Pacific Chronicles, Part 3

Apologies across the board of directors of this blog for not updating for the last few days. We woke up too early to blog Tuesday morning, and got back too late to want to blog. Vegas made us pay for internet, which we refused. SO here we are on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, in the middle of a forest in the middle of a desert in the middle of Arizona. We realize that not updating and going through about a day of no cell phone service made many of our fans think we may have died, but we are fine and well and ready to report back some great stories to the east coast, and some friends we have made along the way.

Yesterday morning we woke up in Vegas. Now, its usually normal for people to go party in Vegas all night, find their friend on the roof of a casino, and adopt a baby waking up to remember none of it. Well we were too tired to do anything but take long showers and go to sleep. So there was no tiger in our bathroom in the morning, only the remnants of the beard I had grown since St. Louis.

Venetian

Grand Canal of The Venetian

Scary enormous bunny inside the Palazzo.

We spent the morning eating a hearty breakfast at Hash-house a gogo in the Imperial Palace. Then we walked around the various casinos on the strip, saw the inside of Paris, Bally's (where we were staying), the Venetian, the Palazzo, the Bellagio, (which we saw the water show from), and then met up with Kelly's high school friend Conor Hastings, and he showed us around the new strip casino, the Cosmopolitan. So shiny.

Shiny 3 floor spiraling bar inside the Cosmo. Bling Blang.

We watched the water show outside the Bellagio, and played some slots. I guided Regina and Eric through their first times on a slot machine, and we spent a few dollars playing the slots. Eric won $2, and I won $10. We bought some rum slushies with our winnings, and took off for the Hoover Dam, which we toured as the sun set over the desert.

Hoover Dam

Pat Tillman Bridge over the Dam.

We rolled some pennies down this thing.

Our drive to the Grand Canyon tonight was the darkest stretch of Earth I have ever been on. We stopped on a lonely stretch of Arizona highway 64, and got out to look up at a milky star-filled sky. There were so many stars and galactic bands that the classic constellations were hard to find since there was more light than dark, and the sheer number of stars caused the earth to actually be illuminated. Being an avid stargazer, this was one of the most amazing sights of my life.

Thank you for letting us leave Nevada.

Tomorrow, now that we are finally up to date, we will hike around the southern rim of the Grand Canyon, and make our way into Texas, stopping in El Paso tomorrow night.

Pacific Chronicles, Part 2

Tuesday we woke up early and drove the famous California pacific route 1, attempting to drive it all the way from Half Moon Bay, near San Jose, and make it to Santa Monica, near Los Angeles. We had our hugs and goodbyes with Dorothy and were off.

A tide pool in Monterrey

Carmel-by-the-sea with Pebble Beach in the background

The drive was amazing. Each place we went got better and better, as we drove from the beaches of Monterrey around winding cliffs, and pristine beaches, and precious towns with fairytale cottages.

Oh, hey. I live in California, and my front yard is a natural grotto.

Meanwhile in New Jersey, 2 more feet of snow fall.

The amazement turned into angry jealousy by the time we hit Carmel, where we ate lunch on the beach, and then drove through town. The phrase "Screw you, we want your life" emanated in our thoughts around every corner. All of us wondered why we live on the east coast, as another foot of snow pounded down on our hometowns.

I descended a dusty gravel ridge, beneath the Bixby Canyon Bridge...

From Carmel, the drive got even more picturesque, with the cliffs rising to beautiful vista points. One of my favorites was at the Bixby Canyon Bridge, which didn't even look real to me.

Until I eventually arrived, at the place where your soul had died...

All the way from San Francisco...

Around sunset we arrived on a beach with seals nursing their pups. Just some of the amazing things we saw along this road. Around this time we realized that we were never going to make it to Santa Monica in time, and certainly not Las Vegas in the same night.

As I chased the end of your road... cause I've still got miles to go.

So about 50 miles short of San Luis Obispo we turned east for the first time this trip and headed inland toward the valley. Around 8am, shortly after dark we ended up in dense dense fog. With about 5 feet of visibility, we crept slowly (without cell phone service) toward Bakersfield using the GPS as radar to notify us of any turns in the road. Defintely some of the most intense driving we had ever done, and Eric handled it very well. Once the fog cleared it was a straight shot to Vegas, and around 2am we were blasting Chamillionaire down the strip.

I wanna show all my haters love...

This songs for you.

Quite a day.

Pacific Chronicles, Part 1

Foster City, CA

Monday morning we took a walk around Dorothy's lagoon. The joys of living in California is your neighborhoods are planned down to the terrain they are built on, so you can have cool things like lagoons in your back yard.

Detained

"Broadway of the prison"

Then we set out to put Ian (our car) in for an oil change. Got on the BART to head to the ferry to Azkaban, I mean Alcatraz. Now, typically when you go to a tourist attraction, you get a picture forced on you in the hopes that you will buy it at the end of your time at the attraction. Nobody likes doing this, so we tried to make it more fun. There was this older Indian woman kind of wandering around near the souvenir picture station looking somewhat lost. We could tell she wanted her picture taken in front of the fake background of Alcatraz, so we invited her into our picture. It definitely made her day, our day, and confused the photographer a lot. To top it off, the following picture is an illegal full-on copyright-infringed picture of the print that we weren't going to buy for $22, courtesy of badasses Kelly "does what she wants" McCreary and Eric "who cares lets just do it" Sorkin

"Yeah, shes our grandma or something"

We cruised across San Francisco bay, and landed upon Alcatraz Island. It was a really really cool tour, where we were able to hear about the various escape attempts and the native American self-determination movement, as well as walk about the entire prison and go into cells and shower rooms and such.

Alcatraz, surrounded by dementors.

We came back to the mainland to go eat in the city one last time, where we got In N Out Burgers one more time (Eric got a double-double), and Ghirardelli sundaes one last time. We made it back to our car with about 10 minutes until the place closed, which would have left us car-less with too much traveling to do. Luck was on our side.

That night we took off to Santa Cruz for an amazing dinner with Kelly's aunt and uncle. Her uncle distilled his own wine and had a huge wine cellar, which was one of the coolest things I have ever seen. He shared a bottle of his white wine with us, and we had a delicious home cooked Italian meal of baked chicken and risotto. We drank, ate, and talked until about 11pm.

We want to thank both Dorothy Gorman for opening her home (and shower faucet) to us for a week, and Dave and Barb Donofrio for cooking and entertaining us for a wonderful evening.

Quick Report

Today we spent the day on the east side of the bay. In the morning we took a quick tour of UC Berkeley. It was a nice campus, but kind of an seedy town at parts, with a college flair thrown in. It didn't have anything on the beauty of Delaware's campus, which was surprising because when I think of Berkeley, I think of ultimate college everything. So it goes.

After that we drove down to Walnut Creek to watch the Jets game with Eric's extended family. They were once again awesome hosts and treated us to another meal. It was nice to meet everybody out here, and it was a great time overall, even though the Jets suffered a heavy loss.

Tomorrow is our last day in San Francisco. We will head up to Alcatraz in the morning, and then to Santa Cruz for dinner. We didn't take any pictures today, but we have changed our original plan a bit and from here back east it will go like this:

Tuesday we head down Route 1 to Santa Monica, and then on to Las Vegas for the night, where we will be staying at Bally's. Wednesday we drive to the Grand Canyon through the Hoover Dam. Thursday we drive to El Paso for the night. Friday we get out of El Paso and drive to San Antonio. Saturday we are visiting Eric's cousin in San Antonio. Sunday we drive to New Orleans, and are staying in the French Quarter. Monday we spend the day in New Orleans. Tuesday we drive to Nashville. Wednesday we tour Nashville and stay with my (Tom's) Aunt Lael. Thursday we drive home to Delaware, with enough time to give us a break before the semester begins on that following Monday.

From Pandora to Paradise

When you see it...

We woke up at about 7 this morning and left for Muir Woods at around 8am.  Tom drove us across the Golden Gate Bridge and through the winding mountains around Sausalito until we got to the ancient looking Muir Woods.

Realllly big trees.

The 150-200ft tall Redwoods seemed to soar endlessly into the sky with trunks being 10ft+ in diameter.  It felt exactly like pandora, and Tom and Regina were waiting for a brontosaurus to come give us a ride around while I waited patiently for Jake Sully to come save us! We hiked up and down the side of a mountain in the redwood forest for almost 2 hours and were pretty tired when we got back to the car.

Waiting for our Brontosaurus.

I (Eric) drove back down through the mountains in 75 degree clear weather until we got to gorgeous Sausalito! It was a beautiful and extremely wealthy town on the edge of the bay. There were so many cyclists riding around who didn't care for cars one bit, so it was tough weaving around them! We got some tasty sandwiches for lunch, walked around a bit, and then got back in the car to head towards the Marin Headlands. 

The drive up the mountain to get to the lookout points was fantastic.  We stopped along the way at each lookout point and took some incredible photos.  Everyone says I must have driven off the road and killed us back in Salt Lake City because we were in heaven! It was very interesting being at the each lookout point too because old World War II fortifications still existed from when the US thought the Japanese might attack the San Francisco port.  We spent about 2 hours going to each lookout point until the sun started setting.

View from Baker Beach

We had to keep chasing the sun!

We ran back to the car and headed back across the Golden Gate bridge on our way to Baker Beach to catch the sunset and dip our feet in the Pacific Ocean! We made it successfully and had a great (but VERY cold) time dipping our feet in, but the couldn't see the sun set exactly because part of the land still covered its decent.  At that point, we decided to make a mad dash over the mountain still covering the sunset and made it the cliffhouse JUST in time to watch the sunset.  It was like something out of a movie.  Regina, Tom, and I scurried onto the beach again and ran around in the Titanic-cold water before calling it a night.

Cliff House

Finally caught the Pacific sunset.

We got back to Dorothy's, went out to her favorite Chinese food place in town, got some frozen yogurt and ice cream after, and headed back to call it a night.  Tomorrow we're headed to Berkeley to check out the campus and then on to McCovey's to meet up with my family to watch the Jets destroy the Steelers!!!

Slightly off the beaten path

So this morning we got up late after going out last night, and by the time we got town to Pier 33 to go to Alcatraz, the last tour had already left and we literally had "missed the boat". So with a nonchalant go-with-the-flow attitude we decided to book it for Monday morning. So you'll have to wait until then to see stuff about it. Instead we decided to try to walk to the Golden Gate Bridge, and attempt to walk across it. We didn't realize the true scale of San Francisco, and ended up not making it even TO the bridge by sunset. We did, however, have a lovely walk along the waterfront.

Pier 33

We walked through Pier 39 again and encountered much more lively sea lions and decided to sit and watch them for about a half an hour. This afternoon they were on the closest floating dock, and were packed in all trying to nap, but had a lot of drama trying to fall asleep. One sea lion would try to move, and the rest of them would wake up, freak out, and bark at the perpetrator to shut up or get out. There were others farther back who wanted their own dock, and would sumo wrestle any other sea lion who dared to jump up on HIS dock.

So much drama.

We continued to walk past Fisherman's Wharf, and on to the Marina district where we saw some amazing homes and boats, and lots of people out sailing on this balmy 65 degree January evening. In the distance we saw this dome building and decided to go explore. 2 blocks later we landed into this hidden gem of a park, the Palace of Fine Arts.

Just some normal single-family homes of the Marina District

All of us were amazed at this site, and couldn't believe it wasn't on any of the main tourist maps. It was one of the prettiest sites in all of San Francisco.

Palace of Fine Arts.

From here we walked down upper Lombard street to catch a bus back to the BART line, and called it a day. A day with a lot of hiking, and a bit of a spontaneous adventure.

Is this for real?

Tomorrow we are off to Marin county, north of San Francisco, for some great sites outside of the city.

The day we did everything all at once.

We had a very busy day yesterday, almost to preemptively make up for how late we started our day today.

We headed out early on Thursday Regina drove us as the sole person awake at 6am out to Yosemite National Park. The whole day was spent driving around the park and pulling off at overlooks and scenic spots to hike and take pictures of the numerous waterfalls, cliffs, and vistas the park had to offer.

Bridalveil Falls

The spot at Bridalveil Falls was especially good because the entire path to the viewing site of the waterfall was iced over from the mist falling down on the ground for the last 3 months. Eric and Regina decided to slide down the last iced over ramp like 2 penguins. I did not attempt this.

That afternoon we went to the town of Manteca to have our first In N Out Burger. It was the first time I can say that fast food was actually of restaurant quality. I wish they had them on the east coast, and I urge any of you readers who have not tried it, to definitely make an effort to stop there if you ever come out west.

By this point, you may think we were tired and ready for bed. You would be incorrect. After returning to Foster City, we changed and went into the city for a late night of dinner and drinks. Eric and Regina split off from Kelly and I and they had a little date over in Union Square. Kelly and I figured out the bus system and made our way to Japantown for sushi. It may be too obvious a statement, but the sushi I had in San Francisco was the best sushi I have ever had. On the way back to meet Eric and Regina I got on the correct bus to head back to meet up, but in the wrong direction, so I ended up on the Pacific Ocean. Our bus driver was nice enough to let us stay on till we reached the right side of his route, and we struck up a conversation about (of course....) how he was a Steelers fan. Luckily he held no hard feelings against the Ravens, and we taunted him about being too San Francisco-thin-blooded to handle ever attending a Steelers game in-season.

Today we head out to Alcatraz. If we ever get around to leaving.