this was so out of the blue. i'm just at home watching tv and i get a call from
Rhoda who i barely knew. i knew her in zambia... but never really met. saw her at
Rayna's baptism, but never really talked to her. so... a road trip with someone i don't really know... i just wanted to travel so i said yes. funny thing about it was that AD was also going. that definitely made me want to go.
somehow i was lucky enough to be able to get time of work. met up with rhoda and her fellow law student friend
Gait at Tapioca Express. after the introductions we laid out our plans for the trip... well sort of. the planning didn't come till much late.
we ended up getting a
chevy trailblazer for our rental car. it was promising at first, till i got on the freeway with it. man that thing swerves like crazy! i took the first shift of driving despite the fact i only slept 10mins the night before. while i drive rhoda and ad took some shots
here and
here. the weather didn't really agree with us at this point. it was pretty miserable and for a moment i thought that's how the whole trip would be.
first stop was at
Solvang which is a town famous for it's Danish community. we didn't spend too long here due to the massive hail storm that came down. so it was back on the road with rhoda taking over.
next stop was
The Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa. took
this shot which i really liked. i've seen a couple of those linear shots at flickr and i've become a fan of them. had lunch at this
diner which was popular with college students. there was this one hottie waitress... man she had great legs.
back on the road, this time gait's driving. had to use the "oh shit" bars a couple of times cos that chick drives crazy! she was speeding up on turns... and remember this is on a rain soaked day on a not so stable trailblazer. but she slowed down later on and the weather improved so i definitely breathed a sigh of relief! haha.
made a quick stop at
Gonzales, a town along the 101 fwy. lucky bastard, has a town with this last name. don't suppose anyone knows any towns named "racasa" do they? no?
next stop... salinas, ca. we went there to see the
john steinbek museum. i hadn't even read any of his books completely or seen any of the movies. rhoda and ad were aware of him tho and i don't mind checking out new things. i actually had quite a lot of fun... mainly because of our
brokeback moments. yes it's immature and juvenile... but that's fun for me. what can i say? almost had a disaster tho... AD trying to pose for a picture accidentally drops our keys. we don't realize it for more than an hour and a half until we get to the car. lucky for us when we went back to find it, some other tourist had found it and were waiting to see if someone would come and get it. close one.
ad's turn to drive and we're back on the road. next stop, carmel beach. clint eastwood lives there and apparently was mayor once. we went there to see the
sunset. with that done... we decided to skip monterey and go straight to san francisco.
we were staying with rhea and allen who have a pretty cool place. favorite part is there attic area. allen has his dj equipment set up there and it's a cool place to relax. we had thai for dinner, went back to rhea's apartment and chilled out for a bit. being so tired from the night before... i slept like a baby.
sightseeing time in frisco! it started out raining but lucky for us not all the time. met up with roy, AD and rhoda's friend from brent. first order of business was lunch. AD wanted crab... so Roy took us to
Crustacean a super fancy restaurant. not exactly what AD was thinkin of... but their
crabs were huge! and so good! the food was delicious, expensive, but delicious. after lunch, we visited the
Golden Gate Bridge,
Fisherman's Wharf,
Lombard Street, a visit to the Castro area, and then to
Twin Peaks to check out the view. and we were done with frisco.
back on the road... ready for the 700 mile trip to the grand canyon. man that was a long trip. would have been a bit shorter had we not experienced trouble with our stupid rental. stupid window wouldn't close. so we exchanged it for a ford freestyle in bakersfield. not as powerful as the trailblazer, but a lot more stable. i took a really good shot, but not with my camera. as AD says,it looks like a Windows desktop
wallpaper and it does. we got into our hotel about 1.30am but we didn't sleep until 4.30am. we ended up hanging outside our room in the middle enclosure type place just
goofin off.
ahh... the
grand canyon. i can't believe i haven't seen this place till now. the views were amazing. took a ton of
shots of course. it was well worth the trip. had a lot of fun. and of course the trip to grand canyon resulted in my alltime favorite
pic that i've taken. the funny thing was that were 0 for 3 in terms of catching the sunrise, sunset and the next day's sunrise.
driving back to cali, we made a brief stop at
Hoover Dam. had lunch and then it was time to go home.
i can definitely say without a doubt that this was one of the best holidays i've taken. i was lucky to take it with some amazing people who share my love of traveling. got to be really good friends with rhoda and gait who are just amazing people. i already know ad but its always fun to travel with this guy. it will definitely be one of the highlights of that year and my life.
