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We have been a lot of places lately that don't have internet so we haven't been able to get things on the web! This blog will hopefully cover what we have been up to for the past few days. We left the
Payne's house in Graeagle and headed for
Lake Tahoe. We were nervous because the fires even now are still going. We didn't know if we would get stuck down there and not be able to get through, and we really didn't know what the situation was like down there. As of this moment, over 3,500 people have been evacuated from their homes and over 200 homes have been burnt to the ground. It is unbelievable down there. Our first stop was in
Carson City, Nevada. Here we got our first oil change of the trip. Lindsey also got some new tires on her car, her old ones were almost at 60,000 miles and she wanted to feel safe while we were traveling the rest of the way home. We dropped the car off and they told us that we would have to wait 3 hours. We didn’t know what the heck we were going to be able to
do for 3 hours at a Wal-Mart. Well… we had apparently never been in a
Super Wal-Mart in the west. This Wal-Mart that we were in not only had new tires and oil changes for our car, but if I wanted to I could go get my nails done, get my hair done, play some video games, get some new glasses, get some food, buy some clothes, get some camping equipment, sit down and have food, anything in the world you could imagine… it was there. I’ve never seen a Wal-Mart like it. Kind of scary actually. When we were finished, we headed out to Tahoe. The lake is so beautiful. So clear that it looks like Caribbean water. We stopped quickly at one place where we could see the fires across the way. The spot that we were looking at was probably one of the first places on fire because it looked as if it was just smoldering. The beach had a lot of burnt wood that was washed up on the shore. We put our feet in the water, but that’s as far as we got, the water was cold!! We got back in the car and headed
over to the state line between
California and
Nevada and went down to the beach, put on our suits, and laid on the sand for about an hour, catching some relaxing time at the end of the day. When we started to get cold we left and crossed the state line and headed for
Yosemite We drove as far as we could in Tahoe, really getting a view of the fires, and turned south in the direction of the park. We drove down the scenic drive of route 89. Probably the most beautiful drive that we have had so far. We made it to a small town called
Lee Vining where we stayed for the night. We woke up backtracked a bit and headed for the small ghost town of
Bodie, California. The town was started in the 1880’s when gold was found there. The town quickly grew to about 10,000 residents, bad ones at that. There were almost daily murders, robberies, and fights. At one point, Bodie was the third biggest city in California. As quickly as Bodie grew, it also was deserted. By the 1940s, no one lived there anymore and now it is open as a true
ghost town. We spent time walking around there, looking in the windows of the stores, school, hotels, saloons, and homes of Bodie. Around 1pm we headed for Yosemite. Yosemite is so huge that we really only had time to drive straight through it in order to get to the other side where the road to the sights like Bridalveil Falls, Half Dome, and Yosemite Falls were. We got lots of pictures . Once again we were near fires. This time they were controlled, but we had to drive through some very thick smoke. We’re beginning to think that we are being followed by fire. First Utah, then Tahoe, and now Yosemite. We headed out of the park towards
Point Richmond, CA. Here we met up with family friends, the
Kittle’s. We arrived in Richmond around 10pm and were brought by
Steve to the
Richmond Yacht Club where Lindsey and I slept on his sail boat which is in a harbor on
San Francisco Bay. The next morning we woke up, went and got
Jesse and headed to the
Winchester Mystery House. Sarah Winchester, heiress to the Winchester Rifle $20 million fortune, moved out to San Jose after her husband and
daughter died. She was told by a medium during a séance that, in order to live, she should move and build. She bought an unfinished 8 room farm house and built on to it continuously, 24 hours a day for 38 years. It was only when she died that they stopped construction on the house. The house, unfinished, has 160 rooms, 40 bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, 47 fire places, 17 chimneys, 6 kitchens and 1 shower. Over the course of the 38 years, her 13 construction workers built over 600 rooms, most of which she had them tear down and start again. The house was ridiculous. Doors that led to nowhere, windows in the floor, doors that opened into a wall, stairs that went to the ceiling. She was doing this to confuse the spirits that had apparently killed her family and were after her. She was a nut to say the least. By the end of the tour we had walked over a mile, staying inside the whole time and seeing 110 of the rooms. I think that the most interesting fact that I learned was that the house was on a floating foundation and none of the rooms were
really attached. This is said to have saved the house from total destruction during the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Instead of the rooms all moving together and making the whole structure fall over, they crashed into each other and basically held each other up. drove back up to Point Richmond, but not before stopping at an
In -n- Out Burger. When we got back to the Kittles, we packed up our sweaters and headed out for a sail on the
San Francisco Bay. The weather was awesome for sailing. Jai would be happy to know that we had a
Fat Tire while we were out there . The next morning, Lindsey and I packed up the car and headed for
San Francisco. Our first stop was on the other side of the
Golden Gate Bridge. True to it’s reputation, San Francisco was cold and really foggy. We couldn’t even get a full picture of the bridge! We’ll just have to go another time. After we walked half way across the bridge we drove over to
Pier 39 and got some lunch. We tried to get over to
Alcatraz, but apparently we’re angels and they wouldn’t let us… either that or
they were sold out of tickets, not sure which. We walked around a bit, took some pictures of Alcatraz and decided to not take one of the San Francisco tour buses, but do our own tour instead. We drove around a little lost for a while and finally found our way to
Lombard Street the crookedest street in the world. Getting up to the top of that hill was crazy. It felt as though I was driving a roller coaster. I had forgotten how steep those hills can be! Even though we have an automatic car on this trip, you would have never known it on those hills. After driving down the twists and turns, we made our way over to the Victorian houses that survived the 1906 quake. These are the houses that are in the beginning of the 80s-90s show Full House. We got out a stretched our legs a bit and took some pictures in Alamo Park. Next we were off to
Golden Gate Park where we found the
Japanese Tea Gardens. Of course we had to stop at the little café and have some tea. We had planned on running a race in San Francisco the
next day, but we decided against it and got into the car and started our trek down
Route 1 to
Los Angeles. We went down to
Santa Cruz and decided to stay there so that we could visit the
Mystery Spot in the morning. We walked down to the Warf and ate dinner at the end. Once again we got to see a beautiful sunset. The hostess sat us at a sort of island table along with 5 20-something year old guys. Lindsey and I were eavesdropping on their conversation when we heard one of the guys say that running and baseball were not sports. Well, all of you know us, so basically we had to let him know how wrong he was. We left dinner and went to find ourselves a hotel. After doing so we walked over to the
Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk where we went to ride the roller coasters. The coaster that we went on first is the 6th oldest in the country. Lindsey giggled loudly the whole ride and I screamed the whole ride. We loved it. It woke us up and gave us so much energy. We walked around the boardwalk for a while and got some funnel cake before heading off to bed. We woke up and got our stuff ready to go to the
Mystery Spot. It was a really fun time. At the moment we’re cruising down Route 1, about 4 hours from our destination. We pulled off on one of the turn-offs on the side of the road and walked down to a cove called Pirate’s Cove. The water here was so clear, you could see so far to the bottom, definitely a place that we would have liked to jump in if there was a way to get back up on the cliffs. We tried to stop to see the
Hearst Castle but the entire tour including us getting to our car and getting some food would have taken about 3 hours so we decided against it. Maybe some other time. We want to get down to LA to see Lindsey’s uncle and be able to spend some time with him. Hopefully we’ll be able to keep our blog more up-to-date for the rest of the trip!
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Ashley
non-member comment
Claire's grandmother KK lives at the top of lombard st. They made all their money on SF real estate, they bought like all of it before it was worth anything, and slowly sold it off. also, you went down at the santa cruz beach boardwalk, in the warm california sun? (i still get that stupid jingle stuck in my head sometimes...) have fun in LA, and say hi to Bob Carmen and the boys for me!