Arrived in Dallas

We have arrived in Dallas and are waiting to get off the plane.  Raleigh flight leaves at 7:00pm central time.

Heading to the airport

We are on the way to the airport.  We leave here at 11:35 pacfic time and arrive in Raleigh at 10:35pm eastern time.  Good news is that we are running about 2 hours ahead of the original flight times.  I hope we don't hit any thunderstorms in Texas.

May 24th - Last Day in San Francisco

Today we had two great tours which included the Muir Woods (A Redwood Forest) and Alcatraz. I have to say I could hardly believe how large the Redwood trees. We didn't feel like we got enough time at Muir woods, because all of the hiking trails were extremely long for the 1 hour and 15 minutes that we had in the forest. We were able to get some great pictures of the trees and even bought a small one in the gift shop to plant in our backyard. After leaving Muir Woods we headed down into Sausalito eating lunch. There wasn't a tremendous amount of things to see at Sausalito, but it was a nice place to have lunch on the way back from Muir woods. After returning to the city Teresa and I spent the better part of the afternoon trying to find the house from the opening sequence of the popular TV show Full House. Check out below for a picture. The house is showing its age and needs a paint job, but its defiantly the house. We grabbed a quick bite for supper and headed down to Pier 33 to catch the night version of the Alcatraz tour. I have to say if your ever in San Francisco I would recommend the night version of the Alcatraz tour, because the guards open up extra areas of the prison. The extra areas of the prison that we were allowed to visit were the prison hospital and the recreation area. Special talks by the guards were also given in different areas of the prison during the night tour, which we were told aren't a part of the regular day tour. All in all we had a great last day in San Francisco. Now it is time to pack for the trip home tomorrow.

Best Pictures of the Day:

May 24th - Urban Trek (lots and lots of walking)

Today we started by returning our rental car to the Avis car return location on Post street in downtown San Francisco. On the way we happened by Lombard street and I actually got the opportunity to actually drive down the street, which is pretty awesome. After returning our car we met our tour guide at Union Square at the "heart of San Francisco" for our urban trek through San Francisco. Our tour guide took us through Union Square, Chinatown, Little Italy (stopped by an awesome coffee shop and had some great cake), Coit Tower, the Levi Jeans Museum and the San Francisco Ferry Building. This tour encompassed some of the key areas of the city and I would recommend it to anyone travelling to San Francisco. The tour started at 9:00am and ended around 1:30pm, with only a couple breaks. After our Tour Teresa and I headed for some lunch at the Ferry Building and then on to Golden Gate Park. Just a note about Golden Gate park.... for some reason it isn't any where near the actual Golden Gate Bridge. We spent about 2 hours walking around this huge park looking for a view, that was never going to materialize. Eventually we decided that we should just go to the bridge itself, where we were able to get some great photos of the Golden Gate. After we left the Golden Gate Bridge we headed back to Fisherman's Wharf were we stopped by Ghirardelli Square where we had free samples of chocolate and ended up splitting the world famous Ghirardelli Hot fudge Sundae... Umm it was wonderful! After finishing off the Sundae we headed up to Lombard street on foot to get some good shots of the curvy street, since taking pictures from a moving car is pretty difficult. If you never have been to San Francisco you probably don't know how steep the hills are, but trust me walking up to Lombard street is a feat that should be left to the cable cars :). After getting our desired shot of Lombard street we headed back down to Fisherman's Wharf for a basket of fresh fish cooked right on the pier. Since we have been in San Francisco we have managed to eat a lot of fish. I will miss it once we get back to North Carolina. After supper we jumped back on the transit bus and headed back into Chinatown to do a little shopping in the gift stores. We didn't get to go in all of the stores we wanted to due to the time of day, but we still were able to see the Chinatown street lights that hang across the streets of Chinatown. Now we are back at the hotel and settling in for a early bedtime for once.

Tomorrow's Planned Activities:
* Muir Woods - Redwood Forest
* Socelito - Little town next to Muir Woods
* Alcatraz Night Tour

Best Pictures from Today:

Lady in Chinatown making Chinese Fortune Cookies by hand. They were the best Chinese Fortune Cookies we had ever tasted!

May 22nd - Day with the west coast Youngers

Today we visited my cousin Larry and his wife Shakira and their two daughters Cecilia and Gabrielle. Teresa and I drove down to Monterey and met Larry and Shakira around lunch time. We arrived at lunch time and were able to sit down and eat with the family. After lunch we headed to sight see at Pebble Beach's 17-Mile drive. This is a beautiful section of the California coast line, where most people are required to actually pay 9.50 to ride down the stretch of 17 miles of beautiful coastline. We have a couple of great photos from this drive below. Check out the one with the "lone cypress tree". After completing the 17-mile loop we headed back into Monterey to visit the Monterey Aquarium. This was the highlight of the day for everyone. At the aquarium we saw penguins, sharks, seahorses, jellyfish and even flamingos. After seeing all of that fish we decided we needed to head over to the original Bubba Gump Shrimp Company restaurant for supper. Supper was great and we even saw Forrest Gump himself in the restaurant (no it wasn't Tom Hanks). We had a great time visiting Larry in Monterey and hope to visit him again sometime soon!

Best Pictures From Today:

May 21st - Our 5 Year Anniversary

We spent today in the Napa Valley wine country. I have to say that it is a beautiful place and I can see why everyone wants a vineyard in Napa. We had a lovely time and even got to eat in Yountville at a restaurant named Hurley's. Yountville actually is the current gathering place for famous chefs of the Napa valley. There is a restaurant there named The French Laundry that costs $600 per person and is rated the #1 restaurant in the country. We would have liked to eat there for lunch, but I couldn't part with $1200 for lunch. We visited three wineries which were the Nicholson Ranch Vineyard, Madonna Estate Vineyard and Sutter Home Vineyard. The ride from San Francisco was about an hour and we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge on the way, which is completely magnificent. We hope to get a better view of it during our sightseeing tour on Sunday and our Alcatraz tour on Monday. After we returned back to San Francisco Teresa and I went out for a nice dinner at a well rated restaurant named Boulevard. I had a Fillet Mignon and Teresa had a Salmon dish. Both dishes were fantastic! Tomorrow we are heading down to Monterey to see my cousin Larry and his wife Shakira along with his two daughters.

Yes it is still very cold here... today the high was 59. Man I wish I had packed more pants.

Best Pictures from Today:

May 20th - Burrrr... It's Cold Here

After a short flight from Vegas we arrived at San Francisco International Airport and took a taxi to our original hotel in downtown San Francisco. The hotel seemed ok at first, but once we checked in and actually saw our room we were quite disappointed and didn't feel very comfortable. The room was very small and looked nothing like the pictures that were advertised by Expedia and Trip Advisor. We decided to "live with it" and head down to Fisherman's Warf for some sight seeing. Well the walk to the bus stop was filled with streets that I don't think you should walk down in the evening hours if you know what I mean, so we decided to switch to a hotel located in the Fisherman's Warf area, since this seemed like a more tourist friendly area. The next three hours were spent on the phone with Expedia trying to get our reservation changed. FYI the protection plan that Expedia offers covers this sort of problem, so I highly recommend purchasing it, because otherwise we would have lost the entire $754 that we paid for the other hotel. In the end we cancelled our reservation booked through Expedia, paid a penalty and booked our 5 nights here in San Francisco with the Holiday Inn Express in Fisherman's Warf for a little less than what we were paying at the other hotel. Once the hotel mess was straightened out we went out for a nice dinner at Alioto's (Fish Place on Fisherman's Warf). The picture from yesterday with the Golden Gate bridge was from our table at the restaurant.

Today's Activities:
Wine Country Tour - Napa, Sonoma and other areas of the Wine Country
Nice Dinner for Anniversary at Boulevard's in San Francisco

Best Pictures:
Sorry ran out of time... will upload more pictures tomorrow, because breakfast is more important.

The Price is Right Gameshow in Las Vegas

Just downloaded from the game's site...it was fun :)...didn't win anything.

Golden Gate at Sunset

Fisherman's Warf View

Packed, Full and Ready To Go

Just finished eatting at Denny's and we are ready to checkout from the hotel.  Our flight got bumped up from 1:45 to 12:51.

Off to the airport.  Goodbye Vegas...Hello San Francisco!

May 19th - Last Day in Vegas

We had a great last day in Vegas. Played some slot machines, ate a great milkshake, rode in a Gondola and went down to the Freemont Experience in downtown Las Vegas. I didn't win big on the slot machines or anything, but I was able to play with $20 for about 2 1/2 hours. Teresa couldn't believe my luck. The milkshake was from a great place we ate at the first night we were here called BLTBurger, which is located right inside our hotel The Mirage. It's kind of like Red Robin or any other speciality burger place, but they have some awesome milkshakes that I just had to try before we left. Your probably wondering about the Gondola, well the Venetian has an indoor river just like the ones in Italy that runs through the entire indoor shopping mall. Teresa and I shared a Gondola ride with a couple from Texas while our Gondola rower sang Italian love songs. It was even more interesting to find out that several people get married in the Gondolas everyday. It is a very neat experience and you shouldn't miss it when you visit Vegas. Freemont street in downtown Las Vegas has a very unique set of hotels and casinos from the early days of Vegas. We were able to see the "Golden Nugget" and the neon cowboy from all of the Vegas movies. We just finished packing for our second leg of this vacation.... San Francisco. We are leaving tomorrow on a 1:25pm flight from Las Vegas to San Francisco, where we will be staying at a Hotel Rex near Union Square. Look for continued updates from San Francisco.



Today's Best Pictures:

May 18th - Another day in Vegas

Today we spent more time wondering around to different hotels and attractions in Las Vegas. We visited the Stratosphere and got some awesome views of the Las Vegas valley. Teresa rode the "big shot" which is a ride that is at the top of the 108 story Stratosphere. The ride takes you up to the top of the needle above the Stratosphere and drops you 8 - 10 stories. We then walked around the Forum shops at Ceasar's palace and ate some lunch before heading off to the "Price is Right" live show at Bally's. This isn't the real "Price is Right" show, but a live "stage" show that allows contestants to compete for prizes by playing the different pricing games that are on the original show. This was very fun and entertaining if you like watching the actual show on TV, then I would recommend it as a great afternoon activity in Vegas. We grabbed some supper at BB King's Blues Club before heading to the Rio for the Penn and Teller show. If you have never seen Penn and Teller I would highly recommend catching their act the next time you visit Vegas. We had a great time and enjoyed the entire show and the meet and greet after. We were able to get our program autographed by both Penn and Teller, which are very nice down-to-earth people. To complete the night we headed of to the Paris Hotel and Casino to go up in the replica Eiffel Tower. This is a great way to see the Las Vegas strip at night. This replica of the Eiffel Tower is 1/2 the size of the real tower located in Paris. We saw the real tower about two years ago or so, and I have to say the replica is very realistic in comparison.

May 17th - Hoover Dam and Lake Mead

Today we spent our time travelling to Hoover Dam, Lake Mead and the Ethel M. Chocolate Factory. I have to say that even though we went to a chocolate factory I was still more impressed with Hoover Dam. I have to say that I am amazed how the Hoover Dam was accomplished in the 1930s with no help from computers. Lake Mead is the largest man-made lake in the US and Park Rangers strive to take care of the lake and it's animal inhabitants. We visited the ranger station and watched a video on how hard it is to undo the damage that cars, boats and atvs and inflict on the areas around Lake Mead, due to the only four inches of rain that the area receives each year. Tire tracks can last for months or even years, so remember to stick to the paved surfaces if visiting Lake Mead. We also took a boat cruise of Lake Mead, which let us get very close to the actual top of Hoover Dam from the higher of the two sides. We did notice the new bypass bridge that is being built to replace the road that currently runs across the Hoover Dam today, yes it is still under construction with no guaranteed finish date. The Ethel M. Chocolate Factory was very interesting, because this factory was started by the same man that founded the Mars Chocolate Company, which makes M&Ms. Don't worry we bought a sampler of their chocolate bars... I will post our findings later.

Things we learned today:
* Hoover Dam has a great "Dam Hot Dog" (see picture below)
* The Hoover Dam was constructed 2 years early and under budget (Only in history so far)
* There are people who can't take your picture correctly. Beware to ask for references when asking someone to take a picture of you and your wife. One lady today took our picture twice and managed to cut half of one of our bodies in each of the photos.
* Boulder City, NV is the only city in Nevada that has outlawed gambling.
* Hoover Dam is also known as Boulder Dam.
* There are no bodies buried inside of the Hoover Dam (Contrary to popular belief)

Today's Best Photos:

Late May 16th Posting

Sorry... we got in kind of late last night so I missed my end of day posting. We had a great time in Vegas for our first full day. For the most part we walked around and checked out most of the hotels. One of the best things in Vegas is the New York, New York roller coaster. I didn't ride, but Teresa had a blast and said it's well worth the money. I believe the best thing I saw or experienced yesterday has to be "The 0" show at the Belagio. The show is pretty expensive, but is well worth the money and I would recommend it to anyone headed to Vegas. We are going to see "Pen and Teller" later in the week and I will have to let you know how that goes.

Things we learned yesterday:
* Monorail - a must when travelling between multiple hotels.
* Denny's - (across from The Mirage) One of the cheapest places to eat breakfast/supper when your in a hurry and not looking for a "nice" meal.
* Big Slot Machines - Always put a dollar in the really big slot machines when you walk past. I won $20 dollars yesterday in one pull :).
* No matter what time you have to get up the next day.... it's still too early to go to bed in Vegas.

Today's Activities:
* Lake Mead and Hoover Dam

May 16th - Activities

Today we plan to walk around Vegas and checkout all of the different hotels.  We really have only seen about two or three hotels at this point.  I am excitied to see the Paris, Belagio and the Castle hotel(not sure of the name).

We do have tickets to The O tonight at the Belagio (10pm show).

May 15th

Travelling is a very tiring task. We left the house this morning at 6:30AM and arrived in Las Vegas at 6:30pm eastern. Our flight was delayed in Chicago for about an hour, which wasn't too bad considering that we were connecting in Chicago. Vegas is pretty cool and I have already lost 20 bucks at the slot machines... not doing so good so far. Teresa on the other hand has only lost $1.20 out of her 20 bucks that we have spent thus far on slot machines.

Looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow.


Travel Stats:
12 hours in transit
2,404 miles from home (using google maps)

View from the room

Pretty nice view.  Will have to check out the night version.

Were here!

Welcome to Las Vegas!

Gate change #3

Will it be our final one?

Chicago O'Hare Airport

2 hour layover is now 3... Very crowded today.

Waiting to board......

Will be in the air shortly....bye bye Raleigh,NC

Packed and ready to go!

After a hour or so of night before packing we are finally ready to go!

Bag Weight Stats:
Checked Bag #1: 46 pounds
Checked Bag #2: 30 pounds

Alarm Time: 5:00 AM

Flight Departure: 8:40 AM

Mail Scheduled To Be Held!

Just finished holding my mail via the usps.com website.  Its fast,easy and great for security while your gone on a trip!

And the packing begins...

Tonight we started packing for our 2010 vacation. I remember now why I hate packing. Basically packing messes up your entire routine for the week. I now have a set wardrobe for the week and the rest of the clothes I really like to wear are packed away in the suitcase prepared for next week's trip.

Trooper wanted to come, but sadly I don't think the TSA inspectors would take to kindly to finding this in our suitcase! :)