Colorado through the Rockies was probably one of my favorite drives on the trip - right up there with the Pacific Coast Highway. The Colorado River traced along through the mountains right alongside the freeway practically the whole time, and it was absolutely gorgeous. There wasn't a lot of snow on the mountains, being September and all, but it was quite interesting to see the empty ski slopes as nothing but large patches of lush, green grass.
Going through the Rockies wasn't as dramatic as some of the memories I have in my head from when we used to roadtrip with the grandparents as kids - probably because we weren't towing an Airstream behind us in a diesel Ford F150, going up stressful grades in the road. It was really quite flat and easy the whole way there, tracing our way along the valley floor. I had been partly fearing the drive through the Rockies, a little nervous that we might run into snow/bad traffic/car problems, etc... The whole experience was really quite spectacular. I even thought to myself that if we'd ever wanted to move back to the US, I might really enjoy living there (if it wasn't for the really snowy winters, that is). I'd like to think I can weasel another roadtrip through there again sometime in the future. I'd really love to go back and spend some time there.
Christine had somehow managed to become an even filthier girl while on the trip, and we stopped in Colorado to give her a much-needed bath.
The before shots.
Mmmm. Bugs.
The door side panel. Serious lack of black.
Jimmer caring for his beloved. Notice how shiny she's supposed to be?
We drove straight through Denver, a choice I may regret just a tiny bit (according to family, it's quite nice as well). As soon as we got through Denver, any suggestion that there may have been mountains in Colorado had completely disappeared, and we were met with the endless stretches of the MidWest plains. The joy. It was here that I started to get a bit down, as it really felt like we were headed home - it just felt the same. And it felt like the trip was ending.
Our destination for the evening was Colby, Kansas, picked solely for the fact that there was a Motel 6 in it, and because it was where I-70 and 24 Highway split off - which was what were taking to the Great Ball o' Twine. Jimmer and I both expected Colby to be this tiny little farmer's town, with maybe a QuikTrip and a Motel 6 popped up right along the freeway, and nothing else. When we got there, I have to say we were both very impressed. It was indeed a small town, but not much different at all to Oak Grove, in that it was a somewhat big small town. I mean, they had a Dairy Queen and everything!
Equally as impressive was our Motel 6 that we stayed in. I'm not sure how many of you know, but Motel 6s are fairly cookie cutter: You walk in to your room via the outside, and are met with the bedroom, tv on the dresser, table and chairs. The sink is usually an extension on the bedroom leading up to the simple bathroom. As we pulled up to the motel, both Jimmer and I were a little confused that there were no outside doors. I went inside to book our room, and was in one of the poshest lobbies I'd seen the whole trip - rivalling our expensive, swanky Marriot in Vegas! The lady behind the counter punches us in, and then directs us to our room down the hall! We didn't have to climb some stairs outside and walk along a balcony or anything! I was so thrilled. Our last night on the road wasn't turning out to be so bad after all.
Although Colby didn't offer us the most lengthy choices of places to eat, they did have a Gambino's pizza, which also made me very happy! Gambino's are a little hard to find (why does it seem they only ever exist in small towns?) and are a true gem - one of my favorites since discovering one in Grain Valley back when I was in high school.
We make our way to the shop, and as we pull in, I notice the sign is off. Being that it's just barely dusk, I think it's only because they haven't turned them on yet. We get out and I'm already through the door when Jimmer slows to read the sign taped to the door. "New hours. M-F, close at 8:00pm." I look at my watch, and it's 8:15. I'm standing in the dining area, and I turn to a lady who is wiping down the tables. "Are you guys open?" I ask. "That's up to Linda," she says, as she motions towards the kitchen.
We go over to the counter, and Linda is in the back sorting out the trash. "Are you still open?" I ask her. She says she can whip us up something quick as long as we don't dine in - that she's still got the oven on for another customer. We promise her we'll get out of her hair, and we order ourselves a little pizza to hopefully make it easier on her. She throws it together, and as we're waiting out in the lobby for it to finish, another customer comes in. I think to myself, it's really late now, she won't serve them. As it turns out, he had ordered ahead, and it was his pizza that was why she still had the oven on and the doors unlocked. So really, we owe our dinner to that man.
About 5-10 minutes later, our pizza is done and she throws it in a box for us "straight out of the oven!" as she exclaims. "Be sure to come back, and make sure to dine in when you do!" I genuinely thanked her, and told her how much we appreciated it because we knew she didn't have to do that (and being that I've worked at McDonald's before, I know how much it sucks to have someone come in right as you're closing). Even though I hate small towns, I still gotta love their charm.
We took our pizza back to the hotel, wolfed it down like it never even existed, then found ourselves hungry for some ice cream. Remembering Colby's promise of a Dairy Queen, we pop out and cross the road, only to be reminded of one of the reasons that I hate small towns - everything closes as soon as the sun sets. So we cussed at the door for a bit, then walked next door to the gas station and got some ice cream sandwiches, as well as a little Wizard of Oz gift for a friend back home.
We made our evening's regrets gorging ourselves on way too much ice cream, and we finished the last night of our roadtrip watching "Two Weeks' Notice" and the first part of "Scream."
( The road through Colorado. )
To use Jimmer's words, we were both "happy to see the backside of Vegas." We were both very anxious to get out; it just wasn't for us. I had always known that I would never enjoy Vegas, and being there only solidified the feelings for me. Just not my cup of tea.
Leaving Las Vegas.
Little did we know that we would hate Utah even more... Without really trying to sound like I am trying to be lazy with this entry, there really wasn't a whole lot to report on the whole day. Just a lot of dusty, empty landscapes. Utah was even more sparsely populated than the feeblest places in New Mexico and Arizona, which surprised us. Jimmer was baffled by the fact that Utah is such a central hub for all of the crazy religious folk, because we thought living in a place so desolate would make you doubt any existence of a higher power.
Getting to our destination in Grand Junction, CO was the highlight of the entire day. This was because this was when Jimmer finally got to sit down in a Red Lobster and have some of the Endless Shrimp that he had fantasized over ever since a commercial caught his eye back in Kansas City. Jimmer let me have the last of the odd-numbered garlic cheddar biscuits because he loves me so. We ate ourselves far too many shrimp, not because we were so hungry, but for the only fact that we were determined to get our money's worth. The plates were huge, and they filled us up on salad and a side beforehand - we were in a losing battle. Tasty battle, though.
We took ourselves to Target to get a cd and some oil for the car (which may have needed an oil change before we even started our trip, so says the guy behind the counter), and then retreated back to the hotel room full to our eyeballs in seafood.
( Pictures from the day's drive. )
Okay, firstly an apology for the delay in getting this done. I'm pretty sure that any interest anyone may have had in our travels has evaporated by now, now we're home, but we'll get this all finished up and then you won't have to suffer it anymore.
Sunday we awoke and made our way into the hotel function room for some complimentary breakfast. This was where we started making our money back. It's been a while, but I seem to remember consuming some biscuits and gravy (and for the uninitiated Europeans, that's like savoury scones and a savoury bechamel sauce with sausage in it, NOT cookies and meat-sauce) followed by some mini muffins, then a big waffle. As complimentary breakfasts go, this was pretty good stuff, with little cups of waffle batter that you poured into a waffle maker so it was all good and hot and yummy. I think Jenise wasn't quite so extravagant and just made several return trips to the biscuits and gravy. We rolled back to our room, beyond full and ready for a nap, having only woken up 30 minutes previously.
As we were still a little shellshocked from our previous night's escapades, we decided to take our sweet time getting ready to head out onto the strip once more, and we showered and got ready to go out while enjoying(?) watching the Chiefs get beat by the Raiders.
We braced ourselves and once again headed out onto the Vegas strip, this time under the glaring sun and 100F (38C) heat of a sunny Vegas lunchtime. As we made our way through the Mandalay Bay casino and out onto the strip, we suddenly found ourselves enjoying Vegas. It would seem there are two types of people in the world, Vegas Saturday Night people, and Vegas Sunday Morning people. Jenise and I are definitely of the latter category. Under the cloudless sky, Vegas looked clean, and the gentle hubbub of vacationing families enjoying the more family-orientated delights of Sin City were much more our pace. We slowly made our way along the strip, sometimes finding refuge in the air conditioned sanctuary of a casino before the stench of stale cigarettes and desperation forced us once again blinking into the sunlight. It was this day, more than any other, where our Scavenger Hunt came into play, for were it not for the scavenger hunt making us have to find several things in Vegas, we may not have spent as long on the strip as we did - and it was something that in the end I'm glad we did. We caught the fountains at the Bellagio hotel and casino (to the strains of 'Viva Las Vegas' by The King...classy) and just generally soaked in a little Vegas atmosphere.
We retired to the hotel with aching, burning feet and made plans to chance our luck one more time and head back out to the strip on a Sunday night, hoping that it wouldn't be as crazy as the Saturday night.
It turned out to be a good decision, and as we walked through Mandalay Bay casino for the last time, we noticed that none of the restaurants had crazy-long lines of people waiting to be seated, so we decided to something crazy in Vegas. Now, remember, I'm without ID so I can't do much that's crazy, and Jenise?....well....you all know Jenise...not really a 'live by the seat of her pants' kinda gal, is she? So the one crazy thing we decided to do on our last night in Vegas was to pay $14 each to ride the rollercoaster that was on top of New York, New York casino. It was such fun, and went on for a lot longer than I expected it to and we were both glad we did it.
We made our way to Chin Chin - a chinese restaurant in New York, New York hotel casino. We had ourselves some good food, with Jenise introducing me to General Tso's Chicken (YUM!), and then retired once more to the hotel to grab an early-ish night as we had another long haul ahead of us the day after. Our last night in Vegas ended with snuggling while watching Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
( Vegas pictures under the cut )
- Mood:
Jimmer
These are from Grandpa B. Helen and Alister have also given us theirs, and they'll be up as soon as we get them online!
More entries in the works, kiddies... Promise!
But I come bearing gifts... The first of pictures from our wedding have (FINALLY!) made their way over to us! Because my aunt Julie continues to be the most awesome person I know, she sent these today:
Take a gander.
The rest of the updates are coming, I promise. Hopefully this weekend? Jenise is working and then we're both going out to do a bit of shopping, so we'll try to get some more done in a bit. Everyone should hound Jimmer to do a but of punching away while I'm at work on Saturday.
- Mood:
cold - Music:Sky News on tv
Firstly, a small warning. This post sees our intrepid travelers entering Vegas, and as such, a few images and stories are not for the very young or extremely sensitive reader. I will try my best to keep it as clean as possible, but for the sake of documenting the trip in its entirety, and in order to best capture our feelings on 'Sin City', please allow a little margin for..well..sinful stuff! (Please note our heroic and good natured travelers were not being sinful, it's just what they witnessed).
So, we left Bakersfield early on Saturday morning. My mood following the previous night's revelation about my missing ID was surprisingly upbeat. So I can't check into hotels because I don't have my ID, no problem, I'll just continue to get gas and food and Jenise can pick up the hotels. We hit the road and everything was going well. Until our first gas stop of the day. I put my credit card in the pump to pre-pay and was told to enter my 5 digit zip code. Well, being from the UK, I don't have a 5 digit zip code. I have a postcode consisting of 3 digits and 4 letters, and Mr. Petrol Pump doesn't understand that. Oh well, not a problem, I'll just head on into the station and pre-pay in there, and hell, why not just pick me up some Mountain Dew while I'm at it. I pick up my soda and head on over to the cashier. I put the soda on the counter and ask for $20.00 of gas to be put on our pump, and slide my credit card over, telling the cashier that it has asked for my zip but I'm from the UK. "No problem" she says, "Can I see your ID, please?". Oh. "Erm...I don't...my wife...ID...no...left back in Kansas City". She tells me she cannot progress with this transaction unless I have a debit card or cash. I don't need ID to go ahead and put it on a debit card, it seems. Bouyed by this piece of wonderful news, I provide my debit card (knowing that it'll work as I've alerted my bank to the fact that I'd be using it abroad). She processes the card and asks for my PIN number, which I enter. "It is not recognising your PIN". "Oh...umm...okay...can you swipe the card and have me sign for it?" "We can, but we need your ID to be able to do that". Once again I return to my wallet and produce a couple of dollars (out of the 8 dollars I have in there), say that I'll pay for the soda in cash and will sort something out for the gas. I retreat back outside where Jenise is waiting by Christine to start pumping the gas, and tell her the joyful news that it seems all the time we're in California, at least, I'm all out of cash.
This spoils my mood a little, and as we head off to Vegas, for the first time in the trip I close my eyes and drift off for a nap while Jenise drives us through the desert (I suppose this one of the pros of not being able to drive anymore, though I certainly didn't see it at the time).
When I awake 15 minutes later, I glance out the window and notice these cool trees have been added to the scenery:
This new botanic discovery led us to one of the least intelligent conversations I have ever had in my entire life, and that includes my formative years spent gurgling and crying. I can give you the conversation word for word, as it is burned in my memory:
Jimmer: Hey! Look at those cool trees! What are they? (You see, Jenise being American, knows everything there is to know about the country...)
Jenise: I don't know
Jimmer: They're pretty cool looking. *starts taking pictures*
Jimmer: They look like the tree on the front of U2's 'Joshua Tree' album! So cool! *continues taking pictures*
Jenise: Umm..maybe they're Joshua Trees?
Jimmer: Oh yeah! Maybe that's what they are! *picks up iPod, scrolls to The Joshua Tree and hits play*
And that, ladies and gentleman, was it. And it was enough to lift me out of my funk and get me smiling again.
We soon crossed the Nevada state line, and as soon as we had we were hit with signs for casinos:
We were soon into Vegas, and in a flash of inspiration I tell the GPS to take us to the Residence Inn, which was just off the strip. I'm so glad we did this. The hotel was great, and the room was probably bigger than our entire apartment back home:
The biggest, most comfortable bed I have EVER slept in.
Looking out into the living area, complete with sofa and armchair. Forgive the mess, we'd just arrived and were keen to unpack and get some laundry done. In a post-modern twist you can see a pretty lady blogging in this picture!
The kitchen. This IS bigger than our kitchen back home, and Jenise was extremely happy that we had a toaster so she could have warm Pop Tarts, and a fridge that we could store milk in.
Safe to say, we wanted to take advantage of this luxurious life, so we made a deal that we would hang out in the room for a while, do some laundry, update the blog, get clean and head off onto the strip in the evening for some dinner.
This was to prove the biggest mistake we made the entire trip! (Yes, including the ID fiasco).
Because our hotel was awesome, they had free shuttles to the strip. So we went ahead and boarded one, which dropped us off outside the Mandalay Bay hotel and casino. The driver told us to walk through the casino and there we would find a tram to the Excalibur hotel where we could get off and get ourselves onto the strip. Our first taste of Las Vegas casino life was walking through the labyrinthine Mandalay Bay, and after 20 or so minutes of walking through a maze of gaming tables and slot machines, we found the tram. We boarded the tram and took the 1 minute ride to the Excalibur, and got off. After another disorientating trip through another maze of crowded gaming tables and slot machines, we exit the tacky fake multi-coloured castle and find ourselves in the oppressive heat and sense-overloading sights and sounds of Las Vegas on a Saturday night.
For those of you that know Jenise and I well, you know that neither of us are party animals. Neither of us are regular drinkers, neither of us are gamblers (Jenise loves a game of Facebook poker where no money is involved, and the only time I gambled was when I married a girl I met on the internet and had only met face to face a handful of times), and neither of us are the 'go out to get laid' kind of person (even when we were single). Don't get me wrong, we KNOW how to have a good time, we rock...hard, but nothing prepared us for this. It was like something out of Apocalypse Now! With drunk guys and girls stumbling about the streets clasping HUGE glasses of over-priced cocktails, crying drunk girls being led down the streets by cops (I witnessed this), and the only means of getting around seems to be going from one casino to another, to avoid the constant traffic that cuts through the strip. For a couple of Vegas novices like ourselves, to try and work it all out on a Saturday was akin to asking Michael Phelps for a swimming race while you've still got your floaties on your arms!
I don't know how long we spent trying to get our bearings, but it was getting frustrating. Every direction we went in, we seemed to be going against the tide of barely dressed drunk girls who were being followed by very drunk, leering guys. Jenise said it was exactly how she imagined it was going to be, and I really didn't know what to expect, but I have never seen debauchery and greed and gluttony on such a huge scale. There aren't many pictures from this night, for all the sights that I wanted to take pictures of were people, and I really didn't want to get punched in the face. I was becoming disheartened and felt sleazy and seedy by association. Not wishing to come across as a snob, but it seemed to me Las Vegas on a Saturday night was a cesspit, full of the worst excrement of the human species (okay, I know that's not particularly pleasant, but it's a damn sight cleaner than my original metaphor).
This was such a shock, after spending a week trawling through small towns, and nice coastal towns. Now the sound of crickets chirping was replaced by the impressive, if slightly disturbing sound of grubby little men flicking the business cards of call-girls to all the single, rich-looking men as they passed by. I don't know if I didn't look rich enough, or if it was because I was walking along with my wife, but these grubby little urchins didn't seem interested in giving me their business cards. To be honest, this started to offend me a little bit! I was thinking 'what? am I not good enough for your call girls?' so the next time we passed one of them doing his clicky-card thing, I grabbed a bunch off him. Big mistake number 2 of the night. As soon as the other guys saw me doing this, they surrounded me, each pushing a fistful of cards into my hand. These cards have the phone number and name of the particular girl in question (or two girls, if you have the inclination and the money) and of course a photo that we are led to believe is the girl that is going to be delivered to your hotel room doorway in less than 20 minutes (I can't even get a pizza delivered that quickly in the UK!) in a state of undress (save for the sparkly little star of the tiniest part of her nipples). As I flipped through my new found stash of soft porn, I came up with a little game. It seemed these were like bubblegum cards, so I handed Jenise half and we had a little game of hooker-swaps... "I'll trade you a Bailey for a Tera and a Tiffanie". Infantile, I know, but it made me chuckle.
We finally found ourselves outside Diablo's Cantina - a very average Tex Mex restaurant on the strip. We got a table and our (not-very-dressed) waitress did a good job of being a bad waitress and brought us our appetiser after our entree. Score. Still, she looked hot. It was while I was eating my not-very-good steak sandwich that a huge fat man started nudging a wooden trunk behind me. He asked if I could still get out from the table, and I replied that I could. As I looked behind me I thought to myself 'that's a strange, small table' and carried on eating my sandwich, looking out onto the scenes of carnage that Vegas had to offer.
After a few minutes I notice a girl that is dressed in even less clothing than the waitresses walk over to the trunk behind me, and get on top of it. It's then that we notice that we are sitting right by where these girls do their 'sexy' dancing. In a cruel twist of fate, I'm sitting facing away from her and Jenise is sitting facing her, but I can see one across the bar doing the same thing. They have bottles of booze, and for an amount of money, you can stand with your back to them, head tilted back and have them poor cheap booze down your neck. I could feel the swish and sway of the girl as she danced mere feet from my head, but I couldn't see her. Jenise kindly took some pictures:
Click here to see a scantily-clad damsel doing her stuff over my head. Here too. She IS dressed, but may not be safe for work, or young children.
The one where she's posing, she is actually posing for a bunch of guys out on the street that were jeering at her. Classy.
I almost felt like joining in with the debauchery at one point, but as were going through Excalibur on the way back to the tram, I noticed one bar inside the hotel had a sign proclaiming 'No matter how old you look, we will ID you, have your ID card ready before you place your order'. I then glanced around another bar, only to see a guy that was EASILY in his 50's get carded. It seemed I wouldn't be joining in on any drinking or gambling while in Vegas, so with that last disheartening fact, Jenise and I conceded defeat to Sin City and headed back to our hotel, tired and overwhelmed. We get to our room, dead-bolt the door and pass out on our comfortable bed while watching The Truman Show on TV.
More than a week late, but hopefully better late than never...
We woke up from Pismo Beach and got an early start to allow ourselves plenty of time to take it slow up the PCH.
It was a bit overcast for most of the day, and a little chilly, but it was still very beautiful. It's a bit difficult to put it all into words, but lucky for you, we took lots of pictures (which of course do no justice for the real thing, but it's the best we could do).
( LOTS of pictures! You and your internet connection have been warned. )
We meandered along the PCH for about 3.5 or 4 hours, averaging no more than 35 miles per hour the whole way. It was great. There was one point that we were pulling away from one of our stops, and we got behind a Winnebago. When he pulled over to let us past, I said how I didn't mind following behind him going so slow.
I really enjoyed the drive, especially going around the sharp corners! There were countless times I was rounding a corner (probably faster than Jimmer would've liked) and I let out a little "Wheee!" of excitement. It was my favorite part of all of the driving we did. If we ever go back near the area, I would love to do the whole drive, all the way up the entire coast.
Monterey was our last stop on the PCH, but it was also the last place on our roadtrip where we would be driving away from home. From there, we would be driving back east.
We made our way to the Monterey Aquarium, which we had been told from different sources that it was worth a stop. I was glad we went, especially because we didn't have enough time to see the San Diego Zoo.
( Monterey Bay Aquarium under the cut. )
After the aquarium, we wandered around the town and shops for a while. I found a shop called "For Garlic Lovers" and I was in heaven. We had lunch at Luigi Linguini's pasta and seafood, which was also very good.
Before we got back on the road, we stopped at a gift shop still scoping for something tacky, and I found this sign pinned up on one of the shelves. While we didn't find anything tacky here, we did find a pirate "Poop Deck" sign for our bathroom, and some salt water taffy for Jimmer to have for the first time (which he said he loved, even though the brown ones are horrible).
We had planned to stay just outside of Monterey in Salinas, but it was still relatively early evening so Jimmer said he would keep on for a bit longer to try to make it to Bakersfield, CA, which would only put us about 6 hours to Vegas.
Mountains on the way to Bakerfield.
Going through Wine Country. Jimmer said he thinks this was the area where they filmed "Sideways."
We did finally make it to Bakersfield, but it was here that we discovered that a serious error had been made. We pulled into our motel, and Jimmer reaches for his wallet and says he will pick up the hotel this time (as at this point we had pretty much reached an unspoken agreement that I was paying for the hotel rooms and Jimmer was getting the gas). He hands the cashier his credit card and she asks him for his ID. Jimmer then turns to me and says "You have my driver's license." I had been through my wallet many times on the trip, so knowing that I didn't have it I said "No, why would I have your ID? You have it." Then Jimmer says the sentence that makes my stomach drop: "I gave it to you when you went up to pick the rental car."
Oh god, I think. So I toss my credit card and ID over to the lady, and Jimmer and I quickly go up to our room and start rifling through our suitcases. We both picked apart our wallets to no avail. I even emptied the glove compartment because I had tossed all of the rental papers, but it wasn't in there, either.
Then we called Neia, because Jimmer said the last he thought he saw it was when Neia was looking at it and commenting on his photo. I called her, but she said no, she was looking at his passport picture.
It dawned on me that I had all of Jimmer's stuff folded together when I went to pick up the rental car, including his passport. Perhaps I had stuffed it in his passport to keep it safe. Our passports were purposely left at Julie's house, because we didn't want to risk losing them while packing and unpacking for 14 days. So I called Julie and have her check his passport. I was met with both good news and bad news: It was there.
Needless to say, Jimmer wasn't too happy with me. We had made it nearly 2/3 the way around our trip - Jimmer driving the majority of it - and he didn't have his driver's license. It did come at a bad time, just as we were heading to Vegas where most things you do will require proof of age. So we ended our day in Bakersfield a little crabby and worried. And Jimmer a little annoyed that he could now no longer drive.
- Location:Jimmer's parents' house
- Mood: hungry
For all of you that have been reading and wondering if we fell off the face of the earth...
We are now back home, unloading dirty laundry from suitcases, opening bills and doing all that fun 'coming home from holiday' stuff that needs to be done.
But keep reading! We still have around half of the road trip to write up, and it should all be done over the weekend (jetlag allowing). We didn't run out of enthusiasm. We did, however, run out of free space on our Flickr site, and didn't want to post our credit card details to upgrade over Motel 6's Wi-Fi. It's all been taken care of now, so as soon as we have rested, we'll be back to furnish you all with more tales from the road..even though we're not on the road anymore. I guess this is the 21st century version of sending postcards back home that arrive once you've returned, or something.
I'll finish with this, for now:
Dear America,
You were bloody brilliant!
Love
Jimmer
PS If anyone in the KC area ever passes a black Dodge Charger, Missouri license plate MC6 V2S, please give her a little wave and tell her I'm thinking of her.
- Mood:
tired
We left San Diego fairly early because we wanted to take our sweet time on the Pacific Coast Highway, as well as run a few errands:
This picture does really kind of give away the fact that we have accomplished one of our Scavenger Hunt items, but I think this is a classic "figuring-out-the-camera-timer" shot. (We didn't go in the zoo, by the way. We decided we really didn't have enough time to do it, and we didn't want to spend $60 trying to run around looking at animals as fast as possible. Maybe next time)
The Pacific Coast Highway going through Malibu was also stereotypical California - expensive cars and surfers crossing the highway to get to the beaches.
We swung by a restaurant on Jenn's recommendation, the Marmalade Cafe. I was still struggling with my sore throat, so I didn't enjoy it as much as I could've. Jimmer had a vegetarian quesadilla which, for someone who loves her meat, I did think it was very, very good. I had an order of pot stickers which were also very good, but I think I liked the garlic cheese bread best.
As we left Marmalade Cafe, we drove by a park that was filled with hundreds (thousands?) of American flags all lined up. Jimmer said they went on for ages when he went over the hill. We're not really sure what they were for, but we assume they were for 9/11. Jimmer hopped out quickly to take a few pictures:
We called Jenn while in Malibu to meet up with her as she was back home in Ventura. So we headed her way and eventually met up with her at her university, which I have to say is a lot more awesome than the university I went to! Jenn was running around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to get her photography gallery/presentation sorted, so we didn't stay long and got out of her hair.
We then headed for San Luis Obispo, but when we got to Pismo Beach we decided to stop in there on a whim, because we planned to have dinner there anyway. It ended up to be one of the best decisions we made, because it was absolutely gorgeous there.
( 'You know what fish and chips are, right? Chicken and fries' - what I overheard a boy tell his younger sister. )
After we spent some time on the beach, we went back to the hotel to get showered, and then came back down in the evening.
Pismo Beach Pier at dusk.
We went to Splash Cafe and had some of their clam chowder on Julie's recommendation. It was indeed very good. Jimmer especially loved the sourdough bread bowl it came in.
After dinner, we retreated back to the hotel. As it was our first night without internet, we had an early night crashing out watching the news.
( Random road pictures. )
- Mood: sleepy
- Music:"Castaway" on tv
Dear America,
Chocolate Skittles are not good.
Yours, with respect
Jimmer
PS. If you could also get to work on not stopping your football games every 2 minutes so I can be told about Ford's new crossover whatchamacallit, that would really help my enjoyment of your (very confusing, but quite enjoyable) game.
- Mood: relaxed
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