The drive up and Apricot Tree...

We left last weekend at the ungodly hour of 2:30 am. You heard that right, "a.m.". Hey, we wanted to beat traffic and while we were dead tired later that evening, it was worth it not having to deal with lots of vehicles on the freeway...

Sunrise somewhere north of L.A.

Our first Pee stop was here, at Gorman, an unicorporated city located north of LA, right before it turns into Central California (near Fresno). Turns out we stopped here two years ago during our 2009 road trip.
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Ironically, I didn't ever wear these aviator shades more than twice during our vacation. They are not prescription, but rather a cheapo pair I got at Wal-Mart for $12. I ended up having allergies to all of the grass and pollen where we stayed in Berkeley so wearing contacts (and non-prescription shades) was out. But man, do they look so damn cool!

Being the anal person that I am, I had already pre-programmed our stops on our Garmin (our GPS, ha ha, I first typed "GPA"; work on the brain!). Prior to our trip, I read an article in the SD Union-Tribune travel section about this restaurants that had a mammoth collection of vintage metal lunchboxes.

Despite the mostly shitty reviews that I read online, we HAD to go there....

Forget the food, we wanted to try therestaurant's namesake...

True to the reviews about the decor, the place had dozens (possibly hundreds) of vintage metal lunchboxes perched on the beams and their matching thermoses in a pony wall display. They were arranged according to theme, such as Disney, Action and Adventure, Musicians, Muppets, Westerns, shows about Space, cartoons, and fantasy to name a few.

To be honest, I cared more about the "atmosphere" than the apricot pie we were about to have...

We ordered two slices. Bert's was warm...

while mine was cold. The pie crust was dry and tasteless. I tried Bert's to see if the pie being warm would be better. It was not. There were fresh apricots in there but I got a few fibrous pieces (ugh). So, based on the pie, I wouldn't eat here again but I would stop here by just to look at the lunchbox displays in more detail!

I used to have Holly Hobbie Colorforms (they were a gift from someone). For some wierd reason, my mom bought Holly Hobbie print fabric and made them into curtains for my bedroom. The faceless pioneer girl served as my window decor from 1976 - 1979.

Ooh, Star Wars AND Star Trek!

Plus Rambo and Julia! Kind of wierd to have those two lunchboxes side by side, ya think?

Although we wanted to look at these rectangular bits of childhood nostalgia reeking of spoiled milk, SPAM or liverwurst sandwiches, and oddly cut apple slices (Thanks mom!), we had to get a move on. That was 30-40 minutes we could have been on the road, but, for the sake of my curiosity and also for uh, blog research, we were compelled to go here like the Millenium Falcon being sucked in by the Death Star's tractor beam.

So, even though we didn't eat the "rubbery eggs" or the "cold" hash browns, we did try the pie. Bert and TC liked their slice while I hated mine. If anything, go for the pop culture aspect of this place.

Article, Stop for Nostalgia and Beef Along I-5" (Sunday, June 5;  SD Union-Tribune, Travel section)

Here's the mostly dismal reviews from several sources:
Fresno City Search, Urban Spoon, and Yelp (2 stars, ouch!)