#Gates50States

California was quite a bit of a project for us. It’s huge. It’s varied. It’s beautiful. And we took it in bite sized trips over several years.

We bundled northern California with our 2018 Oregon and Washington trip. As we flew into San Francisco and drove up the coast to Oregon, we’d’ve been foolish to drive past Redwood National Park.

What seems like ages ago now, when Lincoln turned nine years old, Jenn surprised him with a trip to Harry Potter World at Universal Studios in Florida. By that time, he’d read through the Harry Potter series twice, so he was quite well connected with the theming. This set up an expectation amongst Lydia and Henry that they’d get some big trip when they turned nine. We caught a couple of fish with one hook by traveling to Southern California in 2019 for their birthday trips, with Sea World for Lydia and Legoland for Henry.

The USS Midway is docked in San Diego and they’ve preserved so much history on the ship. We were both thrilled to see the different jets on the deck and humbled by the video depicting the sacrifice so many made in the Pacific Theater in WWII.

The network of friends we’ve established over the years has set us up for many cool connections on our various travels. A veterinary friend, of whom I first learned when I read his name on one of my rabbit medicine texts but later befriended in a veterinary social media group, practices in San Diego. He’s kind of the best exotics vet around, the guy the veterinarians at the San Diego Zoo call when they’ve got a real problem on their hands. Jeff Jenkins invited us to visit his clinic, and we just couldn’t pass that up. How exciting it was to see his place, and to see how a clinic operates that doesn’t see companion animals as we see, but a whole different category of species.

On Jeff’s recommendation, we went to Cafe Coyote for dinner. The furthest thing from a chain, this is a place the locals enjoy. We highly recommend.

The California coast is just beautiful, and even though the temperatures were cool, we still made it down to the beach for some play time.

The San Diego Zoo enjoys an impeccable reputation, and we made arrangements to visit their Safari Park. Jenn went so far as to book us on the evening Safari out into the savannah. It was a most unique experience, from feeding a giraffe to touching a rhinoceros!

We sprinkled Death Valley into our Nevada and Arizona visit in late 2020. Jenn and I had been to Death Valley before, and we knew it was a place we had to take the kids. We celebrated Lydia’s birthday with a dinner at the Last Kind Words Saloon (before driving out to Rhyolite for an evening under the stars), we hiked Gold Canyon (one of our favorites) & Natural Bridge, walked out into Badwater Basin, drove through Artist’s Palate and up to Dante’s View, and enjoyed a dip in the pool after a 100º day. That’s kind of a quintessential Death Valley Trip.

Still to come, provided the state gets back to normal about accepting tourists and not further losing their minds, we plan to visit Yosemite, the Channel Islands, Monterey Bay, and Alcatraz in San Francisco.