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JON: Ok I can’t do this. After patting myself on the back just last week for not being sick for almost a year, here I am with a stuffy nose and sore throat. I pulled together some photos from the week, but Amy is going to step in and provide some commentary.

Amy take it away…

AMY: Alright, you are about to get the entirely-too-detailed description of our week 🙂 Whenever we land at a new location, I do a quick check of the local attractions and then we decide what field trips we would like to fit into our week. Last week I found the Exotic Feline Breeding Compound just 30 miles away. The girls were really excited about this stop. This Amur Leopard is one of their most important projects, as there are only 50 still living in the wild.

Emily and Natalie loved the Snow Leopard, they say he is “big and poofy”.

The next field trip was one of my picks, because it involved hiking. This is Vasquez Rocks, a local county park. These amazing sandstone formations are evidence of the fault lines that run through California.

It was a little windy to be climbing around on steep rocks, so we had to turn back a few times.

The geological layers were amazing.

We moved to Palm Springs on Thursday. Just west of there is this huge wind farm. Tours were available for only $30/person. We took the windshield tour.

We haven’t had much luck lately with campgrounds that allow open wood fires or if they do, they don’t sell firewood and we aren’t prepared. So, here are the girls getting their fix of roasted marshmallows.

Here is the RV Park in Palm Springs. It was the largest collection of expensive RV’s we have seen yet. Also, we were the only ones there under 55 years old. The weather was wonderful, sunny and 75.

On Saturday, we packed a picnic and headed for the Coachella Valley Preserve. It was a very cool palm tree oasis in the middle of desert.

The girls thought this was very cool. Maybe we could tow this instead?

We try to do a family hike on Sunday mornings and last Sunday we hiked up about 800 ft to this Palm Springs overlook.

Later that day, we found this photo of hikers in 1942 taken near where we had just been. It is amazing how this city has changed and expanded to take up the entire desert valley.

And a frozen yogurt treat for the weary hikers…

Here is the tourist-y side of Palm Springs.

The home improvement project of the week: to add two more batteries that will give us more amp hours and therefore a longer time to be without electrical hookups. Between the recent exhibits at the Hoover Dam and the girls wanting to know why they can’t always charge their iPods, the girls are getting good at understanding energy generation, storage and consumption.

When I checked the weather this morning there was a severe weather alert about wind, warning difficult driving conditions for high profile vehicles, like RV’s.  Sure enough, the weather forecast was right on today. It was hard driving and we were headed straight into it.

Then we hit the hills and the winds died down, but the roads became narrow and winding and then the fog rolled in, sigh.

We arrived safely at our current stop, in the mountains northeast of San Diego. It might take us a few days to want to leave our campsite after the drive today, but maybe we will find a nearby adventure.

We left Death Valley on the 31st and headed back to Vegas, as Sherry and Clint needed to catch a flight out of there early the next morning. So New Year’s Eve in Vegas it was…

There were people evvverywhere. And it was only 5:30!

I was not about to get out of the car. We decided it was safest to just drive down the strip a couple times, then go find some dinner away from all the craziness.

That was actually harder than anticipated. After striking out at two other places (one too smokey, the other too expensive), Wo Fat knocked it out of the park. It was cheap and delicious:

As planned, Sherry and Clint flew out stupid-early on New Year’s Day. We had such a fantastic time with them, and it was nice once again to spend a holiday with more family. We hope they can visit us again before this trip is over.

We wanted to see more of Vegas, but we waited a couple days after New Years for things to settle down. We stopped by the Bellagio hotel to catch the fountain and light show. Yes, it was rather ostentatious — as is all of Las Vegas — but it was entertaining nonetheless:

A high-fashion candy store across from the Bellagio:

More sights of downtown:

Later in the week, we took a side trip to the Hoover Dam. Wow:

The electricity-generating turbines deep inside the dam:

The Hoover dam is an engineering marvel. I was unable to capture how huge this thing is.

On Friday, we left Las Vegas for good. Like any freak show, it was fun to gawk at but we were more than happy to leave. Vegas just wasn’t our “thing.”

Amy logging some miles on the road to the Mojave Desert for the weekend:

I thought our campground was called “Hole In The Wall” because of its austere and remote location:

…which it was all that, but the name came from something else (more on that in a sec):

In several places, the pavement just…ended.  We spent just as much time on unpaved roads as we did on paved ones, and many of the “paved” roads were pretty rough. (We are so hard on our little Scion!)

The view from our campsite:

These are solar panels outside a nearby ranger station. I’m including this as a representative photo of all of the solar panels we see out West. They’re everywhere, as they should be. Solar power is sexy.

We got sort of lost on our way to the “lava tubes” (underground caverns made from hardened lava). There were no road signs, and we were a few miles down a pretty rough unpaved road. We decided to hike up a nearby inactive cinder cone (sort of like a volcano) to get a view of the surrounding roads and figure out where the heck we were. This didn’t look like that much of a hike:

…but it was. Size and scale are so deceiving out here. It was a long hike, but we were able to match the roads up with our map and see exactly where we were:

Stopping for lunch:

We eventually found our lava tubes:

Crawling through a low entry:

…to get inside to a larger space:

At the end of the afternoon, we drove out to the local sand dunes for another hike:

It was windy:

We got back to the car right as the sun set, with the moon high in the sky:

That night the wind howled — growled, actually — and rocked the RV like a boat. It was sunny the next morning, but still windy and cold. We bundled up.

…and double-timed it to get the blood flowing on our way to our morning hike:

Buster the friendly brown dog (he belonged to one of the rangers):

These rock formations are from volcanic explosions several million years ago where thick ash and gas hardened to form these interesting shapes. The holes and pockets that you see are where the gas was once trapped:

There were some installed metal rings in a few spots to make climbing a bit easier:

And that hole up there in that “wall” is the reason for the name “Hole In The Wall.”

Though not as spectacular as Death Valley, the Mojave Desert was wonderful. I love the desert. Let me clarify: I love the desert in January.

We’re now in the podunk town of Acton, CA in an RV park right next to train tracks (a train is passing as I type this.) We’ll explore some things around here over the next few days and then move on toward San Diego at the end of the week.  We’ve been in CA for 2 and half months now, so I’m getting antsy to move on to other parts of the country.  I’m talking to you, Arizona.

 

Maybe it’s just the cheery name, but Death Valley has been one of my favorite places of this entire RV trip. I’m going to be a little heavy on the photos in a vain attempt to explain why.

Our camping spot the first couple of nights was unfortunately a bit of a touristy resort, and it was bustling with people. I guess because of the extreme temperatures during the rest of the year (135 degrees is the record), December and January are the busy months:

Fortunately, there was no shortage of places to go to get away from the crowd. We started our first day with a climb in Golden Canyon a few miles away from the camp ground:

It did not disappoint:

I sat down on this path for a while where I took this next photo. Other than my family walking up ahead, there wasn’t another soul in sight. Strangely, there wasn’t the slightest breeze either. Just complete calm. Complete silence. Room temperature. All I could hear was the ringing in my ears and the sound of my own breath. It was one of those moments where I wondered why I would ever go home.

We hiked all day in Golden Canyon, and on the way home we saw some white stuff off in the distance that we wanted to check out. A couple miles down an unpaved road we found out it was a salt patch:

Surrounding the salt area was a vast field of mud that had taken on these bizarre shapes — domes and crevices and such — that had, I guess, been hardened by the sun, like clay in a kiln. It was strong enough to stand on and sounded like broken pottery when kicked apart. I’ve never seen anything like it.

We stayed there until the sun went down:

Wanting to see more salt, we drove out to Badwater the next day. Badwater is a 200 square mile “salt pan” on the floor of Death Valley:

There is a constant crunching sound when you walk around on this stuff:

Badwater is the lowest point of North America at 282 feet below sea level:

This was the gas station down the road from our campsite, one of only two gas stations in the 3 million acres that make up Death Valley. Fortunately I didn’t have to fill up here:

After Badwater, we went to see some dunes. These sand dunes get up to 700 feet tall and are created by wind erosion acting on the surrounding mountains. The dunes constantly change shape, but all that sand is trapped by the mountains from which it originated:

We did lots of climbing:

The temperature was nice, but I wished it wasn’t so cloudy:

Playing in the sand:

Saw a cool fox (we think it was guarding a den to the left). It didn’t seem alarmed at the few of us gawking at it, but it was keeping one eye open:

Finally the sun came out!

Back at the RV, emptying our shoes for the 138th time:

On the way to our next camp site, I had to pull over and take in the amazing sunset. There’s no photoshop work here folks; that’s right out of the ol’ camera:

Our campsite that night was an hour away on a paved road, but it was a “dry campsite,” so no hookups of any kind. It would be a fun exercise in conservation to make our electricity and water last for two nights with 7 people (the 5 in my family plus Sherry and Clint).

Fairly close by was an oddity called Scotty’s Castle. The short version of the story is that in the 1920’s a man named Scotty got a bunch of a investment money in exchange for shares in his gold mine that didn’t actually exist. Then one of his investors came out to see the alleged gold mine, fell in love with the desert, befriended Scotty (despite being conned by him), and built a vacation home there. Scotty publicized the castle as his own and as proof of his gold mine’s riches. The full story is pretty interesting, and I’m glad we stopped.

The main stop of the day, though, was a volcanic crater that blew its lid about 2000 years ago:

The sand and gravel was pretty thick, so we could run down in an almost slalom-like fashion. It was pretty fun:

The cracks in the ground at the center of the crater ran 10″ deep, a testament to the dry, blistering heat that this place gets:

A long trek back up:

We had started down a 30 mile unpaved road with the intent to go see the sailing rocks — seriously, go read about that, they’re amazing — but the road proved to be too rough and we had to stop after just a few miles. Before turning back though, we got out and just enjoyed the solitude of the desert for a little bit. Like the mountain tops of Golden Canyon, this valley was soundless and windless. The clouds would shift and sunlight would roll across the valley, but that was the only detectable motion. It was very peaceful and I could have happily sat there all day:

Could nature say “don’t touch” any more clearly here?

A high point from our final hike of the day:

That night the stars were so bright, even with a half moon out:

Back in the RV for the evening, we celebrated Natalie’s 8th birthday. (Note the single light on; gotta conserve battery.)

More relaxing in the evening. We were all in bed with the lights out by 9:00.

What a view to wake up to:

We broke camp later that morning and headed back to Vegas for New Year’s Eve, but I’ll post that in a separate entry. I want to keep Death Valley as a post of its own.

 

After several days of delays, we were finally able to move into our new RV. We pulled the old coach up to the new one and started the transfer. We were able to get most of it moved within a few hours, making it the fastest move ever:

Trying to find a place for everything:

Our first night, everyone tucked in their beds:

The next morning, we gathered up the last few remaining items. We were all excited about the new RV, but also a little sad to be leaving the old one. After months of calling it “home,” that’s exactly what it had become to us.

We were faced with a bit of a challenge with the bikes and how to hook them and the car up to the new RV (it had to do with the hitch of the new RV being higher and messing up the clearance necessary for everything to work safely). We solved this by donating Carrie’s and Natalie’s bikes to Goodwill, and strapping the remaining 3 to the back of the Scion (now we can bang up the back of the Scion the way we’ve banged up the front!):

In planning for this trip, I think we did a pretty good job with what we took and what we decided to leave behind with one HUGE exception: those bikes. Those cursed, wretched bikes. We’ve barely used them, yet they’ve bounced around on the back of the RV for thousands of miles and dented up the front of the Scion in the process. I regret ever taking them. We should have left them at home.

Here we are, ready to depart on our maiden voyage:

…right into December 23rd traffic. Ugh:

Here’s Em in what she calls the “first class seat:”

Even with the slides in, there’s still quite a bit more room than what we had in the old RV:

These chairs are like home theater seats. I want to watch a movie while driving down the road. It’s also pretty cool being eye-level with the truckers.

Nat, hard at work at her desk:

Boon-docking in a Walmart parking lot on the 23rd:

The next day we made it to Las Vegas:

Our first sit-down meal in the new rig on Christmas eve:

This was just one of those moments that hit me: “It’s Christmas Eve, and I’m in a WalMart in Las Vegas. How delightfully strange.”

That evening, Carrie hung some Christmas lights:

Amy and Em made some Christmas cookies:

I helped:

Despite our attempts to evade Santa Clause, he managed to leave a few items for us on Christmas morning:

Later that morning, Aunt Sherry and Uncle Clint arrived! (They flew in from Ohio.)

Chilling that evening:

On a recommendation from one of the guys at the RV dealership, we drove out to the Valley of Fire State Park on the 26th:

A picnic on the red rocks:

It was a lot of fun, and a great warm-up for our trip to Death Valley.

Welp, I figured I’d be reporting from our new rig this week, but no dice…it’s still at the dealer getting serviced. I guess RVs have recalls on them all the time (comforting, right?) — a light switch here, a transmission there — so the dealer is making sure that everything is up to date before they toss us the keys. Last I heard was that it could be Monday or Tuesday next week before it’s ready for us.

This past Tuesday, we took a family trip to Fry’s Electronics. Emily had saved up enough cash for her own iPod Touch, so she was eager to make her purchase:

I’m not sure why it was so much fun going to Fry’s, but it was. That place is like a carnival of electronics.

The rest of the week was school and work as usual. A big achievement though was getting our first iPad app finished and off to Apple for review (the app is an SLR camera simulator intended to teach people how to use an SLR camera…it’s basically a pimped out version of something I’ve had online for a couple years). Now we’re just waiting to see if Apple accepts or rejects it.

By Friday, the girls were eager to start working on their Christmas stockings:

I thought everyone’s turned out great. I was very proud of them:

Plus, it was a fun night. Everyone was in a good mood even though it was late (10pm is usually “grumpy hour”) and we even had Charlie Brown-esque Christmas music playing in the background. For the first time this month, it felt like Christmas.

On Saturday, we spent the afternoon in Monterey, starting with a picnic lunch at this nice little park:

We tooled around on a surrey for an hour. It was a lot of fun and a lot of exercise (5 passengers but only 4 peddlers):

We were in Monterey a few weeks ago but it was pretty drizzly that day. This time, it was a beautiful day and the weather was perfect.

After we left Monterey, we took the “17 mile drive” through Pebble Beach which has several scenic stops along the Pacific coast.

Finally got to see some whale spouts:

…and the famous “Lone Cypress:”

More cool scenery:

There’s nothing special about this house (other than it being awesome) or this particular photo, but ever since we’ve been in California I’ve been struck by the grandeur of some of these houses. There are big houses in Indiana, sure, but these are like celebrity mansions with butlers and stuff. And there’s hundreds of neighborhoods of these. Everywhere:

Natalie has become obsessed with cleaning the floor around the kitchen area. She’ll sweep it a few times a day and then get down on her knees with a wet washcloth. I thought the day when my kid would do random house cleaning would never come.

Today we spent most of the day in Santa Cruz, mostly at the Seymour Center at UC Santa Cruz. It was basically a science and marine biology learning center-type place. I thought it was great, and the girls seemed to have a good time. Here’s a skeleton of a blue whale that beached itself in 1979. I should have gotten a different angle here to capture how enormous these animals really are. Almost dinosaur-like:

Em got to pet this shark:

More hands-on sea life:

On the way home, we picked up a Sunday paper. Amy’s really been into reading local California news lately, especially since we’ve been around silicon valley. The business section is particularly interesting, as it talks about what Facebook, Twitter, Google and the likes are doing like it was (and is) local news. It’s times like this that I feel a million miles away from Indy! 😉

I’m officially on Christmas vacation starting tomorrow, so I’ll try to do a few things around the RV to get it ready to turn in to the RV dealer. But we’re otherwise just crossing our fingers that the new RV will be ready by Tuesday so we can move in and get on with our travels. We’re planning on meeting Amy’s sister Sherry and her boyfriend Clint in Vegas next weekend, so we need to get heading that way.

 

This past week we traveled here and there blah blah blah:

And then we saw something or other yadda yadda yadda.

Ok, so now that we’re all caught up, the big news of the week is that we got a new (used) RV this weekend. It’s a 2002 32′ Fleetwood Southwind. It’s in excellent shape on the outside and feels inexplicably new on the inside. Only ~18,800 miles. And brand new tires. It was one of those deals that we just couldn’t pass up:

It has a couple slide-outs, so we’ll be able to stretch our long, long legs a bit more:

At 32′ it’s just 3 feet longer than our current RV. Again, more room but still manageable.

Amy taking a test drive:

We’ll be sad to say goodbye to our trusty Coachman Leprechaun — it’s been a great RV — but we’re pretty excited about moving into the new rig later this week (the dealer is doing one last inspection of all of the systems and giving it a thorough cleaning).

RV’s aside, there were other highlights from the week. Here are a few in no particular order.

We’ve been in Gilroy CA, which as every American knows, is the garlic capitol of the world. When you’re here, you know why: the whole town smells like garlic! Not in a bad way either; this place smells delicious.

Yet another random coffeehouse where I did my work for the day:

As well as another random library. Why did I ever rent an office in Indy when there were perfectly good libraries??

It’s been getting a little chilly in the mornings. Here’s Natalie warming up in front of the vent she affectionately calls “heat-y.”

Feels like Halloween in the Fall, not Christmas in the Winter!

I had to work, but Amy and the girls took a side trip 20 miles away or so to Pinnacles National Monument:

I love the way all of the hills around here look at sunset:

Our 5 star accommodations one night last week: A camping world parking lot.

It was a great week, but between work and RV stuff, it was a total blur — hence this blog post being a little more scattered than usual. My work is winding down for the year, so I’m looking forward to spending even more quality time with my family. The first thing we’re going to do when we move into the new RV is a little Christmas decorating (we made sure we brought some Christmas lights from home! 🙂

 

Since we didn’t get to see everything on our list during our first stay near San Francisco, we decided to make a second pass through the area.

We kicked the week off with a trip the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, CA, home of delicious jellybeans and creepy inflatables (am I wrong?):

Inside was a magical wonderland of confectionary goodness:

..like this:

Here’s the crowd in line for the factory tour. The hats were mandatory:

…a requirement some visitors were not too happy about:

Like at jumbo jet factories, photography in this jellybean plant was strictly forbidden. It was a cool tour and, hey, we got free jellybeans at the end!

This is the only surviving photo of our campsite from last week. More on that in a second.

There was a big wind storm Wednesday night that knocked out the power, so the next day we drove to Berkley for work/school:

I’m starting to really like getting out of the RV to do my work, and libraries are my new favorite place. You can’t beat the quiet, and not having to “buy a ticket” in the form of overpriced coffee is a nice bonus.

Here’s my family helping me with a work project on Friday morning; I needed some video footage of a girl’s head (it’s complicated).

This was my latest attempt to get this footage after a couple previous failures and many, many tests. But, finally, the weather, the lighting, the moods, …everything came together, and after 45 minutes I had what I needed. I previewed the shots on the camera, and everything looked great.

But when I went to download the files to my mac, the card was blank. I tried another computer; blank! I put it back in the camera; BLANK! And not only was the footage I just shot gone, my trip photos that I had accumulated since my last post were gone too.

All.

Gone.

A primal scream escaped my lips (among other things). Startled birds everywhere flew out of trees. If you’ve ever lost data, you know: it’s a sickening, soul-crushing feeling.

At this point, it was time to leave for Alcatraz, but I wasn’t about to use my camera until I figured out what its problem was. Unfortunately, that meant all I had to shoot with was my iPhone. Ugh.

We took “the Bart” (which I’m guessing stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit) from Castro Valley to downtown San Francisco:

…then hopped “the Muni” (a bus) and took that to the pier:

…and then took a boat out to Alcatraz:

LOVED the audio tours; they were great. (Natalie chose not to listen to hers, however, as the sound effects of slamming doors “made [her] jump.”)

San Francisco, as viewed from Alcatraz:

I loved Alcatraz. I was pleased (and a bit surprised) at how much my girls got into the whole experience too.

Taking the Bart back to Castro Valley was a different experience than the initial trip, as it was now rush hour and very crowded. We stood most of the trip.

We returned back to a dark campground…still no power after 2 days. Grrr…

That evening, the Chabot Science Center (about 10 miles away from our campsite) was open to the public to come and look through their really fancy telescopes. It was a nice clear night, and we got to see Jupiter, its moons, and a few other outer space curiosities.

This is the best my iPhone could do of the breathtaking view of San Francisco and the Bay area from upon high:

Our campground really was a beautiful place — I HAD photos to show that — but between still not having any electricity and still fuming about losing my photos and videos, I was ready to pack up and move on. (Here’s Carrie showing off a large piece of debris from the wind storm…glad that didn’t land on the RV!)

But this place had one last challenge up its sleeve, this time in the form of brown water gurgling up from the sewer:

Eww. I did the best I could to hose it all off, but it never did drain. So if you’re camping in Chabot Regional Park any time soon, don’t use spot #2 (appropriate number, don’t you think) because, as Uncle Eddie would say, “the s***ter’s full!”

We’ve been casually keeping an eye out for a bigger RV, and Amy found this one on Craigslist. We checked it out and really liked it, but I’m not sure it’s the right one for us (two girls would have to share a big bed). But we’ll at least do some research to find out how an Indiana resident buys (and sells) vehicles in California to see if upgrading to another RV is even worth the hassle.

Today, we drove to Salinas CA, birthplace and childhood home of Nobel prize-winning author John Steinbeck (Of Mice and Men, Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, etc.):

Before today, I knew very little about John Steinbeck. Amy, however, is a big fan and had shared bits and pieces with me of East of Eden (her favorite) and Travels with Charley as she read them a year or two ago.

Travels with Charley was his last book (he died in 1968) where, having become disenchanted with life and his career despite his multiple successes, travels across America in a pickup truck camper with his dog to rediscover America and his own self.

All of this really resonated with me, as there are definitely similarities between his trip and this RV trip that I am on:

John Steinbeck’s house where he grew up:

We’re settled in Morgan Hill, CA for the week. Other than the typical work and school stuff, we need to have some work done on the RV (I’ve got an air-shock that needs attention). Other than that, the major objective for the week is to get our Christmas card finished up and mailed out.

 

 

We really enjoyed Saratoga. Even though our campsite had no internet service, it was a lovely place to stay:

I ended up working a couple half days last week, and plenty of coffee shops like this were just a couple miles away from our campsite. The internet was simply amazing.

And I’m not talking about a coffee shop’s wi-fi (which actually tend to be pretty awful); I’m talking about my own mobile internet connections whose speeds vary wildly depending on our location. In this little village of Saratoga, I got over 3.5 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up over my AT&T 3G — I didn’t even know 3G was capable of those speeds — and over 30 Mbps down and 17 Mbps up over my Verizon 4G — that’s faster than what I got at home with my cable internet. I guess that’s silicon valley for you.

Apple headquarters was 5 miles up the road, so we stopped by for a visit to their company store. Alas, they were closed for Thanksgiving week. That makes us 0 for 2 on successful visits to global tech companies (Microsoft was the other strike-out back in October).

Later in the week we went to San Jose to visit their Tech Museum:

We thought it was going to be more of a “history of computing” kind of thing, but it turned out to be merely a tech-ish science museum. It was still cool though, and the price was right (free).

Here are the girls checking out a cool 180 degree Google Maps booth:

There’s our RV in the driveway at home. C’mon Google, keep up!

Emily navigating an air-propelled space-walk simulator:

Amen:

Some cool earthquake measurement devices:

…and an earthquake simulator. This thing shook the floor, replicating the exact movements of several big earthquakes in recent history. Here we are feeling the Gujarat earthquake in India from 2001:

Thanksgiving day: 5 wild turkeys strolling past our RV. Where’s my musket when I need it?

Amy did a little 6 mile run that morning:

For Thanksgiving, we were graciously invited to join my cousin Jason and Mark at Mark’s mom’s house about an hour and half or so north of Saratoga.

We had such a good time eating together, playing some games, and hearing the stories from Mark’s mom about coming to American (she’s Armenian) in the early 70’s…it was fascinating. Here’s the whole group: Mark’s sister, his niece, Mark, Mark’s mom, my group, and my cousin Jason:

The next day, we took the Scion in for an oil change and to get a leaky tire fixed. This is another place I recommend for auto service if you’re ever in Sunnyvale, CA:

Killed some time at a nearby Starbucks, waiting for the car to be ready:

Once we got our wheels back, we headed to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View:

I could have spent all day here. I could also have posted a couple dozen photos here (it was THAT interesting), but I’ll constrain myself to just a few of my favorites.

Here’s the first computer with a graphic user interface (a post-WWII military computer that would show missile and plane locations on a screen). Its designers thought of everything: it comes with a built-in ashtray and cigarette lighter.

The first video game, 1972:

The first Apple computer (note Steve Wozniak’s “Woz” signature at the top), 1976:

It was fun to marvel at the computing technology from the last 75 years, and even the computer stuff from when I was a kid — those things belong in a museum. It was a little unsettling, however, to look at artifacts from the early internet of the 1990’s — AOL, Netscape, etc. It just really hit me how much the world has changed even since I’ve been an adult. What an amazing time to be alive.

Make that 0 for 3 on successful visits to global tech companies. Google was just down the road from the Computer History Museum, and even though they too were closed for Thanksgiving week, it was still fun to wander around Google-land.

I had to capture this symbol of Californian hospitality; they seem to be everywhere. “Don’t back up! Severe tire damage will occur!” say the signs.

Today, we went to Muir Woods. Great place, but it was very crowded…more crowded than what we’re used to.

I continue to marvel at the age of trees:

Muir Woods was a lot like the redwoods we had already seen, but it felt great to be back in a forest again. Much better than L.A. traffic.

Just trying to capture what a lot of these roads look (and feel) like around here:

I hooked up the PS3. Amy was not too thrilled.

…which is why I find this photo so funny. It looks like she’s racking up kills in Call of Duty, but she was playing Little Big Planet with Emily (and trying to keep up…Emily is freakishly good at that game).

We’re camped in a nice hilly little park near Hayward, about 25 miles East of San Francisco. Lots of deer walking around, and owls hooting incessantly in the mornings. I like it. I think we’re planning on finally going to Alcatraz on Friday.

 

One of the things I love about this RV trip is the variety. When the pendulum swings away from the serenity of redwoods and rainforests, you get places like L.A. and Hollywood. This is where we spent the last week.

We kicked it off by going to a Jay Leno taping (Uncle Walter and Aunt Sue kindly watched our under-age children):

See?…told you:

Monday “headlines”…always a crowd-pleaser:

Guest Amy Adams is a well-liked actress in the Arnold family. She’s been in a lot of movies but my girls know her from Enchanted and Night At The Museum 2:

I had never heard of the Rocket City Rednecks (hillbilly scientist guys), but they were entertaining nonetheless:

Miranda Lambert was the musical guest. I bought an album of hers back in June, so it was cool to see her live. If you don’t know who she is, she’s like Carrie Underwood but way more trailer park. She was great:

After the show, we met up with everyone at a cool diner in Hollywood:

Walter, Sue, my girls, and my cousin Jason who lives in L.A. (his friend Mark also joined us and kindly took this photo):

Amy and the girls at school on the sand dunes, overlooking the beach and watching the LAX traffic fly by:

As requested, Emily celebrated her 10th birthday in Hollywood on Tuesday:

I had planned on getting a cool shot of the Hollywood sign, but we were so busy actually doing stuff, this was as close as I got:

That evening, we went out to eat at this Hollywood italian place:

The waiters and waitresses — who for some reason are also operatic singers — sang happy birthday to Emily. It was amazing. I wish I had recorded it:

After dinner we walked down to the El Capitan theater to watch Cars 2:

…but they were not open to the public that evening 🙁

So, we went back the next night, fighting traffic the whole way. That’s one thing we learned about L.A.: the highways are a slow moving parking lot between the hours of 2pm and 10pm. It was maddening:

…but we made it just in time for a 7pm showing. Cars 2 was a good movie, but I don’t know that there needs to be a Cars 3:

More downtown Hollywood scenery:

A crew taping a scene for a Jimmy Kimmel bit. The line was “Can you get me a cheeseburger?” and then two guys would jump into a car. I smell Emmy:

The Kodak Theater where the Academy Awards are held:

This was at the Columbia Memorial Space Museum that we went to later in the week. I can’t remember where it was or what day it was, and Amy is not around to ask, so sorry. Cool place though:

Toward the end of the week, there was a plumbing…incident. The water pressure at this park was comparable to that of a fire hydrant, and it made the faucet leak underneath the kitchen sink. Undetected, it drained into one of the basement bays and got a portion of the carpet wet under the couch. It smelled like old wet carpet in the RV for a couple days. Nice. Nothing some baking soda and a butterscotch-scented candle can’t fix though:

We left L.A. on Friday and boon-docked at an ocean-side park about halfway between Santa Barbara and Malibu. We left the windows open and slept to the sound of the ocean:

There was a railroad track up the hill from where we camped, so the next morning I showed my girls the old penny-on-the-train-tracks trick.

Place penny on track:

…wait for train:

…admire smooshed penny:

Saw some dolphins:

…and more surfer dudes:

We drove North a ways and stopped at this place where monarch butterflies congregate:

There were hundreds of clumps like this:

And then further down the road, we stopped at this place where sea elephants congregate. These creatures are quite possibly the world’s laziest animals:

…unless it’s dudes fighting over chicks:

This weekend, we mostly drove along Highway 1 which hugs the shoreline — often treacherously. It’s a beautiful drive, as this staged cheesy family photo illustrates:

It was getting late (and dark) on Saturday, and we needed to stop for the evening. But finding a place was trickier than we hoped. The first place we stopped didn’t have potable water, and the 2nd place we stopped didn’t have room for an RV our size. When we finally found a place that would take us, it was dark and the campsite was down a very steep narrow road into a black abyss of redwood trees. We didn’t even know what the place looked like until daylight the next morning:

I notice these dents regularly caused by my ill-stacked bicycles at the beginning of the trip. I’m trying to take the attitude of one of the characters from the Cars 2 movie, however. Mater (the beat up tow truck) likes his dents because they remind him of the people he was with when he got the dents. So too it will be with these:

Yesterday we hung out in Monterey for a few hours. It was sort of rainy:

See those big lollypops? $99.

We arrived in Saratoga by sundown. It was a beautiful drive but tiring with the constant twisty roads. We missed a couple turns along the way, and with no easy way to turn this rig around on narrow roads, tempers flared. I’ve never been so glad to get to a campground and chill out.

There is barely any cell service and zero internet service here, but we really like this park. I’m not working much this week with it being Thanksgiving week, so it’s fine to be off the grid for a few days:

Besides, we’re just a couple miles from town where there is marvelous 4G (I’m sitting in one of the lovely coffee houses as I type this.)

I really, really like Saratoga. The main drag feels homey, and the houses are beautiful without being pretentious.

I’m not ready to settle down anywhere yet, but I could totally get used to this place and am looking forward to spending the week here.

 

First let me remedy an egregious oversight from last week — Natalie lost her 2nd front tooth:

We had a flaky internet connection at the campsite in San Luis Obispo, so twice I drove a few miles down the road into town where it was 4G utopia at one of the many coffee shops:

It was a short week, however. We broke camp on Thursday and headed to Santa Barbara so Amy could run in a half-marathon. There were some very steep hills descending into Santa Barbara, and the brakes on the RV were smoking by the time we reached town. Fortunately, we were only about a mile away from the campsite, so we coasted into the RV park and let everything cool down.

The next day, I took the RV to John Hurley Automotive in Santa Barbara, CA. It’s a bit discomforting to see one’s RV home in such a precarious position, but it turns out I was in very good hands:

Hands down, this was the best automotive repair experience I’ve had. It turned out that my brakes were a-ok; only 10% wear (they just got overheated — nothing damaged). And John here gave me some great RV-mountain-driving tips to keep the brakes from overheating again. And all that only cost me $56. Whenever I have car or RV troubles again, I hope I’m in Santa Barbara so I can go to John. (Amy’s family: does this not look like Uncle Steve??)

The highlight of the week, however, was meeting up with my Uncle Walter and Aunt Sue (Walter would be running the race with Amy). They came over for dinner a couple times, cozy RV-style. It was nice to have some company and spend time with family that we don’t see enough:

Amy and Walter (red nose) on the home stretch of their half-marathon:

It was striking how great Amy looked after this race compared to her full marathon in Missoula, MT back in July:

Just some around-town scenery of Santa Barbara. Very California-y.

From atop the tower at the Santa Barbara courthouse (which is an amazing building, btw):

The old Mission Santa Barbara, dating from the early 1700’s:

This was our neighbor at the RV park in Santa Barbara. I’ve seen a lot of RVs on this trip, but this was my favorite. And yes, that’s a pop-out balcony. Must have cost huuundreds.

Before leaving Santa Barbara this morning, we had a nice breakfast as Joe’s Cafe, a great place to get pancakes with your choice of blueberries, bananas, or chocolate. By special request, Walter ordered pancakes with blueberries, bananas, AND chocolate:

This afternoon we drove down Highway 1 through Malibu, which offered some interesting sights: big houses on hills, fast cars, and surfer dudes. It was a great drive. We reached our RV park in LA mid afternoon. This is where we’ll stay all week:

Since we got to our spot for the week so early, we had time to do some biking along the beach:

…and my girls played HARD on the sand dunes until the sun went down:

Some would consider being right next to LAX a downside, what with planes roaring overhead every couple minutes and all:

But not Emily. Ever since the Boeing tour in Everett Washington, she’s been fascinated with airplanes, especially jumbo jets like the 747. She started a ledger today to keep track of all of the planes she sees flying overhead:

It should be a great week: I’m cutting out of work early tomorrow to go see a Jay Leno taping, we’ll be hanging out more with Walter and Sue, I’ll be seeing my cousin Jason who lives in LA, we have a camping spot that overlooks the ocean, and we’ll get to see more of this crazy city (which by the way has awesome 4G).