I about posted up some pictures from our trip to California yesterday, but I am definitely glad I waited until now. It has been kind of great escaping to all of the sunshine and blue skies from last week, while it has been snowing out and cold (currently 17 out). The majority of my time was spent wandering San Jose while Mitch was at his turf conference. We did manage to do a little sightseeing though. Before I get into the pictures, I should add that some of them are just off of my point and shoot, and some are Mitch’s handiwork. Also, be forewarned that there are quite a few images.
When we first arrived we had some time to kill so we just walked the streets of San Jose down by the convention center. I fell in love when we came upon this church. All of the detail was just beautiful.
Oh, I didn’t boost the sky color at all, it was that vibrant!
I can’t even begin to tell you how nice it was to not have to be anywhere, or do anything for once. This was the first actual vacation that I’ve been on since my bachelorette party I think. Even when we went to Vegas last year it was for the WPPI convention. Mitch and I decided that it would be nice to vacation together. 
Before last week I had never seen the ocean. I had been super close a few times, but was always on a schedule, so it didn’t work out. I’m pretty happy that my first trip was as beautiful as this. We didn’t get down to Santa Cruz until about 4 o’clock our first day, but that was perfect timing for beautiful light.
My handsome husband taking in the view.
This pelican was quite the model for me.
The sea lions were all over the place.
When we arrived I was kind of bummed out that there were zero clouds in the sky. I was really wanting a spectaculur sunset. To my surprise it ended up beautifully.
One of the days Mitch finished up a little early, so we went over the the Winchester Myster House. It is a mansion that Sarah Winchester built and designed when she thought she was being haunted by the ghosts that were killed by her family’s guns in the Civil War. Her husband was the second president of the Winchester company.
There were some pretty bizarre things in the house, like a staircase that led only to the ceiling, a window in the floor, doors that went straight into a wall, and even one spot of seven flights of stairs that only moved you up three feet. One of the coolest things for me though, was her collection of Tiffany glass. They estimate the collection to be worth almost $1 million now. Considering this was constructed about 100 years ago, that’s pretty impressive.
I really wish I had a wider lens with me that day to really show how massive this place is. If I remember right there are 160 rooms in it.
This is an insanely detailed gingerbread model of the house.
Our last full day we took the train up to San Francisco with some other turf guys.
This unfortunately was as close as Mitch got to Alcatraz. All week we heard how cool it was and had planned on going. But, by the time we got down there the lines were huge and it was starting to get late. I guess we’ll just have to go back.
We all decided that we wanted to see the crookedest street in America, so we looked on the map for the shortest route. Unfortunately it didn’t show elevation changes. Holy smokes did we get a nice workout.
If you turned around you would have seen this. We all noticed right away that everyone there knew how to park on a hill. We also decided that we wouldn’t want to drive a stick here and that it is a pretty good thing that icy roads aren’t the norm.
We did make it though. I’m pretty glad we just walked it and didn’t drive it.
We took another slight detour on the way back to the train station to go through China town.
I can’t say there are many towns we’ve been to that we haven’t gone to the local ballpark. San Francisco was not the exception.
It is a pretty cool ballpark with the cove right next to it.
If you’ve made it this far, congratulations!
-alm
