Mark and Linzi Canadian Adventure: REVISED Charles M Schulz Museum

We took the RV out for a spin this weekend as wanted to go to another WordPress talk in Petaluma, about 40 mins away. Gave us the chance to refill the Propane tank as nearly out.

The talk was very good, the chap had loads of WordPress experience and went thru loads of plug-ins how they work, etc. At the end I was helping a woman with Photoshop and we got chatting, the English accent ALWAYS gets a certain conversation going. I happened to as her about Santa Rosa as we wanted to go take a look. She thought Petaluma was nicer but we explained that we wanted to go to the Peanuts Museum. "Oh" she says, "I may have some free entry to that". So she ploughs thru her wallet and pull a couple of free entry tickets out, brilliant.

So 25 mins later we pull up at the Charles M Schulz Museum. Very nice, very modern, not many cars in the car park meaning an uncluttered museum for us to peruse. The photos of the guide (below) show what was there. I went straight to his recreated studio where a 14 min video played on an old TV, I looked at all his stuff and his books, framed articles on him, all very cool and inspiring. The rest of the place was hundreds of cartoon strips assembled for different reasons. One area was about equal sporting rights for women, one was on the theme Snoopy Come Home. It was great. We got there about 2pm and before I knew it we were being thrown out 'cos it was 6pm and the staff wanted to go home. I hadn't finished reading tho!

Anyway, across the street was The Warm Puppy Cafe on the end of the Ice Ring. Charles had breakfast there every day, went home to doodle/get ideas, came back for lunch, went home again and inked in a cartoon. Well I like the sound of that. We had something to eat while little kids played ice hockey on the ice just a few feet away. Bites from my sandwich were interspersed with "kill him, kill him!" from the 13 year olds playing. Once we had eaten we went next door to the Charles M Schulz Gallery and Gift Shop. Not much to say about this as only had 20mins to look round and brain and eyes all frelled from 4hrs of continuous reading already. But I did get a Snoopy Tin Lunch Box I now use as a ArtBin ;-)

Great afternoon out, wanna go back as Linzi saw stuff I didn't, plus you can sit all day in the theatre watching the Peanuts movies, all for just $10 a head.

I didn't take pics inside as mainly hundreds of cartoons or lifeline exhibit and the like, didn't really show anything. Linzi took some video and pics so hope she will add to this entry later. Click on a pic to get it bigger.