Big Basin and Palo Alto

Jackson next to a tree stump

Ready for a walk

The walk was so pretty

Loving this view

Trails

Lovely.

Look at this guy! LOVE!

Someone loves trees

Father of the forest

We finished our chilly morning walks around Big Basin we took the smallest, most narrow, steepest roads in the world. Ok, fine, probably not, but they were terrible. It was 1.5 hours of white knuckle driving. We finally made it back out to Hwy 1. We headed up towards Half Moon Bay. The weather was a little rough for about 20 miles and then it cleared right back up.

Petefish.

Late lunch

We read on Yelp that Half Moon Bay had a train car restaurant that was phenomenal. It was not quite as billed, but it was pretty good. We had their really good clam chowder which tasted excellent on the chilly day.

The trip into San Jose was pretty straightforward. We were surprised at all of the building in the area. We figured it was completely built up already based on all the technology companies here. It was a nice area and we settled in for a few hours of sun at the pool at our hotel. 

We decided to lounge around Monday morning to let traffic calm down before heading into Palo Alto to explore Stanford's campus. The entryway into Stanford up Palm Drive was amazing. The rest of the campus was fine, but it was a little retro. It felt very...seventies or eighties without much in the way of updates so it was not old enough to be classy, just enough to feel dated. It just was not my favorite campus. (I'm also a little biased due to a recent Malcolm Gladwell podcast discussing Stanford's huge endowment and overall sense of entitlement.) We did love the little town of Palo Alto, though. The village area had a ton of great restaurants and shops. We ate dinner there Sunday night and lunch on Monday. 

The availability of organic, wholesome food in California is like no other. I wish we had those kinds of options on the go at home. Maybe in 20 years or so...

An update on MacK

We made it to the airport without issue only to find that our flight was delayed because our pilot did not like the plane they'd selected so we had to wait for another. Then he didn't like that plane. So we waited for them to ready one from the hangar. We had some free United Club passes that we'd gotten with our travel credit cards so we hung out there with free food and drinks until it was time to board our flight. We finally took off and made it home and to bed at 3 a.m. UGH!

Waiting out the delay at the United Club SFO with
decaf coffee (me) and Gin & Tonic for Jack

It was a fun trip, but we are excited to pick up little MacK and catch up on sleep!