The Man and I decided to run away. The Man's cousin was stationed in Monterey, California, so we decided to visit them, but also hit a list of tourist spots while we were at it.
I always find the sandflats so incredible, though the pictures doesn't do them justice.
We were told of an app called Hotel Tonight. You can plug in where you need a room for that day, and hotels will have vacant rooms listed at a discounted price as they would rather fill it for partial price than have it empty. The app only guarantees that the room will accommodate two people. The hotel will choose the room when you arrive.
Turns out, when we stopped in Reno for the night, after making a reservation with the app, the hotel ended up giving us a deluxe suite.
It was a little dated, but it was so fun to walk in and see how huge the room was.
The next day we made our way to San Francisco where we were able to see the Golden Gate bridge through the mist and rain (it rained all day), before the clouds finally swallowed it up.
As we drove around we came across an incredible military cemetery.
Again, the pictures don't do it justice.
And we also came across a park with giant pillars and domes in it. It was attached to a theater, though I can't remember the name of it.
Let's just say that, for the rest of the pictures posted, justice has not been done. We saw so many incredible things.
We found the harbor were we saw the wave organ, but as it was low tide, didn't try too particularly hard to make our way over to it.
And then found ourselves wandering the harbors. Ghirardelli Square, Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39...
And we looped up to Lombard Street while we were at it.
That is one hike.
We found a mirror maze in Pier 39 which is totally worth the $5 and time.
We ate dinner on the wharf (fish and chips for me, scallops for West).
And we drove through Chinatown, which seemed really dirty and worn down. Though we did get a few pictures as we drove through.
It fascinated me how tight the streets were and how tall the buildings were.
Repeat after me, the picture doesn't do it justice.
That night we found a room with our hand dandy app in Santa Clara, soaked up in the hot tub, and hit the hay.
We started the next day with a visit to the Winchester Mansion. They try to sell it as a haunted feature, but mostly, with West's background in framing and building, we were just interested in the architecture and structure of the place.
We weren't allowed to take pictures, but the stairs that lead nowhere are amazing, the window in the floor, the doors that lead to walls, or even better yet, to a drop into the kitchen sink in the floor below, or even outside... I loved it.
Worth a visit at least once.
I'd heard about a life size Monopoly in a park, so we tracked it down, but sadly, we weren't carrying our Monopoly money with us so we didn't get to play.
From there we headed to Santa Cruz to find the boardwalk.
GPS insisted it knew the way...
Somehow we ended up a mountain, single lane road.
No matter what GPS says, that did not look like a beachfront boardwalk with rides to me.
However, GPS, dumped us back onto a main road again and...
Yes, that looks much better.
We ate fried artichoke and drank pineapple juice and took a tour through the fright walk, which was all animetronics.
And then hit the road to Monterey.
Along the way we stopped at a roadside produce shop and bought a lot of stuff. Including fresh guacamole and chips which was delicious.
We ended the day hanging out with West's cousin, Nate, and his wife Kaylynn.
They took us to dinner on the Monterey wharf (seafood pasta for me, a crazy concoction of every seafood thing imaginable for West), and dessert at their Ghirardelli's.
The next morning Kaylyn insisted that we go with her to see the 17 mile drive, which, apparently is a thing at Pebble Beach. It had some great views, some really gigantic houses, and seals.
And I will never need to drive that 17 miles again, but it was fun to see the views.
After that drive we went with Nate, Kaylyn and their family to a giant redwood park in Santa Cruz.
Where we discovered that Speeders are a real thing.
We found the Speeder group near the parking lot and West asked them about what they were doing. That's when we found they were called Speeders. They reserve time on the railroads and travel all over in them. Apparently there's a club of people who do this. They buy the old maintenance cars at auction, fix them up, and away they go.
We're thinking retirement maybe?
Our final stop of the trip was the Mystery Spot.
Which was fun, but it made me feel a little dizzy. I think because the perception of everything was off. They play it off like this is a special, unexplained force, but really, now that I've been there, can say that it's 100% optical illusion.
Which is still cool, don't get me wrong. We had a lot of fun with it, and it was only $8.
I mean, West stood on a wall, so...
After a late lunch of pizza, we parted ways with Nate and Kaylyn and headed back to Reno for the night.
We got way more than we bargained for with dinner.
We decided we're going to be really good at the empty nest stage of life when we get there.
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