Happy in a Million Ways: December 2011

Friday, December 30, 2011

San Francisco

We started out the day with a quick "Full House" tour of San Francisco!

I thought it would be funny to play the theme song as we pulled up to the house! Laura and I rolled down our windows for pictures and Jeremy wanted to die with embarrassment. Hehe!

Alamo Square, with the Painted Ladies houses

We braved the scary drive back up Twin Peaks for a view of the city during the day!

You can see the Golden Gate Bridge above the fog. It was so beautiful!

Jeremy checking out the view. He's wearing his Kung Fu shoes that he got in Chinatown last night!

We went to pick up the rental car and begin the 3 hour drive to Chico to drop Laura off! Jeremy drove the rental car to Chico, and Laura and I drove her car. It was hopefully my last experience driving in San Francisco! I would be getting my brakes checked every other week if I lived here!

Our approach to the Golden Gate Bridge. The fog was charming, but we really wanted to be able to see it!

After crossing the bridge, we stopped at a vista point. (hehe)

Finally, we made it to Chico. It was a fun adventure, and I was glad we were able to make sure she got there safely. Sniff sniff.

Great American Road Trip: Day 3

On Wednesday, we woke up in the desert and ended the day in beautiful San Francisco!

I thought this scene was so Western with the train and mountains in the background.

This sign marked the beginning of the 40 mile desert in Nevada.

At the end of the 40 mile desert, we started to see the Sierra Nevada mountains in California!!!

The scenery was so beautiful that I had to play one of my favorite worship songs, "Our God," by Chris Tomlin (the studio version, not K-Love)... so good!

Laura got in on the action and played "California," and it was such a fun and exciting experience to be driving over the mountains together!

We were hoping there would be a huge sign to take Laura's picture by (since Cali is her new home), but this was the best we could get. Still cute!

We stopped in Truckee, California since it's on the Gold Rush Historic Trail.

Can't you just imagine people panning for gold here?

The mountains were just incredible, and we stopped at numerous vista points.

This was called Emigrant Gap. There was a place near here where emigrants would have to lower their wagons with ropes. Yikes!

We're almost there! We got to San Francisco much later than we were originally going to, since we stopped so much during the day. It was so beautiful driving into the city at night.

After we got to San Francisco, we drove to Twin Peaks, which is a huge hill overlooking the city. The drive up here was steeper than the Sierra Nevada, but the view was definitely worth it... It was so magical and a great introduction to the city. We could barely see the Golden Gate Bridge poking out of the fog!

Jeremy enjoys reading every possible map/historic sign. I thought it was funny to look over the parking lot and see his silhouette against the sign.

We drove downtown San Francisco and checked into our hotel, then went out to explore a little! This is Union Square, a major shopping area.

We found Chinatown, which is the largest Chinatown outside of China! We spent a few hours going through the shops and eating at New Saigon.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Great American Road Trip: Day 2

Today the scenic part of the road trip began! We made it about halfway to California the first day, so we were able to have an easier day today, only driving about 8.5 hours.

This was after we got into Utah. I had no idea this state was so beautiful!

This might sound silly, but all day I felt so grateful to God for allowing us to experience this trip. We're so lucky to live in this amazingly beautiful country and it's so fun to see new parts of it!

Getting close to Salt Lake City

There was a lot of mist from the melting snow which just added to the beauty.

The Great Salt Lake - it's hard to see it because it blends in with the mist. We thought it was kind of eery, almost. Anyway, the Great Salt Lake is the second saltiest lake in the world after the Dead Sea of Israel!

There is a stretch in the Great Salt Lake Desert where the road runs dead straight, east to west, for almost 50 miles.

This was the thing I was most looking forward to on the road trip. There are miles and miles of just pure salt. There are places where it's completely level for over a hundred miles. Supposedly you can see the curvature of the earth.

Me on the salt flats

The sun was going down and it was so pretty.

A Utah sunset

It blows my mind that over 100 years ago people used to pack up their wagons and WALK all the way here.

Great American Road Trip: Day 1

The day after Christmas, we left my parents' house to drive Laura to California! I have always been curious to see what our country looks like from here to the Pacific.