California Trip - Prologue

Crimson and I are finally back from out two week trip to California and I figured I'd share more than a bit about the trip with all my friends and family. Before diving into the day to day details, some background.

I've been thinking about a Western coastal trip for a couple years. I was really interested in driving up the coast, seeing a lot of beautiful scenary and checking out the interesting sights in between. I knew Crimson was very interested in seeing Hollywood and would be thrilled at visiting Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park and it world-leading 18 roller coasters.

I rarely travel without researching a LOT, undoutably too much. When I travel I like to keep busy, not sit around a hotel, by the pool or on the beach. I save that for Barbados. Crimson is pretty much the same way. So, I bought a couple of books, scoured the Internet and made extensive use of Google Maps.

I quickly realized my dream of traveling from San Diego to Seattle was not a possibility with only two weeks to work with. So, I amended the trip to simply San Diego to San Francisco with a day journey North of Frisco.

However, things weren't exactly linear for us as we'd be making detours inland to Hollywood and Six Flags. Since we wanted to see Leno and tour a studio, a weekend date in Hollywood was out of the question. Doing Six Flags on a weekday was also desirable. After struggling with this a bit, I found a rough itinerary that would work. Next up was an attempt to coordinate so that Mom, Sis and her sons could meet us in San Diego. We worked that out although Seth couldn't make the trip due to baseball.

With a rough idea in mind, I started working on specifics. Reservations for hotels in 10 different cities were made, 150 locations and way points were added to the GPS, lists of sites/activities were typed up, tickets for popular activities were purchased and about 50 maps were printed. It took me weeks to put together and organize but it was well worth every minute because it helped us maximize our time and see a LOT.

The last step was to get to the two us packed and ready for the trip. Our early departure from the house meant we'd probably be tired before we even started.

Coming up will be blog entries describing each day of the trip and including a couple photos from each day. The remaining pictures will be available shortly.

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Epilogue