Road Trip Days 14-17

After getting very confused about the time change, we left Las Vegas, heading towards Los Angeles.  It wasn't an exciting drive, although I did see a Roadrunner!  It was cute, Dave was sleeping and missed it. We got a little lost trying to find my friends house, but he helped us get there and we hung out with a bunch of people in Santa Clarita, eating Chipotle (an old college favorite of mine) and watching Extract which was decent.

The next day we went to LAl; we ate at Cielito Lindo, the "best taquitos in the world!" according to my mom.  They were pretty good.  We went to a nice graphic novel store and then headed north.  We are getting a little tired and LA was too much.  We'll be back though.  We drove north and spent the night in Pismo Beach, where we got chowder in a sourdough bowl from the Splash Cafe, which was delicious.

We left Pismo beach and drove to Hearst Castle, which was really cool.  Then we drove up the windy coastal California 1, towards San Francisco.  We ate at the Monterey Bay Brewing Company, which was ok but not all that memorable.  We got to San Francisco late and just got a hotel.

San Francisco was great today.  We went to Fisherman's Wharf early so there weren't very many other people there yet and the air was still nice and cool.  We followed that up with a trip to Paxton Gate, a cool little store with wares that can only be described as "mad scientist-y".  We went to Flax, a big art supply store, and then Delessio Market for lunch, which was pretty good.  We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge and heading north on the 101, which was long and beautiful.  The trees up here are beautiful.  We stopped at the Eel River Brewery and got some delicious beer (I had a stout that was very smooth and very flavorful, and Dave had an Acai Berry Wheat, which was also delicious) and the best chicken fingers I've ever had.  It was also St. Patrick's day today so our beer was green!  We finally stopped in Eureka and got a hotel for the night. Redwoods tomorrow!

Road Trip Day 13

Day 13 was Las Vegas.  We were going to stop at the Hoover Dam but it was a sunny Saturday and there were about a billion people there.  So we drove straight to Las Vegas where we hooked up with Aunti Lani and Uncle Brian for lunch and then a tour of the strip.  It was tiring, and when we got back to Treasure Island and our room we kind of zoned out and watched tv for a while.  But then we went back out and saw the water show thing at the Wynn and then ate sushi at the Palazzo which was really good.  It was a fun day.

Road Trip Day 12

We went to the grand canyon.  It was amazing, of course.  Spent most of the day up there, driving around and walking around.  It was very snowy though, and we both want to come back when it's nicer out and we're in better shape so we can hike the trails.  We ate dinner at a brewery in Flagstaff called the Beaver Street Brewery, where I had their bramble berry brew, which was a raspberry beer and tasted delicious!  The food was amazing too, I would highly recommend going there if you're in the area.  We had a warm pesto cream cheese appetizer and I had a pesto cheese pizza and dave had a sausage meal, and we were both very happy and full afterward :)

Road Trip Day 11

We went to Petroglyph National Monument in the morning, which was really nice.  We hiked a few short trails and saw lots of petroglyphs, it was cold and window but sunny and it was nice getting some fresh air and hiking in.  We ate lunch at the Chama River Brewing Company which had a good scottish ale and tasty sweet potato fries. We hit the road headed towards Flagstaff, but stopped at about 4pm at Petrified Forest National Park, which was beautiful, though we didn't have much time there.  The painted desert was amazing.  We hiked a short trail around the edge looking out over it, it was so beautiful!  We drove through the park and saw old pueblo ruins, cone-shaped rock formations and petrified wood littering the desert floor.  We were rushed a bit though, due to the park closing at 6.  We pulled into Flagstaff at 7:45 and got a hotel and ordered pizza and watched the Incredibles, which Dave had never seen but he really liked it :)  It was a good day yesterday, we saw a lot of cool things and got some nice hiking in.  On to the grand canyon!

Road Trip Days 9-10

Yesterday we drove for probably about 7 hours, through desolate parts of Texas and New Mexico, to make it to Santa Fe.  When I say desolate, I mean there was nothing for that 7 hours of driving.  Nothing.  Except Amarillo, where we stopped to eat at the Coyote Bluff Cafe, a little hamburger joint where I got a phenomenal Hickory Burger with bacon, and Dave got "the Burger from Hell" which just about killed him with spiciness.  He loved it though.

Santa Fe was beautiful.  It's a small little town at a very high elevation, and the views of the surrounding mountains are just incredible.  The plant life is beautiful too, with trees and cactus spread out sparsely.  It was a bit chilly though, and in the morning we woke up to 3 inches of snow, much to our surprise.  We walked around the plaza area before eating lunch and heading to Albuquerque.  I had a roast beef quesadilla which was quite good. 

Albuquerque is only about an hour southwest of Santa Fe, so we were there in no time.  We got a hotel and relaxed, visiting a yarn shop recommended to us by an artist in Santa Fe, and a comic book store that was pretty cool, before heading off to a nice dinner with my old friend Robin and her boyfriend.  I haven't seen her in probably at least 5 years, and it was great catching up.  We ate at El Pinto, and I had huevos rancheros which was delicious.  I'm glad we could hook up, it was great.  Now we're back in the room, relaxing before another fun-filled day of driving tomorrow.

Road Trip Days 7-8

We left Benton after eating a nice free hot breakfast and got on the road to Dallas.  We didn't really do anything on the way.  The day turned into a horrible rainy grey horrible mess.  We hooked up with a friend from WoW in Arlington, that was fun.  Always fun to just hang out with friends over a couple beers.

Today we got started really late, left the hotel at about 11!  We went to the aquarium which was fun, a bit expensive though I thought.  It had tons of birds and some monkeys, and a few fish.  I thought it was kind of weird, but I'm glad we went, it was fun.  And they had a really cool shark tank thing that you walk through.  Then we went to this bead store my mom told me about, and the biggest half price books ever.  I love that store :)  We ate at Whataburger, per Catrophy's recommendation (thanks cat!) and it was delicious.  We headed out at about 4:30 planning on making it to Amarillo tonight, but there was an accident and it took us 2 hours to get out of dallas, so we ended up only making it here tonight. 

Road Trip Days 5-6

Yesterday was a fun day.  We left Louisville in the morning after finding a weird little bakery where we had some delicious breakfast.  I had poacked eggs and proscuttio and dave had some sort of breakfast sandwich.  Really good food, not so good coffee.  We headed to the Mammoth Cave National Park, about an hour and a half away and spent all day there.  We went on two tours of the caves, one 2 hour one going through the big dry caverns and passageways, with all the history and stuff of the war of 1812 and such, and then one hour and 15 minute one through a wet part of the caves with cool formations and weird bugs and such.  It was really cool and worth the drive out to it.  After that we headed past Nashville and stopped in Dickson, TN for the night.

Today we spent most of the day driving.  We drove through Memphis and then to Little Rock, where we stopped at a brewery for a little sample, and then tried to find a hotel but there was a marathon and a concert or something so we couldn't get a hotel, so we drove more west and stopped in Benton, AR and got a room to relax in for the rest of the night.  It's a "takin'-it-easy" kind of day :)

Road Trip Days 2-4

Gettysburg was great.  We went to a fantastic little coffeeshop called Ragged Edge, where I had the best chai I've ever had and a delicious bagel.  We walked around the historic downtown area and then headed to the battlefield and spent all our tim in the visitor's center, which was huge.  They have a really nice movie about the battle and then the cyclorama was beautiful: a huge, 360 degree oil painting of the battle, from the 1800s.  It was amazing.  And then the museum took us about 2 hours and we rushed through part of it!  Really cool, I'm glad we stopped there.

We drove towards Indianapolis after that, heading down route 30 at first, where we found Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum and Candy Shop, which is exactly what the name implies lol.  I wish I could upload pictures but it's not letting me for some reason.  It also took us through some snowy mountain roads before we got to i-70.  It was pretty uneventful after that.  We stayed in St. Clairsville, Ohio for the night and headed to Indianapolis in the morning.  We stopped for lunch in Columbus but didn't have any time for anything else there.

We got to Uncle Troy's house at about 5:45pm and we all went to eat at their restaurant, which was pretty good but I ended up eating too much.  We talked that evening and talked over breakfast, and then we all parted ways again and Dave and I headed down south.  It was really good seeing all of them again.

It only took about 2 hours to get to Louisville, so we had time to go to the zoo when we got here, and then went to a couple breweries, which was fun.  We ate Kentucky Bison Burgers at the first place which were really good.  I'll update again when I can!  Sorry about the pictures, I tried!

Road Trip Day 1

We made it.  It was grueling, I'll say that, but we made it on the road.  I'd like to thank Dave's dad, Lynn, and their neighbor for the tremendous help they were in getting us ready to go.  We made it to Gettysburg today, like we had planned, but we got here a little late so we're just relaxing and refreshing so we can see the sights tomorrow before heading west. I'm so excited that we're on our way.  I promise I'll have pictures once we actually do something besides just pack and drive :)