Aaronw

Depending on your route you may come through Sacramento, if you do Riverside Hobbies is a nice hobby shop. I try to make in in there when I have to go to Sacramento. Hobbies Unlimited in San Lorenzo and the already mentioned Ace Hardware in Berkeley are worthwhile but probably too far south. Oakland & Berkeley have lots of good places to eat, maybe you could sway your wife into driving an extra hour south for lunch? :)

Tamiya reboxes Italeri kits for the Japanese market. I have a Tamiya boxed OH-58A, but its all Italeri plastic inside. You might try some of the Japanese based online sellers, like Lucky Model and Hobby Link Japan. Lucky Model had the "Tamiya" OH-58A when none of the US based shops had the Italeri kit. Italeri did several versions of the Bell 47 in 1/72. Unfortunately they are getting hard to find even on ebay, I know because I've been after the USCG HTL-4 version myself for the past year.