California Day 1

We arrived in not so sunny San Francisco, California on Tuesday, July 11th at approximately 1:45 pm. The flight was early arriving so we were excited to have the extra time. We were going to miss the rehearsal because of our flight but were early enough to give us a little wiggle room before dinner. We were looking forward to being able to check into our hotel and freshen up a little bit after a long plane ride and a 3 1/2 hr car ride. Now those baseball fans would know that July 11th was the day of the All Star game in San Francisco. When we arrived at the rental car counter they were out of compact cars and wanted to give us a minivan. I refused to drive a minivan. I told the gentleman at the counter such a vehicle. He had to "search" the system. We walked away from the counter why he searched. I was called back to the counter and offered a Pacifica. I refused that as well because that is pretty much the same thing as a minivan in my mind. Finally we were offered a Chrysler 300 for the same price as the compact car. Finally 1/2 hr later we were finally on the road.


The ride to Atascadero was very interesting. There were a lot of really neat things to see. The one thing that I noticed how brown the landscape was. We saw green only when we passed farm fields and vineyards. We have never driven in or near mountains before. The miles and miles of grapevines that we saw was staggering.

More Grapevines with mountains in the background.

Another thing that we had never seen before was an oil refinery with oil drills. Dotted along the mountains and road side were small oil drills.

One of the last interesting things that we saw was the sign posted below:

We found out later that evening that there was either a prison or mental institution near by. In the background of this picture is a bell. These bells were along the highway about 1 hour apart. They were mission bells commemorating all of the missions in that area.

We arrived in Atascadero just in time for the rehearsal dinner. We enjoyed a pizza at the restaurant that Jenelle, (Ben's now wife) ran previously. It was a nice little place and the pizza was good. The cake we enjoyed that night was from the Madonna Inn. Check out the link it is a VERY unique place their guest rooms are very interesting. The cake was FABULOUS!!

We returned to the hotel to check in around 9 pm and turned in for the night exhausted!