California was beautiful
We flew into San Jose and drove up to San Francisco. It was a little cool in the city, but walking around on all the hills kept us active enough to not mind. We spent two days in the city exploring the waterfront and chinatown. Being good tourists, we ate dim sum for lunch and took the trolly around town.
Next we headed for Montery, home of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We stayed there for a day, taking in the sights. We saw seals out in the water. We saw lots of fish in the aquarium, and a really pretty jellyfish special exibit. On the way out of the area, we took 17 mile drive through all the rich people places (pebble beach & Cypress pt.) and oohed and aahed at all the luxury.
Next stop was far from luxurious. We stayed in Grant Grove Village in a "tent cabin", a little wood shack with a canvas roof.
Grant's Grove is in King's Kanyon Nat. Park. We saw lots of trees (really really big trees) and on the way to Crystal Cave we saw a real live black bear crossing the road. I wanted to go give it a big hug, but Allen told me no. We spent our last night in the woods in Sequoia Park, home of the Sherman tree, largest single living thing on earth.
Next it was back to S.F. for a little more shopping and sightseeing. Friday night we returned our car (1000 miles, not too bad) and checked in at the Airport Inn. We caught the 4:00am shuttle to the airport, spent all day saturday on a plane, and got home and slept till sunday afternoon.
All in all it was a good time. We shot 15 rolls of film, so here's hoping something good comes out.
We leave tomorrow morning at 7:40
I'm a little nervous about flying.
We have limited ourselves to only 4 cameras.
This is our first vacation since march last year. That's a lot of 50 hour weeks in a row. It doesn't seem real somehow - like actually I'll wake up tomorrow and go to work.
I met with my new round of students at UMSL tonight. They are a quiet bunch, and from the looks of their paperwork, have very little computer experience. I only had them there 20 minutes tho, so they could surprise me.
avoiding packing. avoiding sleeping. shouldn't.
nite.