Get your kicks.. on Route 66

We stayed by the pool until late that afternoon. 

Later that night, we went into the city. After walking for a bit and getting a feel for the atmosphere we chose a nice place to have a beer and some appetizers. There was some live music which we really enjoyed. The two guys, a guitarist and a bassist, played the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Steve Miller Band and the such. After devouring a huge plate of nachos we explored a bit more before going back to the hotel.

The next morning we had breakfast, checked out of the hotel and headed back to the Stone Brewery to refill the two growlers we "accidentally" drank ;) They don’t open until 11am, so we explored a little of Escondido, California in the meantime. We found this park with a playground in the shape of grapes and vines. It was so cool.

We spent the rest of the day driving on Route 66 as much as we could. Since it’s not technically a route anymore it ends and picks up again, sort of randomly, alongside I-40. 

We saw a lot of ghost towns with houses that were boarded up along the way and a volcanic crater!

It was interesting seeing the effects of an interstate on local towns. We also saw SOOO many used car lots with really nice classic cars for sale. A lot of them were in pretty bad shape but there were some nice ones that made us really jealous. We also drove through some cool (tourist trap) towns that were really fun.

One of those towns, Seligman, AZ, we decided to stop in for dinner. This is supposedly the town that the movie 'Cars' is about because once I-40 was built all the businesses lost customers and a lot of them closed down. It’s obvious driving down Route 66 that a lot of these little towns milk the historic aspect of the route to get people to stop in. We planned on going to Delgadillo’s Snow Cap Drive-in but it was closed when we got there :( From the outside this restaurant looked like a junkyard with the amount of stuff they had, so of course I took lots of pictures. They even painted eyes on the cars to look like the ones from Cars.

We ended up having dinner at a really classy joint called 'Roadkill Cafe'.

After dinner we continued our 7+ hour drive to the Grand Canyon. We decided since we’re running out of time that we wouldn’t have much to spend there and that we would get as close to the Grand Canyon as we could and be there in the morning for the sunrise. On our drive we saw TUMBLEWEED, yes tumbleweed!! We were so excited! Only it didn’t roll in front of the car like in an old western film, it was flying in the air over the car. 

The sun had just set and it just started to get dark, when all of a sudden Larry notices a bunch of the yellow lines on the road disappeared. We both lean in to look when we see 2 little glowing eyes! It was a HUGE deer in the middle of the road! We slowed down and it just ran off but it was so scary how fast it all happened. We also almost died. Not really, but kinda. When we got to the Grand Canyon it was pitch black. There was no one at the front to tell us where to go or even give us a map but we just went in anyway. Somehow, we found the visitor’s center. But it was closed. Then we found the bookstore. And that was closed. We weren’t sure what to do because it was definitely too late to camp especially since we would need to be packed up by 4:30am to see the sunrise. We weren’t sure if we could stay in the car because of our previous Yosemite experience. Finally, we saw a bus pull up and we asked the driver what we should do. Thanks to him, and a map I found in the bathroom (gross) we found our way to a parking lot where we spent a less than comfortable night’s sleep.

Not all Halal food is made the same

After deciding to stay another day in perfect San Diego, we realized we haven't seen the beaches or the city yet. So today that's what we're going to do. After grabbing some breakfast, we spent the morning walking around Mission Beach. 

 Larry getting really excited about the possibility of running more wires

crazy pelicans

After finding a nice cache in town(on the old roller coaster seat) we realized several hours of walking has helped us build up a hunger and we decided to head into the city to grab some highly rated halal food. Now don't get me wrong, the food was very good. However, I wouldn't wait on a 45 minute line for it, like I would on 53rd & 6th. You see, the sauce was sort of runny and hot sauce more like cocktail sauce. Lamb was comparable but definitely not the chicken.

Now we're just sipping some sold-out-don't-know-if/when-we'll make it again double hop brewed Stone IPA poolside and listening to Bob Marley! Stay classy, San Diego :)

"Do you know why they're pink?" "Yeah, because they're magical."

Something happened to this post, somehow all the content got deleted. but anyway here is my re-creation...

Today we started the day early at the San Diego Zoo.

We arrived early so there were plenty of parking spots available and after grabbing a spot right near the entrance we bought our tickets and entered. We loved how right away you see a lot of animals, and not just lame stuff but cheetahs!

We were nervous about the line to see the panda bears, since they are their biggest attraction, so we made our way to them first. Along the way we saw some neat birds, such as Condors and a Steller's Eagle. The two Condors were mating so by the time we left that bird exhibit a huge group of people accumulated.

This is the male condor. It had a 9 foot wing span!

They were soo cute! We thought it was so funny how humanlike they were just siting and eating. They spend 22 hours of the day eating or sleeping! The second picture is of the only breeding male in the USA. 

But of course Jules already knows this!

This was a new addition to the zoo. It houses large animals such as elephants and really makes you feel as if you're on a safari. One thing that the San Diego Zoo does really well is house their animals in natural feeling cages. They are decorated very well and organized in a way that the animals are visible even in the more difficult views. After we were all walked out and our legs nice and tired we went on a narrated tour of the zoo. Larry, along with the old man sitting in front of us, fell asleep.

Both of us worked up a good appetite and after leaving the zoo it was straight to Crazee Burger, another one of our Triple D stops. This place is known for their wild game burger. Along with the basic beef and turkey burgers, they offer gator, ostrich, kangaroo, buffalo, and several other meats as well. All morning Larry would look at the animals and go, "I'm gunna eat you laterrr." He ended up having the kangaroo burger (gross) which he said was sort of gamey and I went for the half beef and half lamb. It was delicious and so were the sweet potato fries we got on the side, especially with their homemade chipotle ketchup. It was located in the Old Town part of San Diego which was really cute.

The rest of the daylight was spent finding caches around the San Diego area. It brought us to some nice locations along coast and we got to see some nice houses as well.

You're not worthy.

On our way to San Diego we made a 20-minute detour to go check out the one and only Stone Brewery. At first we weren’t sure if we were at the right place because there was no sign indicating what establishment you were at. We eventually decided to just walk in and sure enough we were greeted by a room full of Stone Brewery apparel and taps galore. 

We got tickets for the noon tour and just roamed the brewery until then. We were only with 4 other people(the 2 o’ clock tour had about 20) The tour was nice but it definitely wasn’t the best part. When we returned from checking out all the tanks and bottling machines we got to try samples. 

We got to try their pale ale, smoked porter, IPA, Arrogant Bastard, Jules had Levitation instead of Arrogant Bastard. All were delicious except I wasn’t too crazy about the smoked porter. After the tastings we decided to grab a bite to eat at their restaurant, Stone World Bistro. Lunch was sooo good and we even got a few free items. They felt they took too long to get to us, saying there was a miscommunication, they really didn’t make us wait long but they gave us a free round of beers and 2 appetizers for free. We ordered some ribs, which were fantastic, and some shepherd’s pie, also great even though it was tofu or something. 

We left after stuffing our faces but not without buying a bunch of beer, fresh and ready to go.  On the drive into San Diego we found a few hotels we liked but we ended up going for something different this time. We chose a Colonial style Mansion built in the 40s. It’s pretty neat and we landed a room that was just remodeled. After checking in we went out to see the area. While checking out our new surroundings we drove around a found a few caches. We had a few Triple D places to go to eat at here so despite having a bunch of left overs from Stone Brewery we went to Pizzeria Luigi. 

Got 3 slices of which all were pretty good. However, nothing that your average NY Pizzeria wont have. Exhausted, from our day we went back to the hotel, re-stuffed our faces and went to bed. We wanted to be fully rested as the next day was the Zoo.

estarbucks and estars

The first thing we wanted to do was get the tourist stuff out of the way. We went to Grauman’s Chinese Theater first to see the celebrity hand and foot prints. We were on the lookout for Marilyn Monroe, who we couldn’t find for a while until we realized we couldn’t see hers because it was always blocked by a crowd of people. You could tell hers was the most visited because her hand prints were darkened in from all of the hands that have touched it.

We were also looking for Frank Sinatra (obviously), and his was a little hard to find too because it was so old. His hands were almost as small as mine! We also found the Harry Potter cast, Star Wars and Shirley Temple.

Then we went for a walk along the walk of fame on Hollywood Blvd. We were surprised at how many names we didn’t recognize but also at how many people we didn’t think should have had a star.

It was pretty cool that Elvis & The Beatles had their own section in the Walk of Fame.

By the time we finished the long walk we were pretty hungry so we went to another place on our triple D list,  in honor of mother’s day: Mama’s Tamales ;). We couldn’t believe how cheap everything was. Tamales were only $1.50! We decided to try one of each. Each one was better than the last. They were out of the pineapple and we were upset we didn’t get to try it.

We left Mama’s very full and satisfied, then we decided to do the next logical thing: Go see the Playboy Mansion. All you can really see is a gate (and if you’re lucky a peacock) so we left right away. 

Next, we went to see Rodeo Drive where we saw our first (and only) celebrities! We saw the Jonas brothers and actually Larry was the one that spotted them! We weren’t sure which ones we saw (clearly, we’re huge fans), so we looked it up and turns out it was Nick and Kevin.

Next we stopped at "the witch's house." It's a house that used to be used in movies but then was moved to a Beverly Hills neighborhood. It's so creepy and cool looking, we couldn't believe people actually live in it!

Next, we went to Griffith Park to see the Observatory. The park overlooks all of Los Angeles and the Hollywood hills. It was a really cool park and the view was amazing. The observatory was full of information about the birth of the universe and had a lot of meteorites from outer space. We went outside the observatory to see the big telescope and saw the city from even higher up. We spent the rest of the afternoon until it got dark finding caches.

After many unsuccessful attempts at ordering good Chinese and Thai food throughout the trip, we had high hopes for LA thanks to one of our favorite shows, The Big Bang Theory. And The Palms Thai restaurant finally delivered! For $7 an entre, we got the best Thai food we’ve ever had! The restaurant has an Asian Elvis impersonator that sings next to a bronze statue of Elvis in platforms. It was really weird, but he was actually pretty good!