It was awesome to sleep in a bed in a room with air
conditioning, but we had to push on because we had to be in California by
6pm. We left Elko feeling refreshed and
I was fueled by my desire not to be late.
The last leg of the trip would be 517 miles and half of that would be
desert.
Nevada surprised me.
I expected it to be flatter, but there were a few instances when we
reached elevations of almost 5,000 feet.
Josh decided to sleep, so for the first time on the entire trip I put on
my iPod and set the cruise control to 80mph.
We stopped briefly to see Reno. Well not Reno the city so much as Reno the Sign...
When we finally reached California, we were met with an
Agriculture Inspection station. This is
California’s way of keep invasive species out of their state. The woman who inspected our car was friendly
and pronounced cantaloupe funny, like “cantaloop.” We passed our inspection and continued
through the mountains.
The Marin Headlands are beautiful. The exit is off the 101 right before the
Golden Gate Bridge. We chose to take the tunnel entrance. It’s cool because the tunnel is one way, so
there is a light the cars have to wait at till the tunnel clears. The sign
actually says to turn off the engine of the car. The structures on in the Headlands are old
army barracks. We stayed in this old
house that has been converted into a hostel.
All the rooms are named after national parks, ours being called Grand
Canyon which was appropriate because it was the biggest room with the most bunk
beds. Yes, we slept in bunk beds and no
one seemed to mind. There was some talk
of building forts, but we never got around to it (5-year-old Jaimie would be
very disappointed). |
| Josh getting a picture of the Bridge at night |
The first order of business at the hostel was the rehearsal
dinner for Bradford and Tupelo’s wedding.
Josh and myself were pleasantly surprised to find that the dinner
consisted of an array of barbequed meats and some sides. There was also a keg of my favorite
California IPA from the Lagunitas Brewery.
It was good to see people that I’ve met when visited Brad in the past,
but because I had driven for 8.5 hours straight that day, I was completely
exhausted. However, Josh and I took a
ride around to the other side of the Headlands where we found the most amazing
few of the Golden Gate Bridge. There are
several outlooks with parking and we took advantage of one of them so Josh
could score some pictures on his camera, being that my little digital one takes
the worst pictures at night. Now
deliriously tired, we gave up and went to sleep
The morning of the wedding we went on a hike around the
coast of the Headlands. The bridge was
still covered in fog and the air was crisp.
My legs still hurt from the hills, but we wanted to make the most of our
time there.
The wedding itself was in
one of the buildings on the property.
The ceremony was in a room with lights hanging from the ceiling. The guests were seated on slightly rounded
benches. Everyone looked his or her best
and it was very simple. Dinner was held
in a larger room on the first floor of the building. The food was served family style with the
most amazing roast pork at the center of it all. After dinner we danced for what seemed like
hours and when it was all over we walked back to the hostel. We had celebrated quite hard and I went to
sleep. I knew that the next day would
bring a new adventure for Josh and I and there’s nothing worse than trying to
enjoy a new city with a hangover.
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