travel

We got up early this morning, saying goodbye to my sister-in-law and brother-in law, and were on the road by 7:30am. Originally we had planned to take US-101 all the way up the coast to San Franciso, but at the last minute, after consulting our maps/apps and estimated travel times we decided to take the less-scenic, but faster, I-5 route through the Central Valley. Our only Roadside America stop on this leg of the trip was at Bravo Farms where we picked up some snacks (like fresh farmers cheese!). The valley was more scenic than we expected, despite the frequent water shortage signs.

We stayed to the east of Oakland on I-680 heading to the Jelly Belly Factory tour in Fairfield and made it before the last tour at 4:00pm. No photos were allowed on the tour but it was amazing to see rows and rows of stacked trays of Jelly Belly beans in various states of preparation. And at the end … unlimited flavor samples (three at a time). Our timing was off again and we ended up in bay area rush hour traffic going back south. We made a quick stop to check out Berkeley and then drove across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. While driving to our hotel near Fisherman’s Wharf, we made plans to go to dinner with an old college friend. After a quick stop at the hotel to unload the car and freshen up, we drove out to Noe Valley (can there be a valley in SF with all of these hills?) to meet our friend and grab dinner at Holy Kitchen, which was fantastic.

My little sister was flying in from Seattle to join us for the rest of the road trip later that evening, so after dinner we walked around the neighborhood (it was chilly compared to Vegas and LA!) socializing and enjoying the view of Jupiter and Venus in the evening sky. Finally, after saying goodbye to our friend, we drove to SFO, picked up my sister, and headed back downtown to the hotel. It had been another long day for us but my sister hadn’t eaten dinner yet so we walked to the In-N-Out Burger around the corner from the hotel to get her a double-double. We were in bed and asleep by 11:30pm.

Tomorrow we spend the day in San Francisco.

We woke up really early to get downstairs, check our bags, and get through security in time for the 5:30am boarding of our flight from Tampa to Las Vegas. Thanks to our TSA PreCheck status though, we were sitting at our gate with almost 30 minutes to spare.

The flight to Vegas was uneventful and by 7:30am (Nevada time) we picking up our rental car for the week (a black Mazda CX5) and driving out to the Strip. After a quick family photo in front of the “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign we headed southeast to the Hoover Dam. It was the second time for me, since I had just come out two months ago, but it was no less amazing. It was, however, slightly hotter! Summer in the desert is no joke. Back at the Strip, we went to Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill in Ceasar’s Palace for lunch and then walked down Las Vegas Boulevard taking in the sights. My daughter and I rode the Big Apple Express roller coast at New York New York which was neat but in the heat of the day the hot air pretty much slammed into you, not refreshing at all.

We left Vegas in the late afternoon, heading west on I-15 towards Los Angeles. Traffic was fine except for the backup at the agricultural inspection station. We tried Del Taco for dinner since we had heard good things about it but were sorely disappointed and ended up grabbing Starbucks instead. There was also one scary moment, on CR-18, where we thought we were going to run out of fuel and barely made it to a gas station. The rest of the night’s drive was fine, although we were getting tired from the long day considering we started at 1:30am PDT. We safely reached my wife’s sister’s place in Simi Valley and were dead asleep by 10:30pm.

9 more days to go!