Quick update on trip

Wow, I have been home for almost two months now. I just wanted to get up a rundown of the parts of the trip that I never got around to blogging about. So my idea was to post a timeline and map of the trip.
Timeline:
January 5th - February 14th (blogged about) : Cleveland to San Diego
Feb. 14 - Feb. 20 : Continued in San Diego
Feb. 20 - Feb. 22 : Los Angeles
Feb. 22 - Feb. 24 : Route 1
Feb. 24 - Feb. 26 : San Francisco
Feb. 26 - March 1 : Lake Tahoe
March 1 - March 8 : San Francisco
March 9 - March 10 : Redwood Forest
March 10 - March 14 : Portland
March 14 - March 21 : Seattle
March 21 - March 23 : Moscow, ID
March 23 - March 24 : Boise
March 24 - March 26 : Salt Lake City
March 26 - March 27 : Zion National Park
March 27 - April 1 : Las Vegas
April 1 - April 7 : Grand Canyon National Park
April 7 - April 10 : Las Vegas
April 10 - April 11 : Grand Junction, CO
April 11 - April 13 : Boulder
April 13 - April 14 : Mount Rushmore & Rapid City, SD
April 14 - April 16 : Minneapolis
April 16 - April 18 : Milwaulkee
April 18 - April 20 : Chicago
April 20 : Back in Cleveland

A Grand week out

This coming week, I am going to be hiking the Grand Canyon with Mike D, Jill and her Dad. While there, I hope to spend some down time catching up on my posts with a pen and notebook. If this actually happens, I will then transfer it to the computer after we are back.

Two days that went unphotographed

Wednesday Feb. 14th-
I woke up at the hotel after Liz and Jamie had left... leaving me to check out of the room. Liz had conference stuff to do and Jamie was flying out that morning. I had made plans to meet up with Natasha to go run that morning. I made my way over to her place and she suggested running 6 miles down at/on Coronado. I said sure, actually thinking "man, I have only been running 5k each time I go out, I am going to embarrass myself out there". We got down there and parked near the Hotel del Coronado. We started running one way on the beach, got stopped by some guard as if the rest of the beach was military property and then we turned around and started running the other way on the beach until we hit a fence that stopped us from entering another part of the beach that belonged to the military. Our run was at a good pace and the scenery was awesome. We finished by running a bit on the street and by the time we were done my Nike+ said we ran near 4.5 miles, not bad and I did not have to embarrass myself. We got back to her place, showered and had some Wahoo's fish tacos for lunch.

Later that day I got ahold of Liz by cell and we attempted to make some plans for our Valentines day evening together. I realized that any place that might serve a nice dinner would probably be quite busy. So I suggested cheap fast food and a movie. Liz countered my suggestion with decent fast food and a movie. We eventually got cheap pizza and saw Pan's Labyrinth. The movie was quite strange and more gruesome than necessary, but I am not complaining.

I have got to say, Tuesday I started to feel a bit under the weather again. Another sore throat and sinus pain. It would continue through the weekend.

Thursday Feb. 15th-
Not feeling on top of my game, I just hung around Bob's through the afternoon. I got ahold of Liz later in the day. We made plans for me to pick her up after returning her car at the airport and then grab some dinner before picking up Kevin (Deuco) back at the airport. After picking up Liz, we drove around Point Loma looking for a place to get some grub. We eventually drove out a peninsula and found a few hotels with restaurants attached. Being that we were both dressed down, with hoodies and jeans, I was skeptical of our ability to get through the door of any of these restaurants. Through Liz's convincing, I stopped at a place I believe was called Humphrey's by the bay... we were seated there and the service was very good. We had some great food and shared a bottle of wine. It was our Valentines dinner a day late. Afterwards, we made our way back to the airport and picked up Deuco who drove us back to his parents house. After meeting his rents and chilling for a while talking with Liz, Kevin and his sister Megan I eventually drove the 45 minutes back to Bob's place.

Hangin' with Balboa

Monday Feb. 12th-
I had heard about a nice disc golf course from Wernet that I wanted to go check out. It was down in Balboa park, so I made the 30 minute drive down there. I had checked out their website and I knew that it was going to cost $2.50 to play, which is a reasonable fee for a decent course. When I got there, I was asked to pay $3... I asked if it was a holiday and the guy said that it was. I guess even though it was not Presidents Day, Lincoln's birthday is considered a holiday to them. The course was nice, each hole had 3 to 6 different pin positions. This is nice for people who play the course regularly as the difficulty and playability of the holes change weekly.

After disc golf I went back to Bob's. We met up with Dave that evening to have a going away dinner for him. He was heading out on ship for a while so we had some mexican food and chilled on the beach for a bit. We got back to Bob's and he got busy packing his stuff because he was going to be spending the rest of the week in the field at Camp Pendleton.

Tuesday Feb. 13th-
Bob had left for the field real early in the morning, he would not be back around until Friday. Sandra left for LA for a couple of days, so it was just me at the apartment for a while. One strange thing about that morning was that only one wall of outlets were working in the apartment with the one for the fridge not being one of them. I called Bob and left a message on his voicemail so he could let his landlord know.

Liz (from Texas) was in town for a conference and she brought her friend Jamie so that they would be able to take care of some wedding stuff while in town as well. We planned on meeting up at the San Diego Zoo later in the afternoon after they had taken care of their business for the day. So it was back to Balboa Park for me, being that the zoo was located there as well. I got there around 2pm, had some lunch and waited around for and hour until I met up with Liz and Jamie by the orangutans at 3pm. The park closed at 4pm but the grounds closed at 5pm... which means they don't allow anyone in after 4pm but the guests can stay until 5pm. So with that we had 2 hours to enjoy as much of the park as we could. For the first part there were a bunch of birds, but then we got to the bears and then the koalas. From there we saw the elephants and rhinoceroses. We walked up a hill and saw the giraffes which seemed to be an arms length away, with no fence in between them and the guests, but just a small ditch. The other exciting animals we saw were the hippopotamus, we were able to see them in their tank right against the glass. These animals are quite huge and graceful under water at the same time. By that time we needed to head for the exit. One thing I really enjoyed about the zoo is the wooded environment that it is located in. Where the Cleveland zoo seems very open and spacious, the SD Zoo was jungle like while still being rather large and providing plenty of space for the animals.

After the zoo, it was about time for sunset and the girls were interested in hitting a beach. with my little knowledge of the SD, I suggested going to sunset cliffs which we were not too far from. Unfortunately, that time of the day was not the best to be traveling across the city and by the time we got there, there was barely much of a sunset for us the view. After that we went up to La Jolla and got some thai food for dinner, it was yummy. After that we split ways with them going back to their hotel and me driving back to Bob's. Not having any plans I drove up the coast instead of the highway just to enjoy the drive. I went to the local coffee shop in Carlsbad and got some chai tea. When I got back to Bob's there was no electricity in the apartment complex at all. There was a note on the door that said the electricity would be back by 6pm, but the fact that it was 10pm did not make me fell good about those prospects. I called Liz and they said I should spend the night at the hotel with them. By the time I got the Liz was passed out and Jamie was nearly there as well.

Chillin' in SD

Friday, Bob went to get his friend Sandra from the airport after leaving me at Natasha's. A group of us were going to get some sushi and sake bombs at a place in Carlsbad. Emily was there with her boyfriend along with Frank and his roommate Aaron. A few others met up with us and it turned out to be a blast. The sake bombs were a first for me and they were not as bad as I had expected. Bob and Sandra eventually met up with us and went dancing shortly afterwards. We all had a great time that night.

Saturday Sandra, Bob and I drove out to the Wild Animal Park and met up with Frank. The four of us walked around the park checking out the gorillas, tigers, lions, flamingos, and elephants. All of the animals at the park seemed to have plenty of land to run around on... it seemed as though they were all pretty well taken care of. It was a good time hanging out with the animals. Afterwards we got some Chinese for lunch and went back to Bob's. Once there we hit the beach with a disc and threw around for a while. That evening we went to downtown SD with the plan of going to some fancy club... sports coat required type of places. I have got to say that I have never owned a blazer and never been to a place that required one. Bob's buddy Dave had a couple that Bob and I were going to borrow, we were meeting up with him at a hotel that he had gotten that evening so that we could just stay down there. As it turned out, we got going a bit latter that we had planned and ditched the idea of the fancy nightclub. Frank and Aaron met up with us and we made our way to a place in the gas lamp district that had an 80's band. We met some traveling nurses there, but no one managed to prosper from it. Dave, Bob, Sandra and myself stayed at the hotel that night while Frank and Aaron went home.

Sunday we went and drove around Point Loma and checked out Sunset Cliffs. From there we went to Pipes Cafe to pick up brunch, which we took back to Bob's. Later that day Bob went to get a haircut and while at the barbers I decided to join in on the fun and get my hairs cut as well. Up to that point I had been letting my hair go crazy for a while and had not shaved for about two months. All of the guys there were Marines and and they all were giving me some interesting looks, kinda like "who is this guy with his hippy style in our barbershop". From there we went to Target where I got some clippers to trim my facial hair and then went to Trader Joe's to get some stuff for dinner. Dave came over for dinner and I cooked some pad thai and overcooked some edamame.

Back on track (happy 311 day)

Thursday Feb 8th, I went down to Point Loma for a seafood lunch. It was fried and good. Afterwards I drove the three miles over to Sunset Cliffs to take some photos and enjoy the view of the Pacific. Bob and I met up after he was done with work and went climbing at the rock gym out near Vista, just a bit east of his place. The place was empty when we got there and the two guys working there were cleaning some of the holds and changing a few of the routes. I don't think it affected my enjoyment of climbing. I managed to find some easy routes and challenged myself on a few, It was quite a workout. Afterwards we went home for dinner before going over to Natasha's. She is a friend of Bob and Frank, who happened to be there as well along with her roommate Emily. So even though they told us they would have eaten by the time we showed up, they had not and even had a plate full of food waiting for us to share... how generous. We sat around and talked for a while and listened to Frand read aloud from some dude's blog. It was a hoot, with him doing voices for the different people. That night Bob drove the Prius home and it hit 5000 miles since leaving Cleveland. That was our Thursday.

As I am keeping rather busy while visiting people, I keep on slacking on the blog. I constantly am thinking to myself that if I could only work on the blog while driving, I would be able to get a bunch done while I have nothing else going on. Having driven the past two days from San Francisco to Portland, through the Red Wood Forest, I might have come up with a solution... I have the ability to record to my iPod. So, I have vocally expressed my thoughts through the end of San Diego and have them waiting on my iPod to get transcribed. Hopefully I can find the time while here in Portland to get those taken care of.