Saturday, May 30

So, today I drove my so far favorite stretch of Hwy 1 from San Simeon to Monterey... it was BEAUTIFUL! Then I met up with Brian for the first time in more than 5 years... that was great! We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium together and hung out at a park and got some ice cream. Caught up on each others lives... it was great. :) Then I drove the "17-Mile-Drive" which wasn't as cool as I expected with what I had heard about it... the stretch of Hwy 1 south of here is cooler. Then I got some Chinese food and hung out around the hotel room and relaxed some. I also worked on getting pictures up, links below:

May 20 - 29
May 29 - now

Off to Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks tomorrow!

Friday, May 29 in California...

Sorry, still haven't put the last 2 days of pictures up... maybe tomorrow night.

Today I started out the day checking out the Santa Barbara coast... then up to the Santa Barbara Mission. Apparently they recently had a festival where people drew chalk drawings in front of the mission... the pictures were AMAZING! I'll have pics up later... Then I drove up the coast on Hwy 1 most of the way. Also went off the coast to a little town that was founded by the Dutch and is the only town designed differently than any other town in the area. There are towns along the way here, including the one I'm staying in tonight, that seem to me that they haven't changed much since the 1970's... it seems that I could have done nearly the exact same trip 30 years ago... kind of interesting. I saw sea lions on a dock by Morro Rock today. Tonight I went to Hearst Castle... amazing. They have 5 different tours you can take, I took #5, the night tour. I need to come back here someday and do some of the other tours.

Tomorrow, up to Monterey Bay... Last Hwy 1 stretch I'll be doing on my way up there tomorrow morning. Then to spend part of the day with Brian Johnson. Haven't seen that guy in more than 5 years... maybe 7. It should be fun! We're going to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and maybe some other stuff depending how long we spend at the Aquarium.

Thursday...

So, today I went to 2 lectures, and then went to get my rental car. Ended up with a black PT Cruiser. I hate PT Cruisers, I think they're the ugliest cars in existance. Wait... second ugliest, the ugliest is the one that looks like a box on wheels. Anyway... Drove up to Santa Barbara via the Pacific Coast Highway... took at least 2 hours longer than the interstate probably would have... or maybe not since the interstate would have brought me through downtown LA in the afternoon... Anyway, this was beautiful and worth it. I drove by a big sign to Camp Pendleton and though of Jake... I drove through seaside towns on the ocean side of LA and couldn't help but wonder if there was a celebrity in the car next to me with tinted windows... Then I drove by a sign to Peperdine University and thought of Christina. So many friends that have lived out here at different times... I got to Santa Barbara and checked into Guest House Inn & Suites, which by the way, has a VERY SLOW wireless internet connection. Then I went to La Super Rica which is a very good, makes the travel books, hole in the wall rickety looking Mexican food stand. It was very good. :)

So, pictures from the San Diego Zoo and Balboa park are working on uploading now, and I'm not waiting for them to load to label them and such, I'm going to bed... you will have to wait for the pictures from the drive today. I'll work on those later. For now I'm going to bed!

Conference DONE!

Ok, a couple more hours of lectures this morning... then the conference is over. I'll be getting my rental car around noon and heading north to Santa Barbara today, a couple stops along the way...

Yesterday I did the conference in the morning and then went to the San Diego Zoo and a little bit of walking around Balboa Park after the zoo closed yesterday. I will work on getting those pictures up soon I hope.

Today in Review...

I slept in, then wandered around the Gaslamp District a bit. Ate lunch at the Tin Fish, it was pretty good. Then I went for 4 1/2 hours of lectures. I went to on on "Hot Topics in Bioethics"... apparently I don't watch or read enough news. I need to figure out who Bernard Madoff is and what he did. Haven't looked that up yet. Then I went to the Maritime Museum of San Diego. That was pretty interesting. Old ships are so beautiful. One of the ships they have was used to film "Master & Commander"... apparently I never saw that movie. Then I was going to walk back along the bay... but a guy who does the cycle-cab things (I don't remember what they're called)... anyway... he offered me a ride all the way back to my hotel for $6, so I took him up on it. His name was Sasha and he is 22 and her from Serbia for the summer to make money to buy a nice guitar. This is the first time he has ever had a job because he has been in college and gotten money from his family. He is in the US for his first time and has only been here 3 weeks. Interestingly, he learned English as a child from watching the Cartoon Network. Anyway... it was a nice ride and a nice chat... and I gave him more than $6... since that was significantly lower than I think the standard rate was.

Got the pictures up to date... all captioned and all the pictures through tonight are up. Either click on the slideshow from the previous post or the link on the left. (For those of you reading this in Facebook... you have to go to "view original post" to get the links).

California pictures so far...

So, here's what I've got up so far... it's a representative group of the pictures I've taken... not many are captioned yet. I'll be slowly working on that over the next few days while I add new pictures of the upcoming days. You can look at the pictures by clicking on the slideshow above or the link on the left.

I also put up a few new pics of Evalynn, my niece, on the Spring 2009 pictures if you want to check those out too.

First few days in Cali...

So far...

Day 1 (Wednesday)... I flew into LAX. I had reserved a car from ACE Rent A Car - never use them. First of all, in LA, they make you take the Holiday Inn shuttle to the Holiday Inn instead of picking you up at the airport themselves. Then they pick you up at the Holiday Inn. From the time I picked up my luggage, to the time I was at the rental car office was a whole hour. They are 2 miles from the airport. Then it took ANOTHER hour to actually be in a car. Never use ACE Rent A Car out of LA. Horrible. Anyway, I drove to Joshua Tree National Park once I finally got out of LA. Picked a campsite... then ended up running back to into town to buy gas and water. There is no running water in Joshua Tree National Park. I also found out that the roads were just paved 2 years ago. I suppose not bad when you consider that the park just opened as a national park in 1994. I tried to get my campstove to work... but it turns out that general Coleman Camp Fuel doesn't work. I could get a huge flame but not a regular blue flame for cooking. So, peanut butter sandwich. Decided I'd find the RIGHT fuel the next day. The interesting thing about this campsite is that it is about an inch of sand on top of rock, so I couldn't stake in the tent. And it was windy. I put rocks on the straps you put the stakes through, but it still blew away. Chased down the tent. Then decided to put the rocks IN the tent. That worked.

Day 2 (Thursday)... Woke up early and did a lot of exploring the park. I drove up Keys View Road. Then up to Oasis Visitor Center and the Oasis of Mara. Drove down Pinto Basin Road to the Cholla Cactus Garden and Octillo Patch. Then to Arch Rock and Skull Rock. Then I drove back into Joshua Tree. I went to a cool outdoors store called Nomad Ventures and they had the White Gasoline I needed for my camp stove. Yay! If you're ever in the area, check them out, very helpful. They suggested I go to the Crossroads Cafe for lunch. Well worth it - amazing burger, AND they make their own amazing salsa. Then I went back into the park and checked out the Hidden Valley Trails and Barker Dam. Then I rested in my air conditioned car for about 45 minutes before deciding to hike up they Ryan Mountain Trail. That hike was awesome. I go to the top and there was another couple, about my age, up there... I asked them to take my picture. Turns out the guy is a professional photographer. Random. I took their picture too with his Nikon D700 with all kinds of fancy features and extras... ohhh... When I got back to my campsite I made my first meal on my cook-stove. Worked perfectly. :) Then another nights sleep... The funniest thing about the day was people complaining about the horrible humidity. It was 16% humidity. Is it ever less than 16% humidity in Minnesota?

Day 3 (Friday)... Up and made breakfast - eggs & sausages on my cook stove. Then off too drive to San Diego. I took the senic route which took awhile. The beginning of the drive I was dissapointed by the "senic route" but then as I got up into the mountians it was awesome. Not many pictures because there were very few if any places to pull off. There are pictures from one pull off. When I got to San Diego the rental car company shuttle brought me to the hotel. This hotel is less than 6 months old and beautiful. I took my first shower since Tuesday. :) Then I checked into the conference. Then I decided to go out to Coronado Island for the evening. I had dinner at a nice Mexican Resturant that reminded me of actually being in Mexico. I had hoped for a beautiful sunset... but the clouds rolled in... which seems to be normal here. Oh well, maybe another night. Now I'm back at the hotel... conference starts tomorrow at 1pm, not sure what I'll do in the morning.

Maybe I'll get pictures up by tomorrow. Working on getting them all on the computer first, then have to wort through which ones will go online. Fun fun.

Pictures

So, I FINALLY got all my pictures up from my visit to Charlotte to see Rose & Korey.

Click on the slideshow or use the link on the left to see the album.



The next 2 weeks I'll be doing stuff around home, specifically yard work to make my house look more like a home from the outside, and working... and on May 20th I'm off to California for 5 days of a conference and 15 days of vacation exploring the west coast for my very first time! There will be a lot of pictures on that trip, no doubt.