Fernanda & Karl - Road Trip, Day 24 -- Website by Now Interactive Solutions

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Vermont
03/26/10

Brú na Bóinne
08/08/09

Galway
08/04/09

Northern Ireland
07/30/09

Donegal
07/24/09

Dublin, etc.
07/18/09

Brasil 2009
04/10/09

Weihnachten, 2008
12/24/08

Syncsort Xmas Party 2008
12/15/08

Family visits: Karl's parents, uncle, and cousin
11/22/08

Vania's Visit
11/15/08

Marden's visit
11/08/08

Autumn hiking, Ramapo, NJ
10/18/08

Oktoberfest 2008, Hackensack
10/04/08

Labor Day Pool Party
08/31/08

Philharmonic in the Park (yet again)
06/24/08

Fernanda's Parents Come to Visit
06/02/08

Memorial Day Weekend in CT with Missy
05/26/08

Fernanda's Birthday Party, 2008
05/17/08

Katja comes to visit!
04/20/08

Spring 2008
04/12/08

Nikhil's Karaoke Birthday Bar Party
04/05/08

Cross-country Skiing in New England
02/09/08

Karl's Birthday Party 2008
01/26/08

Xmas 2007
12/24/07

Syncsort Xmas 2007
12/08/07

Oktoberfest in our Apartment
10/06/07

Crash!
09/15/07

Nebraska, Iowa
09/13/07

Wyoming, Nebraska, Blow-out
09/12/07

[...]
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Monday, September 10, 2007

Road Trip, Day 24

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California, Nevada

We left San Francisco today. We're on the road again. Though it took us a while to build up the momentum to escape SF's attraction. By 2 o'clock we had only made it about 20 miles outside SF up route 1 to Stinson Beach. We were enchanted. Probably helped that it was a beautiful sunny day. We had lunch, walked along the beach, and were really kind of reluctant to go.

I was feeling kind of car sick from the twisty turns of route 1 while looking at a map. It felt like we had driven miles and miles on route 1, but when I looked it was only a really short distance. We headed off towards wine country.

We stopped at a relatively small vineyard in the Sonoma valley, did a tasting, but neither of us are really wine snobs, or that into it. We drove on into the Napa valley, and I must say it has completely jumped the shark. It was nothing like my memories of it from back in the early 80s. Possibly the fact that everything seems drier right now might have something to do with it, but the big pretentious "wineries" with their menu of "tastings" and the price list are just too much. I remember small to midsized vineyards where you go to try what they make and how this year's vintage turned out, so you can discover what you like and learn what are the good labels. None of this pretentious "epicurean experience" in huge pretentious grounds, with pretentious bourgeois tourists spending money to try and compensate for lack of taste. Blah.

We broke 5000 miles driving through wine country, our last bit of sight-seeing before turning back for the return trip. [Actually we broke 6000 miles I now have discovered -- I lost 1000 miles somewhere in Utah... So this is actually a significant milestone, or rather kilometerstone: we surpassed km 10000 this day, which is a quarter of the circumference of the Earth -- it's as if we had driven from the North Pole to the Equator!]

So we headed east on Interstate 80, the road that will take us home. We blew through Sacramento, and headed to Lake Tahoe, where we hoped to spend the night so we could see the area in the morning. But it was either full up or way too expensive. We drove through and tried every motel, but it was no use.

Lake Tahoe is expensive even to just drive through, as I got a ticket just after getting back on I-80 after having given up on Tahoe and decided to push on through to Reno, Nevada. So hooray, I have a speeding ticket from California...

We drove through to Reno, and after driving through the garishly lit downtown with its casinos, we settled into yet another Motel 6 (with no wifi).

So, the push for home has begun. Turns out I-80 will be the best interstate to take, which means we will be passing through the salt flats and Salt Lake City again. If only I'd known... My ideal route would have us leaving from Seattle and driving through North Dakota, but alas, alas, there is no time to get that far up north. So many things to see and do, so little time.

Tomorrow we plow further eastward as much as we can.

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Previous Entries

Our Trip to Ireland
08/09/09

Google Map of our Trip
09/17/07

Road Trip: The End
09/15/07

Road Trip, Day 27
09/13/07

Road Trip, Day 26
09/12/07

Road Trip, Day 25
09/11/07

Road Trip, Day 23
09/09/07

Road Trip, Day 22
09/08/07

Road Trip, Day 21
09/07/07