Home!

Yes, I'm home. It's great to be back... Able to shun my clothing once again. How I get used to going back to work tomorrow remains to be seen though.

As I said we were about to, Sarah and I headed downtown to check out the night scene Wednesday night. We spent a few hours wandering around taking pictures of cool stuff and watched a water show in front of the Bellagio Hotel. We barely made it back to the drop off/pick up point to catch our shuttle, and beings it was the last one of the night, that was definitely a good thing.

The next morning we finally left Las Vegas.

The drive to Los Angeles went without a hitch. It was hot as we knew it would be, but we had ample water to keep is hydrated as we always did. Along the way we stopped at the little town of Seligman, Arizona and browsed through some cool shops there. We actually detoured off the freeway there because it's one of the historic towns on Route 66. I wanted to check out the t-shirts at the Road Kill Cafe, but didn't see one that I liked so we ambled on down the street and looked at a few others. We each bought a couple things. It's cool when you see that town--You can tell it was part of the inspiration for the Pixar movie, Cars. They even had the same tow truck parked out in the street in front of one place.

We also stopped at the little town of Baker, California. It's the home of the world's largest thermometer, but the reason we stopped is that I wanted to investigate the store called Alien Fresh Jerky. Their jerky was just okay, but their trinkets were way cool.

We drove to Mark's house in Thousand Oaks very easily. I had a little cheat sheet with my freeways on it, and that made it a no-brainer. We got there at about 2pm and called Mark. He was still at work but was going to leave right then. In the meantime Sarah and I went down to a local Mexican restaurant and had some excellent appetizers. A half hour later we went back to their house and met them all at the door. Emma is so big! She talks real well, and I never got tired of hearing "Grandpa Rick" over and over. She took a little longer to warm up to Sarah, but before long "Auntie Sarah" was a familiar sound. We ended up staying at their house, with Sarah on a pullout in the living room, and me on a couch in the family room. Dana's parents only live a couple minutes away (maybe a mile as the crow flies) and they came over to meet us and visit after dinner. What a great and warm family!

The next day (Friday), we left Emma with Dana's parents while Mark and Dana took us on a tour. We went downtown to Hollywood for a little while and took a few pictures. There's really very little in Hollywood, and most tourists are probably very disappointed. I wasn't because I really didn't go to see Hollywood. We walked around Grauman's Chinese Theater and looked at all the famous hand prints and footprints in the concrete. They had just unveiled a brand new one that was done a few days earlier for Harry Potter, and Sarah was pretty thrilled to get to see that with the red carpet and stuff around it. We also walked around looking at all the stars in the sidewalks there too, and took a few pictures of stuff. Hollywood really doesn't take long at all. From there we went to Olivera Street, which is a cool shopping area, and home to the oldest brick house in Los Angeles. We ate lunch at a great Mexican restaurant there, and then headed back out on the road. From there Mark drove us out to Malibu so we could get a good look at the beautiful beach and how busy the area is. It was a great little tour and he did it very quickly. I would have spent all day doing half that much.

We all went to Dana's parents' house for dinner that evening. We all got plenty of time to swim in their pool, enjoying the perfect temperature for it, then capped it off with a great dinner out there next to the pool. The "after dinner" is quite the ritual to them, and they ended up bringing out tons of things to nibble on, not the least of which were fresh-picked (I picked them myself) green seedless grapes from their back yard. It was a great meal and it was great company.

The next morning we said our goodbyes. It was sad, but Sarah and I both agreed that the visit there was the highlight of our trip. She really enjoyed everyone--Especially Emma. We both took a bunch of pictures to treasure the visit.

We left there at 8:30 in the morning, and we got home here at 1am at night. It was a long, exhausting trip, but we were both so glad to be able to sleep in our own familiar beds for a change. When it was all said and done, our final leg of the trip from Marks house to home was 1,142 miles, and the total we drove on the whole vacation was 3,483 miles.

Whew.