Harry Potter Day?

No, today was not Harry Potter Day, although we did buy two copies of the book. Today was Steph's birthday! Happy birthday Stephanie! We had a nice dinner at this little Thai place on Riverside in Rockford, and enjoyed each other's company tonight. Considering all the traveling we've done in the last week, doing too much tonight wasn't really an option.

Today the 7th and final book in the much loved Harry Potter series was released all over the world. Steph and I are big fans of the series, so much in fact, we bought two copies so we could both read it right away. One of the copies will eventually find its way to eBay, but for now, we'll both be devouring these over the next few weeks. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it all ends. For those of you who haven't read these, what the heck's wrong with you?!? The series is really quite good, and I highly recommend it.

Travleing Daze: Part Two

We had a great trip. I want to start this post off with that. We spent 5 great days in a beautiful area, ate some great food, saw some amazing things, and most importantly, spent some quality time with family. It's really too bad that it was all punctuated by this day.

The day started normally, with Steph and I saying our goodbyes to Kathie, Josh, and Noah, then driving the 30 miles or so to San Luis Obispo airport. We arrived with plenty of time, returned the rental car without incident, then made our way to the check-in counter. This is where the fun begins! Our flight was delayed. This was a bit stressful, as we only had about 40 minutes in between connecting flights, but the woman at the counter assured us that it was only a slight delay, and we should be able to make our flight to Chicago. The flight was an hour late. Needless to say, we assumed we missed our connecting flight, so when we arrived at LAX, we went to our original gate area to try to catch another. Guess what! Our connecting flight was delayed. Yes, both flights were delayed. This wasn't too bad, but we did have to wait for about an hour and 1/2 in LAX for our connecting flight to arrive. All in all, our traveling was delayed nearly 3 hours. Wow, pretty bad, right? Not so fast! The fun had just begun!

Steph and I boarded the bus to Rockford, and right before the bus was ready to leave, a woman and her daughter got on the very crowded bus and sat right behind us. The mother proceeds to call every freakin person in her directory and talk at roughly double the volume of a normal conversation. This went on for about 1/2 hour, then, after Steph stared at her for about 5 minutes, she stopped on the phone and began talking non-stop to her daughter about the most inane nonsence I've ever heard. They had a 5 minute conversation about whether or not VH1 was on basic cable. I'm not joking. And of course, the daughter was just as oblivious to her surroundings as mom, so she was essentially talking as loud as possible for about an hour straight. I can only equate this to paying $17 to be kicked in the groin for about an hour and 1/2. Crude, yes, but very true.

Well, like I said in the beginning of my little rant, we had a fantastic time, so I guess the torture of traveling for 12 hours was a small price to pay for 5 great days. It's good to be home!

Thursday: Montana de Oro, Farmers' Market in San Luis

It's 10:oo pm, we have to travel tomorrow, and I'm dead timed, so I'm going to keep this very brief. Today was a big day, and a lot of great stuff happened. Instead of trying to force it out of my muddled mind, I'm going to put this little placeholder here, along with my picture for today, and encourage you all to come back to this post tomorrow. When I get home I'll be putting up a better account of today's activities, so hopefully I won't be too wiped out then.

Wednesday: Hearst Castle, Elephant Seals

Today was a great day! Steph and I took a trip to San Simeon, to Hearst Castle. Hearst Castle is an amazing place, and every time we go to California, we try to go there at least once. This time we took the "Tour #4", which is a mostly outside tour of the gardens, the two pools, and ends in the wine cellar. This is probably the best tour we've been on, and since it's one of the less popular tours, instead of having a 30 person group, there were only about 12 or 15 people on our tour. It was really great. There's so much there that I would love to take time to shoot, but they whip you through there so fast, that it's difficult to get a lot of good shots. Fortunately, with the smaller group, I was albe to get some good ones.

After visiting Hearst Castle, we took a drive north on the 1 to view some local wildlife. This time of year, the Elephant Seals are on the shore, shedding their fur and looking quite lazy. These things are massive, and they look like they survive just to lay around and throw sand all over the place. They're pretty impressive beasts, and it's cool to see these animals live and in person instead of on Animal Planet.

Tomorrow we'll be heading to Montana de Oro, a local park that borders the Pacific and is pretty amazing. I should have some pretty amazing shots tomorrow.

Here's the rest of today's shots.

Tuesday: Walking, Shooting, Shopping

Well, tonight I'm taking my sister's advice and hooking up to her lightning-fast wireless connection to post on the blog. I can't even describe to you how amazingly bad the hotel connection is. Imagine dial-up, shared to about 50 different people through one wireless router. It's worse than that. Lucky for me my sister is as big a tech lover as I am and she has high speed and a good router.

Today Steph, Kathie, and I waked the streets of San Luis Obispo, hitting all the little shops and eating an awesome lunch at the Natural Cafe. This is the second time we've eaten there, and for Steph it's great. It has a diverse menu, and a large vegetarian menu to choose from. I even don't mind eating there, as they have a few meat dishes that are really good. There are only a few, however, so now I know the difficulty she faces every time we go to a restaurant in good ol' Rockford.

After the shopping expedition, we took a short visit to the Mission in San Luis, then picked up my Nephew Noah at his preschool. Kathie and Noah went home to take a nap, so Steph and I went down to the state park here in Morro Bay. The views of the rock and the sea were breathtaking. I think I shot about 50 pictures up there, and got some really good stuff. We're now sitting at Kathie and Josh's house, and Josh just pulled up. We're going to eat some local fish fry, then just hang out with a couple cold ones. Time to eat! View today's photos here.

Monday: Walking and Talking

This is going to be a short post, since my eyes are dangerously close to closing on me, and I've been fighting for 15 minutes with this piss-poor hotel WiFi trying to bring this page up. I'm tired, irritated, and totally ready to sleep for about 10 hours.

Today was spent with my Sister Kathie, Stephanie, and myself browsing the various shops and areas of Morro Bay. We spent most of the day walking the streets and visiting the beach, then Steph and I were treated to a great dinner and dessert at Kathie & Josh's house. She offered her wireless for me to put up my post, and god, I wish I had taken her up on it. To say this hotel's connection is crap would be a travesty of understatement. You can see the rest of today's photos here.

Traveling Daze

Wow, what a day. After an early 5:30 am start, about 10 hours of traveling, and some quality time spent with my Sister and her family, I am completely spent. No amount of caffeinated beverages will keep me going any longer. Add to that the 26 hours straight that I was awake yesterday, and I'm one tired dude.

The day went pretty smoothly, but unfortunately I had very little time to actually take my camera out of the bag. This shot I took at O'Hare airport in Chicago. I was sitting at this kiosk that's provided for charging your laptop. It was pretty boring, waiting an hour and a half for our flight, when I looked to the seat next to me and saw this had written sign someone had left. It really struck me to see it there. I just thought it was really profound, and in a place so full of miserable people, I thought it was especially powerful. No one likes the actual travel part of traveling, and I just found it very refreshing to know that someone took the time to write that and put it there so people like me (and my fellow miserable travelers) could see it.