San Francisco to Lake Tahoe

Today was a relatively short day of driving with only about 250 miles to cover. We started out pretty slowly with some pancakes at home before leaving around 9:30. The first leg of the trip took us across the bay and up to Fairfield, California. For those of you that don't know about Fairfield, it houses the Jelly Belly factory and is the highlight of the trip for Ellen and Ethan. Somehow they are fascinated with jelly beans. I admit that they taste good, but it's not the highlight of the trip for me :-)

The Jelly Belly factory gives a good tour, but today the plant was closed for maintenance. We were able to go on a "virtual tour" that was really informative, and we got to sample the new jelly beans that are not coming out for a few months. That's always fun. It is pretty amazing the way they produce them and how many are cranked out of their machines every day. I guess that is something we can thank Ronald Reagan for as he was a fan of the jelly bean and promoted it during his presidency. You do learn some trivia while taking the tour. For instance, did you know:

• Jelly beans were invented in 1976.
• It takes 7 to 21 days to make a jelly bean.
• The original flavors of jelly beans were: Very Cherry, Root Beer, Cream Soda, Tangerine, Green Apple, Lemon, Licorice and Grape.

You get the idea... If you want more facts, search the web. However, the tour is informative, and when you walk around the production facilities you see bins and bins of jelly beans, enough to feed the world.

The tour of the artwork produced with jelly beans is also pretty interesting. There are tons of "pictures" that are created with jelly beans. The signs that they place under them are pretty funny. Did they really have a problem with people taking out the jelly beans from the art and eating them???



After leaving the factory, the car was quiet as the kids compared and traded their jelly beans. It was a shame that the ride was so quick as we were only headed to Davis to stop by the university and grab some lunch. The campus is really nice and there are so many new buildings going up. It's hard to tell that the UC system is having funding problems when you drive through this beautiful campus.

We wandered around the downtown area and stumbled upon a small chinese noodle restaurant. Since it was 110 degrees outside (honest), and the restaurant was nice and cool, we popped in for lunch. Their portions were huge, and my tofu was as fresh as home!


We walked off our lunch around the downtown area and decided that we would head on to Lake Tahoe (our final destination for the day). Before we went back to the car, we stumbled upon a London phone booth on the street. We're not sure why it is there, but it looks pretty neat!


We got into the car and the thermometer showed over 110, and then at one point it displayed three dashes (---). I'm assuming that it was too hot for the thermometer! The car was nice and cool though, so the remaining drive was beautiful and cool. We stopped at the border of Nevada, Ethan rushed out, and Ellen snapped a picture. This was only about 5 minutes from our final stopping point at the Lake!


Once we arrived at the hotel, we checked-in and took a walk down the "beach". It seems funny to call it a beach since it's on a lake, but I guess it still qualifies! It is a breathtaking view to look out onto the lake, see the snow-capped mountains on the other side, and the blue water below. We didn't stay long as we were not prepared for sand and water, so we took a stroll, checked out the water, and then headed back for an early dinner since the kids wanted to swim later in the evening. The weather was still in the 80's here, so it was just perfect.


We decided on an Italian restaurant across from the hotel. It turned out to be really good, and the waitress reminded us of one of the teachers at my school. It was not her, but it sure did look like her. As with all restaurants lately, the portions were huge and hard to finish. Very tasty though, so that's more important! Here's a shot of the three of us that our super-nice waitress snapped for us.


After dinner we relaxed a bit, then headed down to the pool which was pretty warm. The air temperature seemed to drop a lot, so once we got out of the pool, it was cooooold... Well, maybe not cold, but colder than 80 degrees! We dried off next to a big fire pit, then headed back to the room to relax and get some sleep. Tomorrow morning we are going to head to the beach while we're here. There's no rush to leave early since we're only headed to Elko, NV. If you've never heard of it, join the club. We will make stops along the way, but it is really just a stopping point between here and Salt Lake City where we plan on spending two nights.

Hotel: Hyatt Regency Lake Tahoe. Room is very nice. Grounds are very nice. Walk across the street to the beach, but very nice beach. No free wi-fi, no microwave, etc. No free breakfast.