San Francisco trip

stay tuned in for the next couple days for the comprehensive "San Francisco weekend" blog. I've pretty much typed it all out, but want to go back over and make sure it's all good. I had intended to blog daily over the weekend, but couldn't find a wireless to connect to- despite the fact that the hotel should have had one for us.

anyway, here we go...

San Francisco Trip Blog:
Day 1- leaving & arriving

As I’m a terrible blogger, I felt this would be nice- to do a 3 blog series on our weekend trip to San Francisco with some friends of ours. So here we go.

We left Medford after Rachel and Kassie got off work to go get some quick food at the grocery store. After all that stuff, we got on I-5 around 5:30 or 5:45. Of course, we were looking forward to going over Siskiyou Summit. It’s the highest mountain pass on the entire I-5- which spans from San Diego up through Seattle and beyond to Canada. A full north/south highway on the West Coast. I’ve only been all the way up and over the pass once- and that was driving out here. 4310 ft above sea level. It had been raining and even snowing in the valley off and on all week (which snow is uncommon in the valley- a sign that even MORE snow lay ahead in the mountains). And there was a LOT of snow packed beside the road. Despite the potential of driving through the snow, there were only clouds around the mountains- no snow on the road.

As we began our descent into California, I was reminded of the only other time I’d been on I-5 this far south. It was the trip out here to Oregon, and as we drove forth, the idea that the Northwest is a bunch of pot-smoking hippies was reinforced as we drove through the town of Weed. Luke said it best in his blog of the drive out- they must have all gotten together and came up with their favorite name for their favorite plant and named a city that- Weed.

It was a rather uneventful drive, however. And it got dark shortly after we crossed into California, so we weren’t able to see much, anyway. We drove through the town of Redding after a couple hours- Rachel had taken the girls in the youth group to a water park there last summer. It was apparently not all that great of a place, but better than nothing and nothing is what Medford has. Just another reminder that while we may live in a town of decent size, and Redding is a little bigger than that, there’s still NOTHING around for miles and miles.

Our conversations were pretty varied, but so many things ended up falling into one of two categories. Either we were quoting "Family Guy" and reliving favorite episodes or moments, or we were talking about things that made me think of "Oops, I crapped my pants". Different stories relating to control issues leading around different ways our bodies releases its non-used materials. Absolutely hilarious, but, for you, my readers, you only get the ambiguous retelling.

Driving through the Sacramento Valley, we saw that our clouds had left us and we continued driving in the moon-lit glow of the full-moon. Turned on to I-80 in Sacramento. Both Rachel and Kassie were quick to remark how much of a real city it was. It’s got almost a half-million population, but that’s more than enough when you’ve been living in Medford. As we continued, we passed Ikea- right off the highway. In all it’s splendor. I found myself as the voice of reason saying to Rachel that we don’t need any more stuff as we’re already trying to get rid of stuff as we plan to move. And telling Dave they don’t need any more stuff, either, as they’ve just gotten a new sofa. Way to be the buzz-kill.

In one of the funnier moments, we saw a KFC/Del Taco sign. I have many times before seen a KFC/Taco Bell sign. But never with Del Taco. We began making fun of it immediately. “uh, yeah, I’d like to have a chicken leg in my taco, please!” or “ummm- can I get a mashed potatoes and gravy burrito?” well, at least we thought it was funny…

So here’s where it got tricky- the directions we had said it was 47 miles to a merging of highways, then another 6 to our exit. We misjudged that so many times that it lost all meaning to say “I think this may be where they merge!” until it was so obvious, we’d have had to be blind not to see it. But being blind, we’d have larger problems as we were driving… when we finally figured the merge out, we began looking for the exit. But the directions provided by hotels.com didn’t give us the right name for the exit and so we blew on past, just looking for Harrison St. Exit. And not finding it. It was almost midnight by now and we’re just ready to find our hotel. So, after doing a little turn around and deciding to just pick an exit where we thought it was- we knew the hotel is only a mile or two from Fisherman’s Wharf- we found the street we were looking for without even trying. What joy. Note to self for future- don’t use hotels.com directions again. I lay that blame on Rachel- I would have mapquested the directions, but she just printed out the directions from hotels.com an called it good. Not to pick on her or anything, though…

And from there, it was relatively easy- follow the directions again till we find our street. And as we traveled, we passed clubs and shops- and Kassie, who apparently has Rachel’s love for “real” cities, but only having lived in Salt Lake City, found herself loving this city. So, as we pulled up to the hotel- which was so amazingly well displayed that we missed it the first time- I found myself thinking- “I know who’ll leave her heart in San Francisco."

stay tuned for days 2, 3 and the picture recap!