Road Trip Baby! [A Prologue]
In some respects this blog entry is a prologue for the awesome trip to come, and in another, it is a ‘to-do’ list – a fancy way of collating my travel research ahead of the trip and ensuring that I do not overlook anything.
However, since this is titled ‘Prologue’ I may as well give one of those too.
American Road Trip: Prologue
The core idea of this trip was established one late Saturday night a year or two back, having watched the extras on the ‘Stargate Ark of Truth’ disc for the umpteenth time. Included as an extra was a recording of an interview panel with the cast of the MGM tv series Stargate SG-1, recorded at ComicCon San Diego (The largest comiccon in the world!)
At some point during the playback Michelle mentioned how cool it would be to go to Comic Con and see this. I thought about it for a moment and with the sternest of faces said ‘why don’t we?’. From that moment on, planning begun for attending Comic Con 2015 in San Diego.
Our whole trip hinged on San Diego Comic Con; the year was set, the month, July was locked in – and with registrations for Comic Con not opening for about 5 months (opening Feb 2015), we started planning the trip around San Diego. One of the first places we committed to was Las Vegas – that was a no brainer – although I have been there twice before, Las Vegas offers an ever changing scenery and a good time was guaranteed. Michelle wanted to see Los Angeles, so that too went on the list, along with stops at Disneyland and Universal Studios. Third to make the cut was San Francisco – neither of us had ever been, and being a passionate photographer, I couldn’t resist the opportunity of seeing San Fran’s Golden Gate bridge! Finally, as a last minute splurge, we decided to enter the North American mainland from the sandy beaches of Hawaii. Our trip was taking shape, all we needed to do now was wait for Comic Con to begin their ticket sale.
As irony would have it, securing Comic Con tickets was just as hard to secure in real life as depicted by the characters of The Big Bang Theory, despite logging into the ‘virtual waiting room’ as soon as the ‘virtual doors’ opened at 1am on a Sunday morning, the tickets sold out in a record one hour – before Michelle and I had even been processed into the kiosk. The very soul of our trip was ripped away, we had all these great destinations, but nothing to hold it together. Later that same day after recovering from an anti-climatic night, the foundations were laid for not one, but two epic road trips in place of what would have been our time in San Diego for ComicCon.
The first of these road trips, sees us off from Tuscan in Arizona with a drive-by through the Airplane Bone Yard as we make our way to Phoenix for our first night. Although it has not been discussed between Michelle and myself, I’m quite confident our dinner destination for that evening will be a the local AppleBees, a homage to our 2009 trip where we made a stop in Phoenix for work and dined at the family diner. After that, a stroll further up the road to some of America’s more popular sports bars.
Before disembarking the following day, we will spend the morning exploring Phoenix itself, stopping in for lunch at another American sports bar ‘Twin Peaks‘, before stretching out across the open road heading for Flagstaff. From Flagstaff, a 3.5hr drive to Las Vegas on Route 66!
Road Trip #1: Tucson to Las Vegas
After a relaxing time in Las Vegas we will fly to San Francisco where a Chevrolet Equinox will be waiting for the second road trip, through the Napa wine region, Sacramento and into Yosemite National Park – where we will spend the next few days exploring the beauty of the park, including driving along Tioga Pass, El Capitan, Yosemite Valley and Glacier Point.
