Friday August 10th

What a great day. We got up and walked down to Fisherman’s Warf. We walked around the Warf and I ate my first In and Out Burger, yummy. Then we went and saw them sea lions they just hang out on the dock at pier 39. They were so loud and big. I have never seen anything like it.







We also rented bikes and rode them over the Golden Gate Bridge and then down to Historic Sausalito. The whole bike ride was beautiful. The bridge and the bay were just spectacular; the views we saw were priceless.

We walked around Sausalito, got ice cream and then saw this guy balance rock on top of other rock, bizarre and very cool. Then took a ferry back to San Francisco. We then met up with a few friends of ours and went out for dinner. We ended the night by watching The King of Scotland at Liz's apt. We are going to get up early and go to Golden Gate Park.

Thursday August 9th

We left Paula's around noon, that seems to be our time to leave and started our drive to San Francisco. This drive was long and we drove through all farmland. We saw many tree farms, and I’m guessing they were orange trees but there was no fruit on them. The coolest part of our trip was that the whole was we passed trucks that were hulling large open bins, inside the bin were tomatoes, thousands of them. Each truck pulled two large open bins. The funny thing was that as we were driving you could see smashed tomatoes on the side of the highway. I saw a squirrel run in the highway, grab a tomato and run back in the field.







The other crazy thing we saw on this leg of the drip was a cow farm. Now I have seen cows on the side of the road before but I am not joking that this farm had 20,000 cows. We drove 2 or 3 miles on the highway and it was just cows, and they were not just here and there, they were packed in and everywhere. It SMELLED so bad. I have never seen so many in one location. I even took a movie of it back it was so crazy. We don't know if they were meat cows or dairy cows.

We got into San Fran around 7:30. We drove to Elizabeth's apt on Sutter and Polk. She lives in Union Station. Right next to china town. Bryan, Liz, Larry and I went to North Beach and had sushi, then went back to Liz's to hang out.

Wednesday August 8th

King size beds are great! When we get back to Philly we are buying one. You don't even know you are sleeping with someone because the bed is so big. Larry's feet don't even hang off the edge.

So we went to Main Street Station Casino for a breakfast Buffet. It was OK. Try to win our money back but no luck. Then we went to the Golden Nugget and Larry played his last $50 on roulette and he hit big. His last $10 he put on the number 12 and red and he won $190 total off 10 buck and then he walked away.

We got in the car around noon and started our drive to Los Angeles. Again the ride was beautiful. Stopped at Peggy Sues dinner and had a banana split. We got to Paula’s house in Pasadena around 5pm. We then got back in the car and went to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim Stadium to see the RED SOX kick the Angeles butts. We met Paula and Calandra there and had really good seats in right field.

Great game, Manny hit 2 doubles and the end score was 9 to 6. We then drove back to Paula’s for the night.

Tuesday August 7th

The morning was very crisp. The 3 of us went on a hike to the edge of the canyon called Bright Angle Fault. WOW is we could say.







We had some food, packed, checked out and got back on the road around 11am and headed back towards Vegas. Tony slept in the while we took turns driving. Larry fits very well in the Jeep, lots of legroom.


We got a Hotel room at the Golden Nugget. The rooms there are huge. King size bed and the best part was the pool. The Golden Nugget has a shark/fish tank in the middle of the pool. You can swim right up to it and look a mini JAWS. But the best is that they have a 3-story water slide that goes right through the shark tank. I forgot to take pictures but we are staying there again at the end of the trip and will post them later. Loved old Vegas/Fremont Street.

We checked in, went to the pool, went on the slide and then took showers and went out! We stayed on Fremont street and just walked into all the casnios. We did not win any money but has fun and really enjoyed the fried Oreos and $1 hot dogs at Mermaids Casino.

Monday August 6th

Larry, Tony and I left Vegas around noon to drive to the Grand Canyon. OMG the drive was amazing. The landscapes changed every hour. We drove through the desert, then changed to the forest and then it was just canyon. We saw a family of deer, a fox and a bunch of turkeys and a turkey vulture.









We stayed at the North Rim Lodge http://www.grandcanyonnorthrim.com/ which was at the edge of the canyon. We got there around 4pm, checked in, had some dinner and watched the sun set behind the canyon. Later that night we went back outside around 9:30pm and just laid on a path and looked at the millions of stars, saw many shooting stars and tried to see the many constellations but had trouble because there were so many stars in the sky. We were just blown away by the amount we could see.

The cabin we stayed in was very cute and it was made of logs.

The Plan!

Saturday August 4th
• Drive to MD and drop off Sealee

Sunday August 5th
• Leave from BWI at 8:15pm Southwest
• Arrive in Vegas at 10:20pm
• Rental car
• Stay at Tony’s house

Monday August 6th
• Drive to grand canyon (5 hours)
• Stay at Grand Canyon Lodge
• North rim
• Train
• Hike

Tuesday August 7th
• Morning at grand canyon
• Drive to Las Vegas (5 hours)
• Stay at The Golden Nugget

Wednesday August 8th
• Drive to LA (5 hours)
• See LA vs. Boston Baseball Game
• Stay at Paula or Calandras

Thursday August 9th
• LA sites
• See Paula
• Chinese theater
• Drive to San Francisco (6 hours)
• Stay at Liz’s House

Friday August 10th
• Hang out in San Francisco
• Go to Berkley
• Walk over the golden gate bridge
• Stay at Liz’s House

Saturday August 11th
• Leave san Francisco in morning
• Drive up Coast to Redwood Forest (8.5 hours)
• Stay at Redwood Forest cabin, Red Creast Inn

Sunday August 12th
• Redwood Forest
• Drive to Portland (6 hours)
• See and stay with Alissa

Monday August 13th
• Drive to Seattle (3 hours)
• See Market
• Duck Tour
• Stay over Kat’s or Casey’s

Tuesday August 14th
• Seattle Music experience
• Rent bikes
• Stay over Kat’s

Wednesday August 15th
• Drive to Lake Tahoe (13.5 hours)
• Lake Day
• Stay with Heather or Hotel

Thursday August 16th
• Lake Tahoe
• Visit Kate
• Stay with Heather

Friday August 17th
• Drive to Las Vegas (8 hours)
• Stay at Vegas Hotel

Saturday August 18th
• Hang in Vegas
• Flight out at 10:45pm

Sunday August 5th

Around 5pm Larry, Denise (becca's Mom), Sealee and I all got in the car a drove to Stan’s in Baltimore. Stan is a family/childhood friend of mine and offered to take care of the Sealee dog while we went of on our trip. It was hard for me to leave the dog but she is in good hand with Stan, who knows Stand might teach her some cool tricks; Stan is really good with dogs.

We then went to BWI airport. My Mom drove us to the airport; we took southwest airlines, and were in the C group. I was worried that we were not going to sit together but we found 2 seats in the back of the plane. We both were not very comfortable and it was a long flight with nothing to do. We forgot to bring a movie with us. Opps ... 5 hours later we were in Vegas baby.



We got a rental car, a Jeep Liberty, great car, Larry fits and drove to Tony's house. After a long day we went to bed around 1am vegas time 4am philly time, ouch.