Growing up in California, I

Growing up in California, I have distinct memories of taking family trips every year up and down the state, and passing quite a number of attractions along the way. There's a small handful of places I always wanted to go (like Hearst Castle, Huntington Library, the Redwoods of the northern coast), and as I've grown up, I've gone out of my way to visit these places I never had the chance to as a kid. On Saturday, I was driving through San Jose with Kay, and we were leisurely looking for mall, but then we saw a sign. Winchester Mystery House next exit. I said something about always begging my parents to stop and they never would. Kay echoed those thoughts and said she always wanted to see it, regardless of how cheesy she knew it would be.

So we stopped, and took the tour. I was happy to knock another roadside attraction off my list because to be honest, the place was an enormous letdown. In billboards and advertisements, the place is positioned as some sort of mystical, slightly haunted house, but I think the only mystery to the house is why anyone would want to perserve a crazy widow's bad experiments with architecture. The house is a monstrosity of bad choices and bad taste.