We left Las Vegas around 7 am and headed for San Francisco. We decided to shoot over to the PCH and go up that way, while avoiding Los Angeles and it's traffic craziness. It was actually kinda cool because we elected not to use the GPS for the first few hours, and planned out our route on an actual paper map. It made me feel like a true explorer. :) We drove through the Mohave Desert and saw a LOT of random things. I can't remember what they were at the moment, but I know there were some strange things going on there. We stopped in Bakersfield, California for lunch...at In n Out of course! I had In n Out when we were in California in 2008, but I didn't care for it at the time. Good news, I like it now. It was SO delish, even if I did drop my root beer everywhere. (Me drop something? Never.) We were lucky to get a table there, it was SO crowded!
We missed the California sign, so this had to do..
So yum!
After we left Bakersfield, we made a plan for getting over to the PCH. It took several hours to get to it, but the drive was neat. We drove through a bunch of orange groves, and then through miles of vineyards, and then over glorious green mountains. It was really beautiful. We got on the PCH at Cambria, California. We were SO excited to be on that road! We stopped at a park to see the ocean.
Gorgeous. Just gorgeous.
We continued our drive up the PCH for about 2 hours. It was beautiful and amazing, but very intense. It was twisty, and curvy, and cliff-y. We pulled off several times to let cars behind us pass, because we were on the slow side for sure. Good news, we were jamming to the Beach Boys the whole time, getting in touch with our Cali side. :)
Beautiful and slightly terrifying.
We also drove through Big Sur. We saw lots of restaurants and hotels, but we are still not sure where the Big Sur was. Or what it is really..
We made it to Monterey Bay around dinner time and stopped for dinner. We ate at a pretty fancy seafood place. I don't like seafood, but I do like coconut shrimp, so that's what I had. It was awesome, just like all of the food I ate on this trip. We had a view of the bay during dinner, and it was just lovely.
Coconut shrimp with a mango dipping sauce, and sweet potato fries. Mmm-mm.
We got a rose with our dinner. So nice. :)
After dinner, we still had 2 hours of driving, so we got to it.
Sunset over the PCH.
We got off the PCH and headed in-land. We finally arrived in San Francisco around 9:30. We were SO happy to be there and SO happy that we made it to our destination. We unloaded Kate's car (with the help of her nice new roommate) in about 10 minutes, which was awesome. We set up some beds in Kate's new room and went straight to bed, happy to be in Kate's new home!
Day 8
We woke up on the last day of our trip, happy and sad. Happy that we made it, happy to be in San Francisco and doing some touristy things, but sad our trip and time together was coming to an end. That morning we went to downtown SF and grabbed some Starbucks. The baristas at Starbucks were hilarious and fun, saying things like "Kate, it's Vanilla Latte time!" when her drink was ready. This made us laugh and really got our day off to a great start. We headed for Muir Woods after Starbucks. On the way, we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge! This was a bucket list item for me, and I'm really glad we got to stop. Unfortunately, we were at the Golden Gate at the same time as about 1000 Girl Scouts. No joke, everywhere we looked was a sea of Girl Scouts. Random.
The weather at the Golden Gate was cold and windy!
We had to take a shuttle to get up to Muir Woods, because, as usual, the place was PACKED. There was also a running (and maybe biking?) race going on on the road to the park. Odd.
Bus selfies, my favorite kind. :)
I don't know what I expected or what I was thinking, but I wore flip flops on this day. So we did a mile hike through the redwood trees, in flip flops. But it was great! I would have loved to hike further, but will have to save it for next time. Obviously, I don't always make the best shoe choices.
The trees were really awesome. SO massive, and it was cool to be with nature. After our hike, we got back on the shuttle and headed back to the car. We went to Alamo Square next, the famous park from Full House! It overlooks the Painted Ladies, and was super neat.
Had to take some Full House pictures!
The streets in San Fran are just as crazy as I imagined. Straight uphill. We even parallel parked on a rather large hill to go to the park. I wasn't sure we were gonna make it without hitting something, but Kate did a great job. :) Plus, we were desperate to find parking. Parking is super minimal in SF.
After our photoshoot and exploring (we saw a dog park with no fence!) in Alamo Square, we walked a few blocks to a little place called Fly Bar for lunch. We both had sandwiches and salad and it was quite yummy. After lunch we went back to the car and drove to the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, which was really cool. I would like to back sometime when it is less crowded and we can walk around. We also drove by the Full House house, which is now blue apparently. Still fun to see!
Full House house!
We drove down to Fisherman's Wharf next, which was really neat, but again, there were SO many people. We didn't have a chance of finding parking, so we just drove through. After Fisherman's Wharf, we drove by Kate's new office downtown. Then we went back to Kate's and chilled for a bit. Kate needed groceries, so we did that, and grabbed some dinner while at the grocery store. When we got back, Kate's roommate was having a pre-party for a costume party, which was funny. There were probably 10-15 people in this apartment, but everyone was very nice. We spent the last night of our trip eating Ben and Jerry's and watching Crossroads, of course. If you've never seen it, Crossroads is a ridiculous Britney Spears movie about 3 girls and a guy who go on a road trip to LA. We had to watch it, it was only appropriate. :) We went to bed pretty early, because my flight the next day was at 6 am. The trip was over. :(
HIGHLIGHTS
Here were the highlights of the trip for me:
-We saw 48(!!!!) of the 50 state license plates! Ah! We had an app and were keeping track the whole time. The only ones we missed were Rhode Island and Delaware.
Awesome!
-Seeing so many friends and family members. It was absolutely amazing that we didn't have to stay in 1 hotel (okay sorta 1 motel but that doesn't count!), because we have such great friends and family that let us stay the entire way. Plus, the people we saw are not people we get to see often, so it was just wonderful to spend time with everyone!
-The Grand Canyon
-Las Vegas
The whole trip was, in a word, amazing. We didn't have any trouble, we got along the whole time, and saw some really incredible sights. I am so grateful Kate invited me, and so grateful I was able to go. It really was a trip of a lifetime, and one that I will never forget!!
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