We left Everett at 3:30 in the afternoon, expecting it to take 14 hours to get to San Francisco.
Getting Started. :)
As you can see, I got bored in a hurry!
We stopped for a sit down dinner in Centralia and stopped at Walmart right after that. Already dark, so I took over driving. We hit another Walmart somewhere in Oregon. (For those that don't know, I met my travel partner while I was working at Walmart and she gets a discount. So anytime we thought of 3-4 things we needed, we stopped at a Walmart. Our handy map told us where all the Walmarts could be found.) I don't recommend a book light, it only worked a few hours, we ended up returning that further down the road. I do recommend the book "The Shack" which I picked up at that first Walmart stop and finished hum somewhere mid-trip.
Since we weren't going to make San Francisco by 6am we decided to go on past toward our first stop in the Santa Cruz area. We almost missed our 11:00 train tour through the redwoods.
Roaring Camp Railroads:
We made it. I guess there were about 6 open cars with a fun conductor. We were in the caboose which had a roof so we didn't sit in the hot sun before heading out.
These redwoods are just babies at 200-500 years old.
Aren't they beautiful!! The ride was fun and at the top we got to learn how God designed the forest to rejuvenate itself. How a grandma tree will grow children and even grandchildren onto her root system and how even a "dead" tree can produce life. It was pretty amazing info.
So the train ride costs a bit more than we felt it was worth, it was very informative and a nice rest for us after only an hour and a half of sleep in the car. We headed off to the mystery spot to learn about the absence of gravity, but the steep, steep climb scared us off so we passed on that one.
We drove down to the Santa Cruz pier -- I'm never going here during "the season" and probably never on a weekend. We got there and it was fairly dead and a good thing to. The driving was bad enough with no other cars to worry about. The Beach was beautiful.
Yards and yards and yards of HOT, white sand. We didn't enjoy it for very long and I can't imagine it completely covered with bodies. . . We had places to go though so off we headed to Monterey. I recommend that should you every decide to drive to California and think driving straight through would be a good idea. . . I wouldn't recommend it. . . most especially if you don't have a hotel reservation on the other end. We made it into Monterey and we did get a VERY NICE and inexpensive hotel room, but figuring out the roads and maps and rates and what have you just isn't worth it when your so tired.
We headed down to Fisherman's Wharf for dinner. Did you know that every coastal town in all of California has a Fisherman's Wharf? A little confusing. We did a little research ahead of time, but we were to tired and ended up looking for a restaurant CALLED Fisherman's Wharf and being highly disappointed when it wasn't where the map said it'd be. Anyway, we had a very nice (tasty) dinner. Serenaded by these little fellows.
Masses of these little fellows. Fran didn't care for these guys but I found their noise to be kinda "white noise" like and actually enjoyed it. Even when I awoke to it the next morning.
Our plan this day was to tour some old homes as part of the Monterey State History Park but the info and web sites were highly misleading so we ditched that plan and instead went shopping.
Fascinating and fun shopping to be found. A fairly nice lunch, highly overpriced and a store I feel completely in love with. It's a good thing the store is far from home because I could easily spend a small fortune. We went off to find another shopping area as well. It's housed in an old Cannery factory (HUGE OPEN Space) very nice shopping but apparently rent is overpriced because not many stores to be found. Of course we did stumble across a very nice jeweler. . . dangerous grounds to be sure.
Okay, I'm already tired to fiddling with photos and we're only through day one of 10 days of travel and the most boring day to boot. So stay tuned, I've got 55 more photos as I take you through my travels and the most pretty come up next.
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