. It opened on May 22, 1965 and employed about 575 locals. The plant was purchased by Sconza Candy Company, which began production in October 2008.

 

so, even though they closed the plant over 7 years ago, they actually still had the Hershey's Oakdale Visitor Center and Shop building still there...but it was completely vacant on the inside...

 

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kind of eerie keeping it around...

 

but this was the 23rd chocolate festival, so I think the fact that they had been having the chocolate festival for over a decade already, and the fact that it brings in a lot of revenue for the small city, is a reason why they kept the festival around even after 7 years with no chocolate factory.

 

 

we decided to walk back to chocolate alley and have a look around and try some things out....

 

this booth was promoting the health benefits of chocolate and was selling energy drink and chocolate powders and stuff of that sort...

 

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and this booth had designer chocolates, but also chocolate covered bacon...

 

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several types of chocolate bacon....some with pistachios, some with pecans, some with sprinkles and some with red crushed pepper on it....

 

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more..

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so we decided to try the chocolate covered bacon on a stick...

 

and bought one...with red pepper...

 

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honestly, I was not a fan...i like that the bacon was still soft, and i liked the taste of the dark chocolate, but the two didnt really go together good...then you had the red pepper flakes which is kind of a beef jerkey thing and not really a chocolate covered bacon thing and that really threw the taste off...a took a couple small bites and was over it and let my girl finish the rest...

 

 

so, we decided to get that nasty flavor out by eating some cannolis....so we stopped at this booth....

 

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wanting to stick with the chocolate theme, i decided to get the chocolate chip cannoli that had its shell dipped in chocolate....my girlfriend (who doesn't really care about the theme of these festivals) went with the mini meyer lemon cannoli instead...

 

this is where the magic happens....apparently this lady doesnt know how to put powdered sugar onto a cannoli because she over did it and when my girlfriend ate her cannoli, she looked like scarface in the scene where he was doing cocaine from a huge mound...

 

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but we finally got our cannolis...

 

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they weren't really all that great either and we paid $9 for the two ($6 for the chocolate one and $3 for the mini one)..washed them down with water and were kinda disappointed at the chocolate festival at this point.

 

more..

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we were really looking for some creative innovations with the use of chocolate, but nothing really stuck out....so we did some more walking around...they did have this fudge booth that did have some fudge made with jack daniels whisky, but we chose not to partake because we actually had ate some fudge (/no homo) earlier in the week ...

 

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at this point, it was lunch time and neither my girlfriend or me had ate breakfast and we werent full from pudding, bacon, and cannoli, so we decided to head over to the food stands and pick something...

 

I was personally in the mood for mexican or chinese food, but my girlfriend wanted to do deep fried seafood (especially because she loves seafood)...and the food mustve been good because i saw a long line for the seafood booth....so i said fuck it, lets get some to share...so we got a mixed plate with catfish, shrimp, and fries...

 

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it was actually really good....we threw some lemon juice onto it and put some ketchup on the side and for $13 we both got full from it.

 

after we ate it, we walked around for a bit and decided to share a snow cone...

 

blueberry and red cherry...

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more..

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we did some more walking and decided to stop and watch this band...

 

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play that funky music white boooooy.......

 

 

(sorry about the shitty quality again...i need to fuck with my camera settings)

 

funny part is that after they were done playing this song, they looked at the crowd and said they were taking requests....

 

some lady shouted to the lead singer,"Play superfreak by Rick James!"

and the lead singer said "Superfreak, by Rick James.....uuuuuuuh...NO!"

 

lol....it might not be funny here but the way he said it was really funny in person....

 

did some more walking and people watching after watching the band...

 

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more...

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we saw this vendor who was selling chocolate covered carmel apples....they looked pretty good...

 

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they had a bunch of different chocolate covered caramel apples...

 

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they were selling them at 1 for $12 or 3 for $30...but honestly we were both full and couldn't even do one...we thought about buying one to go, but because it would probably melt by the time we got back home, we decided not to get one.

 

This was by far the best vendor at the chocolate festival, and I wanted to try at least one more chocolate item before we left so I decided to see what else they sold....the had everything from chocolate covered cashews to chocolate covered peanut clusters to chocolate covered espresso beans.

 

I decided to get a dark chocolate covered rice krispie treat (on a stick)...

 

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more...

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even though I was full, I ate the chocolate covered rice krispie treat anyways...because why not...

 

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at this point, we had pretty much seen everything and eaten some good (but unhealthy) food and the event was starting to get really crowded as you can see from this picture I took right before we left...

 

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...so we decided to head back to Sacramento.

 

 

All in all, another fun day with a lot of walking (took 10,400 steps at this event), and it gave us a chance to get out of our city and visit another city in central cali.

 

even though we were disappointed by the lack of creative chocolate themed foods, it was still fun to visit Oakdale's chocolate festival and cross it off our list of festivals to do.

 

that's it for now....hope you enjoyed it!

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