San Diego

Michelle flew in to town and we planned a whole bunch of stuff to do. I took some time off of work and we headed down to San Diego. The funny thing was that Marcus and his girlfriend Monica were planning the same trip as us. When Michelle landed, we first went to Santa Cruz which is an hour south of Mountain View. We cruised through UCSC and it is very nice. The campus is huge and it is all inside a very beautiful forest. We kept heading south. Our first stop was at Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara is my favourite city. That night we met up with Marcus and Monica at Santa Barbara Brewing Company on State Street. Good Beer. We filled up the growler and we had a great time.

The next day we headed to the Santa Barbara beach. We chilled there for awhile, soaking up the sun and then we continued down the coast through Los Angeles. Just south of Los Angeles is Orange County. This is where Huntington Beach, Newport beach and Laguna Beach are located. We enjoyed the sites and sounds of of Orange county this evening and we slept in San Diego that night.

We woke up Saturday morning in San Diego and we headed to the San Diego Zoo. This is a world renouned Zoo and we definetly wanted to check it out. It is located in Balboa Park in San Diego. It boosts more than 4000 animals with 800 species. This particular Orangutan above intrigued me. She was really interested in womens make up and purses. The Orangutan wanted to see inside everyones bags. And she got really excited when you showed her lipstick. We were instructed not to show her cigarettes because she used to be addicted to cigarettes and it would upset her. I thought it was amazing that this animal could be addicted to cigarettes.
The main attraction at the Zoo while we were there was the Panda Bears. There was a huge line to go and see them. They were very lethargic. Panda Bears are in the Bear family and are carnivores, but what is interesting is that their diet is primarily shoots and leaves. They live almost entirely on bamboo. This Zoo is definetly worth checking out. Afterwards we headed a bit north of the Zoo to Old Town San Diego. This was very interested section of the city that exibits what life was like between 1821 and 1872. During this time period, San Diego was California's first Spanish Settlement.
Here is Marcus and I at the Coronado Beach. Coronado is an "Island" in the San Diego bay. There is a huge bridge that will take you over to the island. The beach there is huge and the water is the warmest that you can find on the west coast.

Aferwards we went to crab some food in the Fish Market. The Fish Market offers the widest selection of seafood in the city and we all had some good eats. That night we went out to the gaslamps district to have some fun.
Above is La Jolla. I find this place to be absolutely beautiful. This place is known as the "Jewel" of the Pacific Shoreline.
Here is Myself, Michelle, Hanna, Monica and Marcus. We are on a harbour tour that tours around San Diego Bay. There are two tours you can take. The North and the South. We decided to take the North Tour. There are many interesting facts to learn a long the way. For example, the airport is right downtown San Diego, so all pilots that fly in and out of San Diego have to go through a special program that certifies them in flying very close to large buildings.

That day we started heading back to the bay area. But first, I took a detour through the desert trying to make it to Joshua Tree National Park. Unfortunately, it took a lot longer to get there than I thought so we didn't have time to actually go into the park and explore. I still want to there ! We finally made it back to the bay area very late at night to conclude a very excellent trip!

Crater Lake

This is our Crater Lake Vacation 2006!!
We left from work at 6:00 PM on Friday night on our way up to Northern California. Our first stop is Chico State! Chico State was rated by playboy as the 2nd best party school in America. Check out the link: PlayBoy
We had a great time in Choc Partying with the Locals. It is about 4 hours away from the Bay Area so we got there in time for the party.
In the morning we kept on treking up north. On our way we encountered Mount Shasta. It is one of the biggest mountains in California. Check it out above. Amazing. After we got around Mount Shasta we encountered a city called Weed. This is a city that is very proud of their name. You can found souvenirs in their gift shops that say "I Love Weed". Anyway, we thought the Cop car picture below was a little amusing.
After we drove through Klamath falls we were starting to get close to Crater Lake. First we saw about a foot of snow on the ground. As we kept on driving, the snow kept getting deeper and deeper. As you can see below the snow depth got very very deep. The snow height was above the height of the car. It was really amazing. Crater Lake is one of the spots in America that get the most snow. Check out how high the snow is compared to our MiniVan below.
We finally reached Crater Lake and we very very Amazed. Crater lake used to be a mountain the existed a long time ago. During a volcanic eruption, the Mountain caved in on itself loosing about 1000 feet of height. The caldera of the Volcano slowly collected water over the years and eventually became known as Crater Lake. This is one of the deepest lakes in North America. The water is really blue!
There is still a lot of snow there at Crater Lake and we could not drive around the caldera. We were able to get a very spectacular view of the lake.
After we saw crater lake we headed out to the Oregon Coast. By the way Crater Lake is in the city of Oregon. We saw some very nice scenery along the way like this river below.
We crossed the border into Northern California in Crescent City and we were able to catch this magnificant sun set. Another interesting fact about crescent city is that it is the only place in North America to suffer a fatality due to Tsunamis. As we drove around northern California we were confronted with many evacuation paths in the case of Tsunamis.
We started heading south down the coast and we confronted the great Redwood forests. One of the spots that we stopped off at was the Pual Bunyan tribute you can see below. We got see some really tall trees.
Some of the trees were so big that you can drive through them. Check out the picture below were we could actually drive through the tree.
We continued to drive down the coast and check out Highway one. After this trip I pretty much drove on evry mile of Highway One in California. It was very amazing. We also stopped in Eureka to see the Lost Coast Brewery were we had some lunch and good beer. The west coast is a very pretty place and this turned out to be a very very great trip!

LA Adventure

Andrew, Mike, Steve and I headed down to LA this weekend. I used this chance to check out some of the stuff that I havn't seen yet. First, we checked out Grauman Chinese theatre. This is where all the major movie premiers are held. Also, all the actors press their hands into the concrete. I thought R2D2 and C3P0 was pretty cool. Check it out below.
From there we saw the Kodak theatre where every Oscar ceremony has been held and got a good look at the Hollywood sign. We cruised down Rodeo Drive and took Santa Monica Blvd. out to the coast where we hit Venice Beach. Venice Beach is a pretty cool place and some very interesting characters can be found there like the "Worlds Greatest Wine-O" below. All kind of stuff is happening on the beach like the muscle heads pumping iron and a pick-up game of basketball or hand ball.
You can pick up Highway One in Venice beach and head south along the LA coast. You will go underneath LAX and through Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Redondo Beach. The picture below is Redondo Beach. It is very pretty, the peninsula in the distance is Palos Verdes and it is the home of some very rich people.
Heading back into the Down Town Core we got a good view of the Horizon. I posted it below. I really like LA. There is so much of the city to see and do. It is amazing. But ofcourse, the pressure from the auto industry has caused most of LA to become a parking lot in exchange for no public transit. Anyway, below is a good view of the downtown sky line.
The best night life that we could find was in Hollywood. There are many clubs and bars that you can go to. In the morning we woke up for some Famous Roscoe's House of Chicken N Waffles. There is nothing like waking up for some Fried Chicken and butter/syrup drentched Waffles. This place is definetly recommended.
After some waffles we headed through the fashion district in LA and went down to Long Beach. On our way, we went through Compton. We wanted to know where our music was coming from. Ofcourse, it was no where near as bad as it is portrayed we definetly apreaciated the experience. Long beach was not what I expected. It is a huge city in the county of Los Angeles with over 500 thousand people living there. There is a huge long beach there too with people doing all kinds of stuff like flying kites, wind surfing, boogey boarding. We found a good spot to stop and eat and it had a good view of some harbor buildings and some kind of cruise ship. Check out the picture below.
We had a good time exploring the city this weekend. Very fun.