I left my heart in San Francisco

Haha... not really, my heart is still on the East Coast, but there isn't a song title "San Francisco was great to visit"

We headed down California and made a couple stops along the way.  First stop was in beautiful Napa Valley, home to over 400 wineries.  We couldn't stop at all of them or even multiples, so I picked one that I  thought would be cool to see.  Castello di Amorosa looks like a medieval castle and was built using the same type of construction methods that were used in the middle ages.  The castle had tons of different passageways and things that you could wander around in for hours if you wanted to.  I also did a tasting and their wine was good too.  After leaving the winery, we headed to Petaluma, CA home of the Lagunitas Brewing company.  That was a cool place too that had live music in a huge beer garden and some of the best IPA's in the country.

The next day we went to a nice church in the morning.  The people there were very friendly and the message was great.  Then we headed into town.  We took a bus tour and had a great live guide as we saw the sights around the city.  We walked around Fisherman's Wharf, near the Transamerica Pyramid Building, down to the Embarcadero, around Washington Square, and Ghiradelli Square (OH MY... that was a chocolate lover's dream!  Chocolates everywhere and free samples were being given out too!).

We did the same thing the second day, but got off the bus at a few more stops.  We went into their city hall which was a very nice US capitol like building on the outside.  The dome is bigger than the US Capitol.  There at City Hall there were people lined up to get married there.  You would see people all around the main hall in wedding dresses and tuxes.  Then we headed to see a particular group of Painted Ladies.  Painted Ladies are houses that are Victorian or Edwardian style houses and are painted all different colors.  In order for them to be classified as a "Painted Lady" they have to have at least 7 different colors on them.  The particular group in San Francisco near Alamo Square are famous.  The house shown at the beginning of the Full House episodes is in this group.

We walked over to Haight (pronounced like Hate) street which is a very hippie street. and then got back on the bus and headed across the Golden Gate Bridge.  The bridge is huge and awesome and iconic and super windy and really cold.  It was cool and we ended up crossing it 4 times in the two days on the bus.  We then walked up Lombard Street which was soooooo steep.  It was like climbing a mountain, and once we got to the top there was a section of the street which is called "The Crookedest Street in the World" It was a very crooked street that was all brick.  It was also beautifully gardened.  We went to Chinatown which was cool.  There are pagodas on the corners of the buildings, lanterns hanging between the buildings and restaurants and souvenir shops all up and down the street.  And we topped on the trip into the city with a ride on the California line Cable Car.

Inside the Castello Di Amorosa

At the front of Fisherman's Wharf

Mmmmmmm... Chocolate!!!!

Transamerica Pyramid

City Hall

Painted Ladies

Corner of Haight and Ashbury.  Hippie place.

Some bridge... I think it's called the Golden Gate or something like that.

Steep street, I'd hate to have to park sideways.

Crooked street... back and forth and back and forth.

Forget it Jake... It's Chinatown.

Tralalala...Trolly

Tell me where you are... and be Pacific!

We left Seattle and took the roundabout scenic route that took us around Mount Rainier and into the Columbia River Gorge Scenic area.  There were very scenic views all day on that trip (although our first part of the trip was much rainier at Mt. Rainier).  One thing that happened was I totally disregarded the lyrics that TLC sang and I went chasing waterfalls.  All along the Columbia River Gorge, there were short hikes to all sorts of different waterfalls. We ended up just outside of Portland, Oregon and I got to sample beers from a local brewery called Amnesia Brewing... I can't remember anything else about that night... jk!  Funny thing about that was that I was talking to our server and found out he has a brother that lives in Charlottesville and the brother is getting ready to open a coffee shop in Crozet.

The next day was a LONG driving day on our way south.  We headed out to US route 101 also known as the Pacific Coast Scenic By-way in Oregon and made our way down the coast.  The Pacific ocean (at least in Oregon and northern California) is much different than what I am used to when I think of oceans.  The waves were huge, the beaches were rocky, the mountains go right up to the waters edge in most cases, and there is a sea mist that kind of hangs out over the beaches.  Also on US 101, you drive through the National and State Redwoods Parks.  The Redwood trees are massive and beautiful and the road goes right beside some of the biggest trees I've ever seen.

Snow-capped peak of Mt. Rainier through the clouds

Cedar Creek Falls

Beginning of the Columbia River Gorge.

Horsetail Falls... looks like a horsetail right?

Multnomah Falls

Wahkeena Falls

The Pacific rocks!

Friends, Family, Countryside

It's been a little while since blogging last.  Last I left you, we had just gone through Yellowstone.  After leaving Wyoming, we entered Montana and our first stop there was Helena.

Helena is the state capital of Montana, so we took a trip to the Capitol building and then to the Cathedral of St. Helena.  Helena was just a stop on our way up to Glacier National Park.

Glacier National Park is in the northwest part of Montana and there is a road through the park called Going-to-the-Sun Road which goes all through the park and has some amazing vistas of mountains, waterfalls, wildlife, creeks, and lakes.  I loved it and would like to do it again sometime and maybe camp and hike more throughout the many trails in the park.

The next stop on our trip was Kennewick/Richland, Washington.  These cities are in the east of the state which is not what East coast people think of as Washington... it is basically desert out there.  The terrain was very brown and dry, but still beautiful.  There were a lot of orchards and vineyards there which were irrigated so that they could grow.  We stopped there because that is where Dad's Aunt (My grandaunt) Lucy lives and her two children (Dad's cousins Shirley and Brenda) also live there.  It was great for Dad to catch up with them and for me to meet them.  I also met three of my second cousins there.  It was fun meeting them and it was amazing because just talking with them, there was something familiar, like we had known them forever even though we just met them and I realized that it was probably because, since they are family, we have many of the same mannerisms and features (which was fun to see a literal "familiarity")

When we left there, we headed up to Canada and spent the day in Vancouver, British Columbia.  We just toured around the city and stopped at a few places to take some pictures.  Vancouver is where most of the show Psych was filmed, so I made it a point to stop at a few of those locations!  Vancouver marked the end of our northwesterly direction on our trip.  From here we have a bunch of south to go and then back East after that.

The next day we headed south to Seattle.  We went into the city and went to the Space Needle and something called the Chiuhly Garden and Glass.  The space needle was cool to actually be there and got a nice view of the city.  The Chihuly Garden was an amazing art museum type garden where the artist Dale Chihuly made all of these AWESOME sculptures out of glass.  Soooo beautiful!!!
That night I met up with one of my best friends from middle and high school, Amanda.  I had so much fun seeing her and reminiscing and finding out about what she's doing these days and just laughing.

Our second day in Seattle, we headed downtown to the Public Market which was a fun experience.  It reminded me a lot of Camden Town in London.  The first ever Starbucks is there right near the market, so I popped in for a tall coffee :)  There are so many different little shops and eateries around the market, it would be easy to get lost for hours going into the shops and seeing all the shiny things.  Another cool thing about the market was that there are a few seafood stands and they throw the fish around like you see in movies about the 1920's.  Then we headed to a park and got a cool view of the city.

Montana State Capitol Building

Clouds coming over the mountains of Glacier National Park from a distance.

St. Mary Lake at Glacier

St. Mary's Falls at Glacier

Beautiful Canyon in Glacier

Red Rock overlook in Glacier

Lake McDonald

Snoqualmie Falls in Washington.  Used in the TV show Twin Peaks

Pier in White Rock, just outside of Vancouver.  This was the pier used in Psych.

Chihuly Glass exhibit

Chihuly Glass in the Garden too!

Self Explanitory

Seattle Skyline!!!

Don't Feed the Wildlife

After leaving Rapid City, we traveled for about nine hours among a ton of desolate looking terrain.  I tell you what, if Dad hadn't been there, I would have felt immensely isolated during that day of driving.  It's hard to explain, but with that huge open expanse of nothing, if felt almost claustrophobic.

Then...We arrived in Jackson, Wyoming which is nestled deep in the Grand Tetons range of the Rocky Mountains.  Jackson is a resort town which reminds me a lot of Zermatt, Switzerland.  All of the buildings of the downtown area are old western themed, but very nice.

Jackson is close to Yellowstone National Park and we headed there the day after arriving in Jackson.  Everything about that day was absolutely beautiful (save for the smell of some of the hot springs...).  On the way we passed through Grand Teton National Park and then on to Yellowstone.  We did a large loop around the park and saw lakes, mountains, waterfalls, sulfur springs, bison, rivers, trees with the leaves changing, canyons, and geysers (Old Faithful!!! woot! woot!).  The whole day was amazing views.  The pictures wont do the scenes justice, but the give a slight idea.  I kept thinking, this is SO amazing and this is only a shadow of the glory that God has planned for us.

Whoa... Double Rainbow all the way!

Grand Teton and the other mountains in the range.

Tetons with the Aspen trees changing color in the foreground

Welcome to the Park!

Lewis River.

Dragons Mouth Spring.

Bison on the hill.

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

Lower Waterfall of the Yellowstone river.

Old Faithful is so faithful, they can predict when the eruptions will be plus or minus ten minutes.

Look! Yellowstones!

Grand Prismatic Spring.  The colors Duke! The colors!

Badlands to the bone

After leaving Minneapolis, our next destination along the way was Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  Along the route, we found that we weren't that far from Sioux City, Iowa either and we were going to get to Sioux Falls a little early, so we dipped down into Iowa for lunch and then into Nebraska, just to say we had been to there.  Sioux Falls was just a stopping point to break up a long day of driving, so in the morning we set out for Rapid City, SD.

The terrain as you go the east part of the state is very flat and there is corn everywhere.  This area of the country is the tall grass prairie.  The houses look like Little House on the Prairie homes.  The interstate is straight and flat.  As soon as you cross the Missouri River (the longest river in the US by the way) the terrain becomes much more hilly.

Along the interstate, there is a town called Mitchell, SD which has a place called the "Corn Palace"  That is a large building that decorates the outside with intricate mosaics made only of corn cobs of different colors.

After that, we headed further into South Dakota and into Badlands National Park.  The badlands are awesome formations that were caused by the receding waters of an ancient sea that used to be in the area.  They were so beautiful and it was breath-taking sometimes just coming around a bend and seeing a hugh valley just appear out of nowhere.  Some of the formations have flat tops from where people and animals would walk along the very tops of the ridges.  I could have spent days just crawling along the tops there and into the canyons.  Walking around on some of the paths were what you would imagine walking on the moon would be like.  It's impossible to capture the beauty of the park through the camera, but you can still see some of the wonder of the park.

At the end of the road through the badlands park is the town of Wall.  Wall has a place there called Wall Drug which is a total tourist trap, but it still was cool to see.  It was set up as an old west town drugstore which took up the entire block of the neighborhood it was on.  There were plenty of other stores inside the building including a cafe and a little statue park.

Corn Palace Facade.  The mural on the right is under construction.

Uniquely South Dakotan Corn Mural

Badlands Canyons.

More Badlands.

Flat tops on the ridges that I would love to play on.

Wall drug.