We took a short drive down to Lake Tahoe and blew a little bit of change at Bill/s Casino - but I didn/t luck out and win any jackpot this time around. We stopped at a nearby restaurant called the Fox & Hound for dinner - patty melts, one of the best I/ve ever enjoyed. The day was warm, but started cooling off quickly in the evening - especially at that altitude. When we were out in this area back in February, we had little trouble at all with the altitude. But our son/s apartment is located at 7,800 feet. Our room was on the ground floor of a 3-story apartment. Great room, but...the bathroom was upstairs. And they were very steep steps! Every time I climbed the steps to use the bathroom in the middle of the night (which, unfortunately, is somewhat frequently at my age), I had to stop to catch my breath.
Sunday, July 1st: We were up at 4am and were on the road by 5am. Our son accompanied us on this two-day *side-trip.* We had breakfast at Denny/s in Minden, NV - and it was the best Denny/s breakfast I/d ever eaten! We were about to head off to Yosemite when we noticed an unpleasant sound coming from the front left tire of the Dodge Neon which we/d rented from Dollar Rental at the Reno Airport. We called Dollar and they were less than sympathetic about our situation. There was no way we were going to head any further up into the mountains with a tire which sounded very much like it was ready to separate. So we drove 1-1/2 hours back to Reno and exchanged it for a Dodge Intrepid (a little more expensive, but a much more comfortable ride all the way around). Leaving the Reno Airport, we headed first for Mono Lake, CA. Actually, it/s on the border of NV/CA.
The CA wildflowers were beautiful and the lake was very impressive, especially with the tufas jutting up out of the lake. After we left Mono Lake, we stopped at Bodie Mike/s BBQ in Lee Vining, CA for a very delicious lunch (couldn/t help recalling that famous line *best darned BBQ I ever had* from Fried Green Tomatoes) while enjoying that lunch. :-)
After lunch, we entered Yosemite Park through Tioga Pass (elevation 9,945 feet!). Tuolumne Meadows was our first stop in the park, and we waded in Tuolumne Creek. Actually, our son and my husband *almost* waded up to their knees - collecting various rocks. I got part of my feet wet and decided that I/d wait for warmer water before I went wading. The day was hot, but the creek was ice cold! The climate in that area was so very dry that when we got out of the creek, we were completely dried before we even got to the car which was parked only 50-feet away.
Yosemite was absolutely impressive and downright majestic. We got a couple of pictures, but I wish I/d taken many more. Some of the main sites in Yosemite that we enjoyed were Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite Falls, El Capitan, Half Dome, and Yosemite Valley. All very beautiful! If you/ve never been, you really ought to make it a point to view this most awesome of God/s creations!
We would have loved to hike around a bit. But, besides being pressed for time, the altitude was definitely affecting our decision to do any real hiking. I/m sure our son was up for it, especially after climbing Mount Whitney last month, but the very idea of it was just a bit more than I could handle. Just outside of Yosemite, we checked into Cedar Lodge - which is located in El Portal, CA. The room was very nice and even included a jacuzzi which we made good use of. Unfortunately, there was only one bed in the room, so our son made do with cushions off of the chairs and one of the chairs laid on its back. Apparently, he didn/t sleep too well because he came bursting into the room shortly after 3am to announce a bear sighting - the biggest bear he/d ever seen (and this boy has seen some bears!). By the time we got dressed, out the door, and safely tucked into the car, the bear was long gone. We drove around for a few minutes hoping to spot it, but had no luck. We were wide awake by this point. So while I proceeded with my usual 1-1/2 hour routine of preparing for the day (and our son snuck in a little catnap), my husband went out for coffee. Remembering the bear, he decided to take the car. Hearing the sound of metal cans being rattled around, he whipped out the camera, rolled down the car window, and very nearly snapped a shot of the morning newspaper deliverers (who got quite a kick out of the familiar tourist error). Sorry to say, we never did see an actual bear on this trip, but we did spot deer several times and even managed to photograph one a couple of days later.
Monday, July 2nd: After checking out of Cedar Lodge at an early hour, we drove a couple of hours (and spotted a couple of deer) before stopping for breakfast at another Denny/s near Gilroy, CA. Unfortunately, this one had none of the aspects of the breakfast we/d enjoyed the morning before. The service was lousy and the food was even worse. The only good thing I could find to say about Gilroy was that they did offer some of the best flower gardens and nurseries I/d ever seen. Gilroy is also known as the Garlic Capital of the world. Too bad we didn/t take advantage and purchase some while we were there.
A short while later we made it to the wharf at Santa Cruz, CA. The wharf had to be at least a ¼ of a mile long and was full of various tourist shops and seafood restaurants. Naturally, we bought into the whole scene and not only did we persuade ourselves to purchase a couple of trinkets, we actually even ate seafood from one of the bait shops along the pier. Now THAT was an adventure in food. :-)
We did get to see starfish clinging to the pilings under the pier. But the whales were not *in season,* so we never did spot a whale or sea lion. Our son gave into the temptation to check out the Pacific Ocean - and very nearly even swam for a bit while my husband and I indulgently enjoyed his pleasure (and kept ourselves warm and dry). He/d hoped to find some shells on the shoreline, but the only thing he could find was rocks and stones - mostly polished to a shiny round shape.
Leaving Santa Cruz, we took Route 1 all the way along the coast to Pacifica, CA. What a coastline! Such a huge difference from the East Coast! Here in Florida, the entire coastline is crowded with condos and you/re lucky to get a place to park. In California, the coastline was mostly wide open, but only a very few small beach areas. The coastline is very rocky and even has cliffs all along it. But at least you can see it!
I never realized before how much of the US Agriculture California is responsible for. Some of the farmlands had crops growing all the way down to the cliffs of the rocky coastline. What a sight to behold. California also has a huge collection of wildflowers growing throughout the state - and they/re all beautiful. Even the dried grass was so pretty that I stopped to pluck a couple of stems (unfortunately, they didn/t survive the trip home). I would/ve picked some of the wildflowers, but was warned that it was illegal. Oh well, at least I got a snapshot of a couple of them.
Anyway, at Pacifica, we found that we would have a short wait before we could check into our room.
We used that time to drive the 15 minutes into San Francisco where we located *Haight Ashbury* - the section of San Fran where the whole hippie movement of the 60/s supposedly originated. And boy, did it show! What a wild assortment of people we observed on that street. Most of the stores (and even a school!) were painted up in psychedelic colors and the stores boasted such wares as string beads, black lights, tie-dyed t-shirts, Jerry Garcia dolls, and various other accessories.
The store that really amazed us the most was *Backstreet Betty/s.* The thing that caught my eye first was a really cute dress in the window. Hoping to see a price tag (nearly everything in that tourist trap is seriously overpriced), I got a closer look at the store. Turns out that the dresses were for MEN - as were the push-up bras, fake breasts, fake butts, and various other items in the store. And, only men were even allowed in the store. Now that was a real eye-opener for me! I never dreamed this stuff really existed - I thought that was all just in the movies! And, just like in the movies, the streets really do run straight up and down at near 90-degree angles! It was really nerve-wracking for me.
Of course, my nerves were also still pretty wrecked from the previous day and a half of flying around mountains on narrow little roads with no guard rails - and the drops go as much as 1,000 feet down or more! San Francisco is a really crazy looking but beautiful city. Houses are built on top of each other and in rows and they are crammed all the way up into the top of the nearing mountains. Really wild looking, but very neat and pretty little two and three-story houses!
The first view from the top of one of those rows and down into the bay was breathtaking and intimidating at the same time. Anyway, having entertained ourselves with the sights of Haight Ashbury, we drove back to Pacifica and checked into Best Western/s Lighthouse Hotel. What a great place! The room was angled, with sliding glass doors on two of the angles which afforded a gorgeous view of the Pacific Ocean. I went through an entire roll of film just trying to capture the sunset.
The hotel had its own private little beach. And though my husband and our son both got in the water, I once again chickened out at the temperature and decided to content myself with just a view of the ocean. And we know our son was delighted to find that while there was only one bed, at least there was a fold-out couch. :-)
Once again, there were no shells to be found. But we did collect quite a few neat rocks, sea beans, seagull feathers, and a piece of driftwood. That night we had dinner through room service. The food was absolutely delicious, and of course the service was outstanding. We were all quite happily impressed. :-)
Tuesday, July 3rd: We breakfasted for free (great variety and ample Continental breakfast) at the Moonraker Restaurant in the hotel at Pacifica. The food was good and the view was fantastic. This was a very romantic, well laid-out restaurant and we could only imagine how nice (and expensive) dinner there would have been. We checked out of the hotel and headed back into San Francisco.
After picking up the best bagels I/d ever tasted in my life at one of the delicious smelling cafes in Haight Ashbury, we drove on down to Fisherman/s Wharf.
Now that truly was definitely one of the best seafood spreads I/d ever seen in my life. There were restaurants, cafes and street vendors all lined up in rows and they had a most impressive array of goodies. The lobsters were the biggest I/ve ever seen. As were the crab.
However, crabs were $25 each. And having tasted a crab cocktail that my husband had decided to sample, I decided I really didn/t care for the taste of that type of crab anyway. There/s still nothing in the world that compares to the taste of the Baltimore style steamed blue crab. So I settled for a shrimp cocktail myself and our son went for the calamari - which turned out to be the second best of the trio we/d tried (my opinion, of course).
We shopped along the streets, passed Cannery Row, Ghiardelli Square and a couple of other famous landmarks, then boarded a real true cable car (complete with the Rice-A-Roni ad painted on the back of it). We rode it all the way uphill and just past Chinatown before we realized that it had started going downhill. We/d previously heard the conductor mention that the return trips were sold out for several hours, and we certainly didn/t want to have to climb back uphill at those angles. So we jumped off and walked back up through Chinatown. The first shop we stopped at was a restaurant, and we were all quite thirsty. We stood just inside the door for several minutes, and nobody paid the least bit of attention to us. We finally walked up to the counter and asked for a couple of Cokes. One of the waitresses immediately informed us that she did not speak English - and she truly wasn/t a master of the language! That was when we realized that this was TRUE Chinese food, being eaten by true Chinese - and that was the only language being spoken in the restaurant. While nobody was downright hostile, they weren/t especially friendly either and I felt rather awkward and out of place there. Our next stop was a tourist shop, and the Chinese woman in that shop (anxious to sell some trinkets) was extremely friendly. But, back out on the street, we were once again faced with a somewhat unfriendly crowd of people scurrying along to complete their daily errands. They weren/t unpleasant to us in any way, but they were in no way sociable either.
Though I felt very much unwanted in this area of town, I truly enjoyed the sights - especially the Chinese Consulate, the laundry hanging on lines out windows to dry, and various plucked birds in the windows. Nearly every sign was in Chinese and the produce being sold in the area was downright exotic.
Along the way back to Fisherman/s Wharf, my husband bought a painting from Frank Dong (who/s one of the best in the US for producing true Japanese art on rice paper). The painting is of a cable car and every time I look at it I feel like I/m back in San Francisco all over again - smelling the various smells, tasting the foods, seeing the sights).
We even got to check out one of the new 25-cent, self-cleaning, public toilet booths located on a sidewalk. Had our son not seen something on the Discovery Channel about these curious units, we never would have figured out what it was - and it came with quite a long list of rules, including a 20-minute maximum time frame.
Since we/d already found out in Santa Cruz that the seals were not *in* at this time of year, we skipped Pier 39 in lieu of a drive down Lombard Street. It was a beautiful sight with all the flowers and the constant curves, but absolutely impossible to photograph.
Leaving Lomboard Street, we crossed the Golden Gate bridge and found ourselves on a 14-lane freeway that could not be avoided. Surprisingly though, even with bumper-to-bumper traffic, it was not too bad an experience. Seems like we managed to avoid the worst of the rush hour.
I have to admit that I was just a bit disappointed with the bridge though. It was every bit as beautiful as its pictures (unless you looked real close and saw all the rust), but somehow it just wasn/t as majestic as I/d always imagined. Guess I was still in awe over all the mountains in Yosemite and along the way. Enroute back to our son/s home in Zephyr Cove, NV we crossed through the Sonomo and Napa valleys and over Donner pass (remember the cannibalistic survivors of the wagon train that got caught in the pass back in the 1800/s?). We also passed through Truckee, the Ponderosa Ranch and crossed over Brockway Summit on California Route 243 into Kings Beach at the NV/CA stateline. We made it back into the Lake Tahoe area just in time to catch a beautiful sunset over the lake. That night we stayed at our son/s.
Wednesday, July 4th: Our son had to work today. But my husband and I slept in a short while (7am) and had breakfast at the nearby Fox & Hound restaurant. It wasn/t nearly as good as their patty melts - and almost as bad as the second Denny/s we/d been to earlier in the week. But we consoled ourselves by blowing a little more change at the Lakeside Inn Casino - where I hit my first wild royal flush. It paid off a whole $12.50 and I was rich there for a short while. :-)
We got bored with the casino scene quickly enough and spent the rest of the day back at our son/s doing laundry and relaxing. When our son got home from work he cooked a delicious pizza for dinner (had no idea Di Giornio was such a good pizza - must/ve been the altitude). Then we drove down to the lake, parked behind Horizons Casino and entertained ourselves at both the Horizons and Harvey/s Casinos while waiting for the fireworks display to get started. We also browsed through a small craft fair on the street there. We found ourselves a good spot on the beach with all the rest of the tourists (all the locals were out in boats on the lake, lighting it up very nicely).
The fireworks show started at 9:45 prompt and lasted about 40 minutes. The start of the show was better than some of the finales I/ve seen in this area! It was a truly spectacular display - computerized and perfectly synchronized simulcast with the music that was blasting out of everybody/s boom boxes and stereos (even on the lake). I/ve never seen anything like it and just know that I/ll suffer severe disappointment now whenever I see the displays at our local themeparks. They even put up fireworks that created real true smiley faces in the sky! The music was wonderfully moving and I think the entire crowd was in tears before the show ended.
There were thousands of people on the lake and on the beach and traffic was a true nightmare. So we killed another hour and a half playing penny slots in the casino (I was up $5 at one point!) and then made our way back to our son/s.
Thursday, July 5th: Our son neglected to tell us about the construction crew that started at 7am sharp - seems the condo he/s in is under renovation at the moment. We gave up trying to ignore the loud saws and hammering and crawled out to Burger King for breakfast that morning.
Then we drove CA4 through Ebbett/s Pass to the Calavaras Big Tree State Park to see the redwoods/sequoias. This was a really great park. Elevation was only about 4,000 feet, so we got out and walked through the entire park. Wow - what huge trees these were! Some are over 3,000 years old and had trunks with a diameter of 30 feet!
After leaving Calavaras, we drove through mining towns on CA49 to Shenandoah Valley where we had just enough time to visit one of the wineries. We picked Toscano Winery and though they weren/t open for tours that day, they gladly invited us to taste nine various wines. Each one was so delicious (except for one Syrah that I didn/t especially care for) that we had a hard time choosing only four to buy. Two of the wines we tasted were actually still in the barrel and not even bottled yet. The winery itself was beautiful with the rows and rows of grapevines/vineyards, clay pots, flower and water gardens, etc. The building where the tasting was conducted was a beautiful Spanish Mission style, though the rest of the winery was of a decidedly more Italian flare, as were the wines.
Friday, July 6th: This morning we went to the Forest Buffet at the top of Harrah/s in Lake Tahoe. Just as in February, the spread was amazingly diverse and delicious. And the view of Lake Tahoe was gorgeous!
We then drove through Moundhouse, NV where I couldn/t resist snapping a few pictures of the real live (and even legal) bordellos. We didn/t see any call-girls hanging out the windows or anything like that, but the parking lots sure were full. Absolutely amazing!
We then drove through Dayton, NV and saw the building where my husband had his restaurant about five years ago. The building is so ancient that it was actually featured in an issue of National Geographic. From there we drove up the mountain and into Virginia City, NV (heart of the Comstock Lode). Now this was a really neat old wild-west type looking town - complete with costumed characters and real boardwalks along the streets.
The shops were charming and we couldn/t resist treating ourselves to a couple of turquoise pieces - including a white turquoise piece (very rare) for my husband. One of the stores even housed one of the original vaults from the old Gold Rush days. The same store also boasted a gold mine tour - which we bought into at $4 apiece. It wasn/t all THAT impressive, since it was a short tour. But it was still really neat and also enough to convince me that mining is not an occupation I/d be very happy in.
Leaving Virginia City, we took Daggett/s Pass to Reno and checked into John Ascuaga/s Nugget hotel for the evening. We had an early flight to catch the next morning in Reno, and we didn/t want to have to make the hour drive from Tahoe in the morning. Exhausted from our journeys, we passed on the Reno tour and spent the evening in our room, enjoying a really wonderful buffet from room service.
Saturday, July 7th: Room service was so good the night before that we decided to give it another try for breakfast (besides, there was no Burger King or Denny/s on the way to the airport). Anyway, all I can say about their room service breakfast is that, like nearly every hotel, they failed miserably at it. However, we ate what we could and got to the airport in plenty of time to catch our flight to Phoenix, AZ. The flight was on time and we had a smooth changeover in Phonenix before catching the plane back to Orlando. Anyway, that about sums up the majority of it. I could go on forever and ever about what a spectacular and enlightening vacation this was, but...best that you go experience it for yourself.
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