For those of you who have never driven The Big Sur to San Fran before, I highly recommend doing so before your time on this earth is up. It's something that Brad and I have wanted to do for a long time and we finally made it happen. Now we can cross that off the Bucket List.The journey began Friday morning with Regester picking us up and taking us to Denny's for a Breakfast of Champions. Then we were off to rent our convertible Pontiac G6 from Enterprise. Thanks Dax!
We decided to take the 101N to San Luis Obispo and then jump on the 1N the rest of the way up.
Our first stop was at a 76 station for some Monster energy drinks, which were much needed before the long drive.
Some of the gorgeous scenery on our way to Obispo.
Brad's an amazing photographer. He actually stood up on the seat to get a few of these beautiful photos. He quickly realized that I was going much faster than he thought!
We made it to the Village of Arroyo just outside of Obispo where we stopped to get gas and use the restroom. It was a very cool town with little country shops everywhere.We hurried through Obispo pretty quickly on our quest to visit the Hearst Castle. If we would have known the tours stop at 3:30pm I think we would have taken our time. We ended up just looking at photos of the Hearst and walking around the shops looking for a some sort of memorabilia, but ended up getting some pizza that had been sitting out all day causing some excruciating stomach pain.
After the Hearst Castle, we continued on our journey to SF. We came across one of the many site pit stops, but for some reason this one looked really interesting and there were more cars than usual. Without any warning, I quickly pulled over and stopped before Brad could say anything :) This stop ended up being one of the best sites on the trip. We were greeted by hundreds of Elephant Seals and a dozen of these little squirrel looking animals. They would just dig in the sand. I'm not really sure what they were looking for...don't know if they did either. The smell was pretty atrocious, but God's creatures are certainly amazing.
The seals just laid there while their stubby arms attempted to scoop up as much sand as possible to throw on their back. The cold sand served as a cooling method to keep their body temperatures low. It was actually very relaxing to watch.
By the time we left there it was about 5pm and we had planned to be at this restaurant, Nepenthe, by sunset for dinner. We had to hurry our butts up, but we managed to catch some beautiful sites.
About half way through the trip we discovered we had XM radio so we were stoked. We listened to 80s and 90s all the way to Big Sur singing our hearts out. We finally reached Nepenthe, which was a restaurant that was built for Rita Hayworth by her second husband Orson Welles. It certainly lived up to its hype. We walked up several levels of stairs and finally reached the top where to the right side we could see about 150 miles of coast line and to the left was the endless pacific ocean where the sun was just about to set.
There was a large fire pit out side which made an extremely cozy atmosphere. We lucked out and got a great table outside looking over the cliff to watch the sunset. It was very romantic.
We enjoyed the wine far too much.
After the wonderful dinner (I recommend the burger) we headed north for another 3 hours to finally reach San Francisco. It was about 11: 15pm by the time we got into the city and found my brothers place. We were very tired, annoyed and wind blown. Rus and Kelsey (my brother and sister-in-law) were driving back from a wedding in Sacramento so they didn't get to the apartment until a little after midnight.
We were all tired but little miss Lucca was out and about. They are pregnant with a 5 month baby girl. I haven't seen Kelsey since August and I can't believe how much she had grown. Check out my niece. Too cute!
After catching up and watching some TV, we crashed at around 2am. Brad, Rus and I wanted to go for a run before our activities on Saturday so we needed to get to bed. The aero bed was perfect for a good 6 hours ;)
Rus woke us up around 8pm ready to go!!! I could have slept for at least one more hour, but we all got up and enjoyed a beautiful run down by the stadium, under the bay bridge, through the farmers market and down to the Pier. We stopped and had some of the most amazing peanut brittle at the market, which later gave me a little cramp, but I ran through it. We ended up running about 3 miles.
Rus and Brad before our run. Yes, Rus has a barrette in his hair.
After the run, we all showered up and headed to one of Kelsey and Rus's favorite breakfast places, Balboa Cafe. It was just what we all needed and they made a really good Bloody Mary!
After Balboa, we headed north to Sonoma to meet up with Rus's work partner, Kevin, for his 30th birthday. His wife rented out a house (AKA Shack O' Lack :) for the weekend so we made an appearance to wish him a happy 30th. The house actually wasn't that bad. It was on a beautiful piece of property with a grape farm. We took it upon ourselves to try a few grapes. No one keeled over and died so we were happy about that. They were actually very sweet & tasty, but had 4 seeds in the middle of them so you barely got any juice.
After visiting for a few hours, we made our way to Chateau St. Jean. It was the only winery still open. We lost track of time. Sweet Ole Bob was our wine specialist and in 15 minutes we ended up purchasing 6 bottles of wine. It was tasty.
Lucca started to get hungry so we stopped by this little pizza joint to grab a bite to eat before we headed home. It was a long day, but a great one.
After getting back to the apartment we all crashed out on the couch. About 10pm Brad and I decided we were hungry again so we went to this really great Mexican place just across the street from Rus's called Tres Agaves. After that, we checked out a local bar down the street, John Collins in SOMA, where we listened to a pretty good DJ and just people watched. Francisonites are quit interesting.
We slept in the next morning until about 9:30am. Rus took us to this great coffee shop down the street, Philz Coffee, where they brew each individual coffee cup to order and use brown sugar to sweeten it. It was really good. Wish they had something like that in Venice.
After coffee, we were off to the Raiders/Jets game. Kels works for EA Sports so she got us club seats. For those of you who don't know, Brad's man crush is Darren McFadden who played for the Arkansas Razorbacks, he now plays for the Raiders so he was a pseudo Raiders fan on Sunday. Even spray painted his hair black. Anything for McFadden!
This man in the Razorback sweatshirt and Brad became instant best friends. We were actually surprised how many people were wearing McFadden jersey's considering he's a rookie. He's a ripper (as Brad would say).
There were some very interesting people at the game. Only a few brave souls wore Jets jersey's and they ended up eventually getting thrown out some way or another.
We actually sat next to this guy from Bermuda who has season tickets and flies to Oakland for every Raiders home game. The local station was doing a special on him so we might have gotten some air time. I screamed "Go McFadden!" Kelsey screamed "Go Favre!" ha!Their fans are insane. No matter how bad they suck or what Al Davis has done to their program, their fans are dedicated and love their Raiders. The Raiders ended up winning by three points in over time with the longest field goal in NFL overtime. It was the most exciting game on Sunday and WE WERE THERE!!!!
After the game, we went straight to the Oakland airport. It's always sad to say goodbye to family, but it had to be done. The fun was over. Time to get back to reality. We grabbed a bite to eat and waited for our flight back to LA. We were beat, but we had a wonderful time and would do it all over again.
Special Thanks to:
Rus and Kels for an amazing trip. Thanks for opening up your home to us. We love you!
Bradley for his photographic ability. He has such an amazing eye for beauty and really knows how to capture those special moments.
