We just got back from a great vacation to California. Here is a short summary:

We started on Wednesday, Aug 18 and drove from Seattle to Sacramento. We arrived in Sacramento at Uncle Ken's place around 2:30 am. The next morning we drove to Fresno and stayed there for a few hours and then headed to Pismo Beach to stay with the Karrs (some friends from our Cal Poly days).

The next morning we looked for a few letterboxes and then visited San Luis Obispo and Cal Poly. Cal Poly sure has changed since we were there. Then we headed up to Los Altos to the Millet's to stay the night.

The next day we headed to Great America for the day. We had a great time but it started to get really busy after 1:00pm. Our favorite rollercoster was Top Gun which we were able to ride twice. The park is trying to turn itself into a partial water park so there were a number of neat water slides. The most interesting one was DownUnder Thunder which is a ramp that you go up and then come back down. We got pretty tired by about 5:00pm so we decided to head up to Napa Valley.

We got to Riverpoint around 7:00pm and got some Groceries for our breakfasts, lunches and dinner. It was a very nice place, we enjoyed it a lot.

Over the course of the week, we did some letterboxing in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park where we visited the Japanese Tea Gardens, walked around the Conservatory gardens and a number of other areas. We had dinner at Creps on Cole, which was very good. We visited Muir Woods, Petuluma and Healdsburg (to have dinner with Jenny's cousin Chela). We saw a number of movies over the week as well: Spiderman 2, I Robot and Bourne Supremency.

Of course we took a day to do some wine tasting. We were surprised at how much the wineries were charging for tasting ($3-$10). We weren't planning on spending much for wine tasting so we went looking for the few that had free tastings. One of our favorites is V. Sattui since they had free tasting of any of their wines and a place to have a picnic.

On Friday, Aug 22nd, we headed back to Los Altos to pick up Kyler and go back to Fresno to stay with the Howards for a couple of days. The weather was nice but hot, it was at least 100 degrees every day. We played in the pool a lot and just took it easy. It was very nice.

On Sunday, we headed back to Los Altos to visit with the Millets. On Monday, we went into San Francisco for Fran's 70th birthday. We took a ferry from Larksburg Landing to the Ferry Building Marketplace and then had lunch at the Garden Room in the Palace Hotel, one of the nicest dining rooms I have ever seen. We headed back to Los Altos, and had cake, opened presents. After this we packed up and headed back to Sacramento to start our trek home.

The next day, Uncle Ken got us Krispy Kreme doughnuts for breakfast and we started our long trip home. It took us 14 hours due to all of the fuel and food breaks. I think I liked driving at night a little better.

All in all, we had a great time. Thanks to everyone who put us up for the night and special thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Howard for taking Ilea and Grandma and Grandpa Millet for taking Kyler.