Ventura to Las Angeles

San Fransisco and Monterey

I'm still alive.

So I haven't posted anything in a while, and the reasons for that are simple. Laziness, and limited Internet access. I have however written out all the things I want to post up to the other day, as well as all the pictures. As soon as I have wifi, rest assured you will have some really great stuff to read/look at. (as if you're all just hanging on every word, ha. Oh well.)

The Rest of California

I think I'll continue with bullet points, it's much quicker and i'm sure it's easier to read. If you want more details, you can read Steve's blog.



- after San Fran, we camped at big basin redwoods state park.  Honestly, the redwoods weren't that big.
- the next day, we made a stop at the Hahn Winery (unfortunately, I am not related to them.). We tasted like 10 or 12 delicious wines, I got a little tipsy, and then I bought two bottles and two wine glasses with the name Hahn etched in the sides.  So good.
- then we went to Monterey, and had a tasty seafood lunch
- drove down the coast (such a beautiful drive) to Big Sur, where we were camping.  The view was beautiful, the bathrooms were disgusting.  We also had a minor incident with a hungry raccoon.
- after Big Sur was Ventura.  This place wasn't too bad, we were able to walk to the beach, although it was much too cold to swim.
- we spent a little time on the beach the next morning, then decided to go into LA to check it out.  Went to the California Science Center, which wasn't too bad.
- next day we camped in Malibu, the place was okay, a lot if kids and the bathrooms were stupid.  We got a little bit of hiking in.
- went back into LA again today and saw all of the Hollywood stuff.  It was cool, I felt like such a tourist, but hey, isn't that what I am?
- so tonight were camping in Angeles national forest or something, and tomorrow is Vegas!

Hopefully I'll have a chance to post pictures soon, I know that's way more interesting.

San Fransisco

Upon arriving in San Fransisco, it was still much too early to check into our hotel.  We parked the car and took a little walk around the touristy Fisherman's Wharf area.  It had all of the things you would expect out of a boardwalk, plus those creepy mimes who spray themselves gold and dance like robots on top of boxes.  So wierd.  After about an hour, we decided we were hungry, and drove farther into to town to avoid paying for a ridiculously overpriced seafood meal at the pier.  We went to a place called King of Thai Noodle, which is supposed to be one of the best Thai places ever or something. The food was unbelievably cheap (all the entrees were $5), and it was really tasty.  Two big complaints, however: while the eggrolls and my meal arrived fairly quickly, they apparently forgot about steves, and I was almost completely done eating before it finally got to the table (after steve reminded them about it).  Also, the Pad Thai on the menu was listed as having rice noodles, peanut sauce, egg, and tofu, however when it arrived, it had all of those things plus a mystery ingredient. At first I thought it was tofu, but as soon as I tasted it I knew it had to be something else, and on further inspection, we decided it was probably chicken.  Normally, I guess this wouldn't be a big deal, but to me, it is a very big deal.  After that, I had a very difficult time eating anything else on the plate and although it was delicious, my appetite was gone.



We left after paying and walked back to the car, which had literally just run out of time on the meter (there's a one hour limit on meters in San Fransisco, wtf?), and thus narrowly avoided a ticket.  We still had a while before we could check in, so we decided to check out the San Fransisco MoMA.  We parked the car again (we spent a ridiculous amount of money on parking, it was absolutely stupid.) and walked over to the museum.  It was more expensive than I would normally pay to get into a museum, but ended up being worth it.  There was some pretty awesome stuff there, along with some pretty awful stuff.  We saw a great video piece that we both really liked, I can't remember the artist at the moment though.



We were finally able to check into our hotel, so we went there to drop off our stuff.  I took a shower, uploaded some pics, and we left again.  We went to the Macy's in Union Square and I bought a dress to wear in Las Vegas.  After a little more shopping around we were ready for dinner.
 


So now I'm getting kind of bored or writing all this, so I'll just list the rest:
- we had sushi for dinner at two different restaurants, and one of the waitresses was from jersey which was cool
- we bought some beer and went back to our hotel
- we attempted to find bagels the next morning, which apparently is impossible in San Fransisco
- we left, and had chipotle for lunch

The end!

The Beautiful California Coast

Point Reyes, California

After a delightful morning of wine tasting, we were on our way to our next destination: Point Reyes. We stopped first at the visitors center to get a campsite, and to get some maps and information about the park. After that, we had some lunch in the picnic area, and then took a drive up to the lighthouse, along the way getting our first glimpses of the Pacific Ocean. When we reached the end of the road, there was a path that led the rest of the way to the point and the lighthouse. It was such a beautiful view. Then we walked down the steps (like 300 something of them) to get to the actual lighthouse, which was really neat. Then we walked back up the 300 or so steps and left for our campsite. Oh, and we saw a lot of really cute cows on the way.



We found the parking lot for the Laguna trail head, which is what we had to hike to get to our site. After packing our giant back packs, we set off on an almost 2 mile hike. It was pretty rough in the beginning, with a lot of uphill. The super heavy backpacks didn't make it any easier. It was fun though, and I got to see a bunch of bunnies and quail and cute things. When we finally reached our campsite, another nice secluded one without any people around, we were hot and exhausted. We set up the tent and had water and a few snacks, then walked down the short trail that led to the beach. It was awesome, much too cold for swimming, but it was beautiful and I got to touch pacific sand and pacific water and see some gross pacific sea weed.



We spent a little while at the beach, but we were both pretty hungry and tired so we went back to our site. We ate some tuna fish sandwiches, and then turned in.



The next morning we woke up early, ate some dry cereal and granola bars, and packed up camp. We hiked back to the car, got to see more bunnies and quail, and towards the end of the trail there were 3 deer hanging out just a few feet away. We repacked the car and started the drive to San Fransisco! But that's for another post.