Oh, Sweet Bliss

Vacation is long over, but it sure is fun to reminisce! So I'll do my best in summarizing the 12 days that we were gone. We'll see how far I get in this first post.

We flew into San Francisco and had quite an ordeal just getting to the car rental place, but we finally picked up our white Nissan Xterra. We really liked it, but we returned it on Tuesday in exchange for a little cheaper vehicle. It was definitely necessary for the off-roading we did, though! Anyway, we drove across the Bay Bridge and I got to take a bunch of pictures of the Port of Oakland for my husband. Only a few turned out, but there were a LOT of containers being loaded onto and off the ships. We hit the traffic jam of the year...it was crazy for a LLLOOONNNGGG way out of Oakland. We stopped in Tracy for some In-N-Out Burger. Have you been there? It's crazy good. By the time we got back on the road, the traffic had thinned out.

We stayed in Modesto on night one. We loaded up that night with road trip food and a cooler for our drinks. We planned on being in the mountains for a few days and didn't know what kind of food or how often we'd be able to find anything.

On Saturday, we drove to Jamestown to see Railtown 1897. Lots of movies ("Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again," "Back to the Future III," etc.) and TV shows have used the park to tape their train scenes. We rode the train and then took a tour of the roundhouse. (This is us at Railtown.)

We also visited Matt's cabin from when they lived out there in Long Barn, CA. That was the beginning of our journey across Sonora Pass. We got some beautiful pictures (see the last post), but the driving was pretty insane. Nightfall came about halfway through the Pass, so we spent a lot of the drive in the dark, which is pretty crazy when you have no idea what the drop off right next to you is like. I am glad I was driving - I get more scared when riding then driving.

Anyway, after discovering I have acrophobia (unlike him), we made it to Judy's Tahoe cabin. We were SO tired, and we had quite an ordeal just getting a cheeseburger at McDonald's (I think they were closed but forgot to turn off the menu board, so they made the burgers for the starving travelers.) We had the alarm code and punched it in, but then we set it off trying to find our way around (it's quite a big place). We figured out she had switched the "arm" and "disarm" codes around in her note - possibly on purpose. She's quite the practical joker. We decided not to figure out the hot water heater until the morning, so I washed my face in the most freezing water I have ever used in my life. And we fell blissfully asleep.

This is already too long, so I will have to continue with day 3 and on at another time.