The left coast and beyond.

It's been a busy week but finally, here's another post. We spent four days in San Francisco and got a good opportunity to explore the city. We went on a run towards the Golden Gate bridge, tried to check out Coit Tower (but the elevator was broken), walked around Union Square, and even got to play some frisbee for an hour or two in Golden Gate Park. After a few good days of good weather and a few good nights out in San Francisco, we packed up the car and headed towards Thousand Oaks, CA.

On the way to Thousand Oaks, we spotted an exit for Cupertino and had to make the stop at the headquarters of Apple Inc. After some pictures and a stop into the Apple store, we were on our way. We spent four nights in Thousand Oaks with Alex's brother John and his wife Sandra and son Henry. Our first full day we drove to Venice Beach and walked around the beachside shops and got a chance for a workout at the original muscle beach. We spent the rest of our time in California surfing in Malibu, racing go-karts at an indoor track, and spending plenty of quality time with John, Sandra, and Henry. On our last night in California, John took us out to Dodger Stadium to see them play the San Diego Padres, which was a blast.

After leaving Thousand Oaks, we drove to the Hoover Dam, just outside of Las Vegas. We got to go down into the dam to see the turbines and saw a presentation about the dam from the 1940s. After the Hoover Dam, we continued the drive to Williams, AZ, just outside of the Grand Canyon. The following day we got up and spent about four hours hiking around the Grand Canyon and taking lots of pictures. Once we did enough exploring, we got back into the car and headed off towards our next stop, Phoenix.

On the way to Phoenix, we made a stop for dinner in Sedona, AZ. The drive coming into Sedona is absolutely beautiful, and the town itself is quite amazing as well. We sat down for dinner at Open Range Grill, which had some awesome views, and ate dinner along with watching the end of the Stanley Cup Final. We left Sedona after dinner and drove through the night to Phoenix.

We spent next to no time in Phoenix, which is mostly because we were ready to get going on the rest of the trip. This morning we left Phoenix and drove to Las Cruces, NM, where we are staying tonight. We got some pizza and saw Terminator Salvation, and we'll be getting up early tomorrow to drive to Roswell, NM, where we'll be til Monday. It was Colee's birthday on Thursday and mine is today, so thanks for the good wishes and rest assured that we're enjoying our time on the road. Thanks for the comments.

So it's been a few days...

We've been on the go for the past 6 days, staying in a different place each night. Friday night Arches National Park. Saturday night Bryce Canyon National Park. Sunday night Zion National Park. Monday night Las Vegas (uh oh). Tuesday night Sequoia National Park. We reached San Francisco Wednesday evening and will be here through Sunday. It's nice to finally have a "home base" for a few days.


Bryce Canyon was awesome. Deep canyons filled with "hoodoos" stretched as far as the eye could see. Hoodoos are the spires seen in our pictures of Bryce Canyon. Mike and I have discussed which park in Utah was our favorite and decided it was too tough of a decision to say that one park was worse than another. I will say that if we were able to spend one additional day/night in one of the parks, I would have chosen Zion. Zion was filled with incredibly steep cliffs/peaks. This park was unique in that the park wasn't filled with mountains like we had been used to seeing. Instead, it was filled with cliffs and peaks that rose almost vertically. There wasn't gradual elevation changes like what's seen with normal mountains. It was, 0 feet... look straight up and... 2000 feet. Monday night we stayed in Vegas and had our first legitimate shower in over 72 hours. Calm down, calm down... we were able to wash up to a certain extent. We didn't live like cavemen for 4 days, psssh.

Vegas was great. We did what any two, typical college grad students would do: stayed up late and gambled... a little bit. After all was said and done, we had a fairly inexpensive and fun night. Both of us came out about even and had a great time winning, and losing, money. We stayed at the Golden Nugget which is located in the downtown area, not off the Strip. We spent the first couple hours of our night strolling down Las Vegas Blvd, watching the Bellagio Fountain, and cruising through several big name casinos. The remainder of our night was spent in the downtown district, hopping between roulette and black jack tables.

Tuesday we drove to Visalia, CA. A small city on the outskirts of Sequoia National Park. Fortunately, we had a small, Celebration Station-like place right next to our hotel. Mike and I spent about an hour at the batting cages, mashing baseballs over center field's 10 foot wall. Yeap, that's right... Mike McGuire and Alex Bonds were in the house. We also visited the local Regal Cinemas and saw "Up." A bit sad, but a great flick to say none the less.

Wednesday we spent all day in Sequoia National Park, walking amongst trees several thousand years old. These trees were amazing. Every few feet we were spotting another jaw-dropper, claiming it was bigger than the last tree we'd seen. We climbed Moro Rock and enjoyed the picturesque view from the top. See pics to appreesh.


We made it to San Fran last night and posted up in a cheap-o motel. Today, we checked into a Marriott Courtyard in the Fisherman's Wharf area. Check back for pictures of the San Fran community.

Stay tuned.