Well, in the last 3 weeks we felt so busy that we didn't really feel like we had the time to post to the blog, but as we drive to Bend, Oregon for a week of real vacation with Angela's family, we wanted to update on how our California trip ended and what we've been doing since then.
After waking up on Friday, July 22nd in Santa Maria California, we drove down to Santa Barbara and enjoyed the beach for about a minute before deciding to just keep driving down to Mission Viejo to see our friends, the Rosenbaums. We were welcomed into the Hollywood area with a ton of traffic. We also learned not to listen to our GPS system too much. The GPS lady kept telling us there was a faster route around the traffic and it really got us confused. We ended up back on the main highway we started on when all was said and done.
We got down to Mission Viejo in the evening and it was great to see our friends and catch up before "hitting the hay". We stayed with the Rosenbaums for several days and got to spend a lot of time outside and hung out with the 4 boys (3 Rosenbaum boys and 1 cousin) and Sara and Ryan Rosenbaum. We got a lot of sun and got to do a couple runs. We also got to spend a day at Universal Studios in Hollywood. Luke had gotten to go to Universal Studios with Ryan Rosenbaum on their road trip 16 (or so) years ago and he thought it hadn't changed that much. The rides were different, but the studio tour was about the same (not too exciting) and there really wasn't that much to the place. At the end of the day, we went to the big theater there and saw Captain America in 3D and really liked it. What we liked even more was the trailer for the Avengers movie coming up in 2012 though.
On Wednesday, July 27th, we headed north out of the Los Angeles area. We had found out that Angela's brother Jon was stationed in Monterey, so we drove back up to that area and got to spend some time with him and see a little more of Monterey. The next morning we headed north again, towards the Sacramento area to see Angela's Aunt and Uncle. We had a great time with them and went out for dinner and a tour of the area. Angela had visited when she was much younger and had a lot of great memories from her first trip and we made some more memories this time. On Friday morning, we headed out early from the Sacramento area with the intention of driving the remaining 12 hours straight to Poulsbo, Washington. We took turns driving and listening to music and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" audio book. Harry Potter's adventures really make time by go fast, by the way. We made it in just a little more than 12 hours in the end (with stops included for gas and snacks). It was good to be back at a home with Angie and Nicholas, Paloma and Jude.
One thing California showed us about blogging from the road was that it is a lot of work. Picking pictures, writing about our experiences and then getting it all posted online takes a lot more hours than we thought it would and when a lot of our time is booked up with driving and seeing things and people you have to do everything at the end of the day or at the beginning of the next day and it can be a little stressful. So we are trying to figure out how to successfully blog while we are in Europe based on what we have learned recently. We think our blogs may be much shorter than we thought and a little more structured and with limited pictures. Or we may just upload pictures and let those tell the story some days until we get time to spend some time writing about our adventures. We plan on journaling each day in little books, so we might just use excerpts from our journals as well. I guess time will tell, but I am glad we learned some of this from our trip so far.
On Saturday, July 30th we hung out with the family and then headed over to Kirkland, Washington (our old home) to meet up with our friends from Alaska (Deyton and Kelly) and spend the week housesitting for our friends Mark and Lindsay. It was a fun, but mostly busy week. We ran a ton of errands to get ready for our long trip to Europe (bought back packs, some clothes and travel items), we also spent quite a few hours planning and making reservations for car rentals and lodging in Europe. But we managed to still spend a bunch of time hanging out and having fun in the sun with Kelly and Deyton. We went kayaking at Greenlake in Seattle, we played Tennis at Greenlake and Coulon Beach Park in Renton, we did some shopping with them and ate some really good food.
During the week, we also got to spend some time with Luke's brother, Andy and sister in law, Laura. We went to see a great movie with them called "Cowboys & Aliens" and ate some dinner at Il Forniaio in Seattle, which was the site of our first date over 6.5 years ago. It was a good week in the Seattle area, but somewhat exhausting because of all the errands and running around.
We are definitely looking forward to this week in Bend, Oregon. We won't really be doing any errands, and the weather is supposed to be great so we plan on spending a lot of time relaxing in the sun and just hanging out with the family.
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