heaven is real and it's big sur, california : everyday driver PCH cruise to big sur [26]

Hey guys! One of my goals for 2018 is to get better at updating this ol' blog in a more timely, consistent manner. November and December got SO busy for us and got away from me so quickly, and every time I tried to set aside blogging time I ended up with a thousand other things going on. So - like I said - I am going to make this more of a priority in 2018!

So, catching up on our activities. I briefly mentioned this in a previous post, but in case you missed it - earlier in the fall, my husband bought a Lotus Elise and has since spent a lot of his free time rediscovering his love of cars.  He was pretty involved in the car culture when he was living in Charleston, SC; moving up north to Connecticut and starting his sea tour made that a bit more difficult. One of his goals when we moved out here was to find a fun new car for the time we'll be in California, and the universe aligned to get him the Lotus. She's quite the fun little car - and I love everything a bit more when it comes in yellow, just sayin':

During his rediscovery of car love, he's been listening to a podcast called "Everyday Driver" (also a TV show on Velocity) and found out that they were doing a trip out to Monterey the weekend of November 17-18th to do a track day at Laguna Seca and a group cruise on the Pacific Coast Highway from Monterey to Big Sur. Naturally, he wanted to go take the Lotus out to play. Boy, am I glad we did.

First things first: shoutout to the Everyday Driver guys for being the actual nicest people. I am certainly not a car enthusiast and frankly don't care that much about cars in general, but both the guys behind the show and all of the people we met were SUPER welcoming and incredibly friendly.

We weren't able to do the track day for a couple of reasons - the Lotus isn't really track prepped yet, plus a pesky thing called "work" prevented us from being available on a Friday afternoon - but headed out to meet up with the group for the cruise portion of the weekend. The group met up in Carmel to begin the journey. We haven't gone to Big Sur yet, and I've been told that this drive has some of the most beautiful views in the country. Everyone who told me that is certainly not wrong.

This was our first stop on the journey - some sandy area along Route 1. These photos absolutely do not do it justice. It was a gorgeous day, sunny and warm enough for the top to be down, barely a cloud in the sky. And just look at that water. I still can't believe we live so close to the Pacific Ocean and these stunning, perfect views. And this was only the beginning of the day!



Plus a Traveling Chucks photo (featuring my Boba Fett socks because I am very cool) for good measure. ;)



The second stop on the adventure had us near the large, seemingly random rock you see in the background of the Chucks photo above. I don't remember exactly the name of it, but further investigation told us it was some sort of naval station outpost. We stopped by a fenced off area that's a part of El Sur Ranch to take some photos. The views were once again stunning (and the Lotus ain't too bad either):

                                   

From there, we continued rolling south towards Big Sur. Now, I love the beach, I love the ocean, I am always happiest by the water. But I grew up as a Lake Person in the Adirondacks, and so I am so much happier when the water is also close to some pine trees. It's why I fell in love with Lake Tahoe immediately. So when I saw this, I nearly cried, turned to my husband and said "heaven is real, and it's Big Sur, California" :

I can't even begin to find the words to do this incredible scenery justice, so I'll go ahead and let you just see for yourself.

                                                       

We stopped for lunch at the Big Sur Roadhouse, a smallish rustic restaurant on Route 1. I didn't take any pictures, but the menu was fairly standard casual lunch fare - I ordered chicken fingers because I'm an adult and I do what I want - with some indoor seating and plenty of tables outside with fire pits! And pine trees! And sunshine! Parking was a little difficult but I imagine if you aren't rolling in twenty cars deep you will probably be fine. Shoutout to the staff at Big Sur Roadhouse for being totally accommodating of the unexpected huge group. 

After lunch the group split off to head their separate ways - we were one of only a handful of locals, so a lot of people had to start making their way to airports and train stations and what-have-you. I, however, had other plans. 

I am a huge, huge Death Cab for Cutie fan (I walked down the aisle at our wedding to an instrumental version of "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" type of huge fan) and some preliminary research into the area before we moved out west alerted me to the fact that the Bixby Creek Bridge is near Big Sur. This bridge is absolutely gorgeous on its own - one of the most photographed bridges in the world, I'm told - but it's also featured in the Death Cab song "Bixby Canyon Bridge." So, because my husband thankfully puts up with my crazy ideas, on our way back up to Monterey we stopped to pay homage to a favorite song and a beautiful spot.

Lord have mercy.

  

So there you have it, friends. A peek into a gorgeous day on a gorgeous road with some gorgeous views. I highly, highly recommend doing this drive - even (and maybe especially) if you're not a car enthusiast. I figured I'd spend the day taking a few casual photos of the car, and ended up falling in love with the coastline and the views and always, the trees and the ocean. It amazes me that these incredible places are just a handful of miles south of where we live. It amazes me even more to think about my life five years ago, a graduate student in Buffalo, NY, never even dreaming that she might live somewhere like this.

Coming soon: yet another drive! Stay tuned to read about our drive down to and our adventures in Los Angeles for Thanksgiving weekend.

look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now : Los Angeles and HAMILTON [25]

...as you may have seen in my previous post, I've flown through LAX a bunch of times without ever having been to Los Angeles. I finally, finally got my chance to leave my footprints in the city of angels.

Rewind - as soon as we knew we would be moving to California, I started looking at dates for the Hamilton tour. We wouldn't be able to catch it in San Francisco, but Max's brother lives in Los Angeles, so I figured that would be a great opportunity for us to visit...and to see the show. When tickets went live in April, I spent three hours fighting through Ticketmaster's terrible interface and finally managed to score some tickets.

So, fast forward to November, and we were on our way. We needed to bring the car up to the shop in San Mateo, so we made plans to grab some lunch at a Burmese restaurant in the area. Unfortunately, we managed to hit the one window during the day where they were closed, so we headed into San Jose. Max remembered a market-type area from when we were in San Jose for the Sharks/Sabres game a few weeks prior, so we went downtown and got some drinks and food at Firehouse No.1 Gastropub. They had some fantastic cocktails - I had a blood orange mule that was A+ - and we split mac & cheese and a bison burger. Both were delicious, so in the event we end up looking for food in San Jose again, I would definitely go back. We killed some time at a local mall and then went to the airport. A quick SJC - BUR (how funny that when I finally visit LA, I'm not flying into LAX) flight later, and I was finally there.

    

We spent Friday night catching up with family, recovering from the flight with some wine (naturally) and game planning the weekend.

Saturday morning, we met up with Max's uncle who was also in town for the weekend and went to breakfast at Tallyrand in Burbank. I had a chili breakfast burrito (accidentally a trend, but I'm not mad), Max got his corned beef hash fill, and the rest of the group had assorted omelets and burritos.

After breakfast, since I had never been to Los Angeles before, we spent some time driving around to do the touristy things...

Mulholland Scenic Overview. Look at that skyline!!! 😍

      

The Hollywood sign!!!!

We needed a nap and to get ready for the main attraction of the weekend - Hamilton. 😍

Before the show, we had dinner reservations at The Hungry Cat on Vine near Sunset. I picked it after reading some Yelp reviews, and it reminded me of Oyster Club - one of our favorite restaurants back in Mystic. These displaced New Englanders were so happy to get some oysters and cocktails. I ordered trout, Max got the stuffed lobster - both were fantastic.

And then, it was time :

I cannot say enough about how amazing this show was. I've been obsessively listening to the cast recording since it came out - I know every word (almost - some of Jefferson's raps still escape me) and I have listened to it enough that even Max knows most of it by now. Seeing it on stage, though, blows all of that out of the water. The set is so cool, very minimal in design with a turntable in the center of the stage; the lighting design was phenomenal. The choreography was stunning and god, the vocals. Emmy Raver-Lampman made a perfect Angelica, Joshua Henry played a powerful and nuanced Burr, I wasn't sold on Michael Luwoye until "Yorktown" but once he won me over I was absolutely enraptured by him. I wasn't expecting to cry in the first act but Solea Pfeiffer's Eliza got me right in the heart with "That Would Be Enough." And man, "Schuyler Sisters" is my jam on the recording; even better live. 

And then the second act happened. It's such a strange thing to watch something were you know how it ends - you know what happens, and yet it catches you in the heart anyways. I knew that "It's Quiet Uptown" would get me. Ever since the first time I listened to the soundtrack, and then when Kelly Clarkson's version was released on the Hamilton Mixtape...and then reading the chapter about it in Hamilton: The Revolution, I have had so many emotions tied up into that song. It's become particularly poignant in the last few months as some people I love dearly have experienced some devastating losses, and the hardest part of Navy life is being so far away from people you love when you want nothing more than to be there to hold their hand through the darkness. So I sobbed, even more than I was anticipating, because not only did I already have emotions about the song but the Angelica-Eliza-Hamilton trio on stage performing it just did me in. And the duel and the finale. Perfect. Perfect. As Max said while we were leaving the theater, "that was so much better than I could have imagined." So, if you are able to get tickets, go see Hamilton. I could never do it justice.

Sunday morning, we gathered up our crew and rolled out to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to see the Rams game. Max's brother is a season ticket holder and participates in a pretty great tailgate, and it was a great ending to a fantastic weekend. We grilled (if you see a large man grilling chorizo burritos on NFL network - that was our tailgate, FYI), we drank, we explored, and then we went into the game:

Our seats, and our crew. We had a blast cheering on the Rams - me, especially, seeing some former Bills players running around on the field - and spending time with the family. While we may be away from a lot of friends and family - it is pretty awesome to live on the same coast as Max's brother, and assorted aunts and uncles and cousins from Max's side. And luckily, we get to go back to Los Angeles for Thanksgiving, which I am thoroughly looking forward to (mostly because it means I won't have to cook! 😂)

But for now, we had to head back to Monterey. I am enjoying the traveling...but I am also looking forward to a weekend at home. The crazy November rolls on; of course, we will be plenty busy in our downtime - these Traveling Chucks can't stay still for long.

cross country travels: SFO and Charlottesville, VA [24]

The first weekend of November found us heading back east for a friend's wedding in Charlottesville, Virginia.

But, of course, not without some delays...

We thought it would be a swell idea to fly from the small regional airport in Monterey to SFO to catch our flight to Dulles Airport. Of course, we were delayed in MRY by just enough that we were going to just barely miss our connection in San Francisco...which meant that the next available flight from SFO to IAD was the 10:40pm red eye. We had gone through multiple flight itineraries to avoid the red eye flight, since the wedding was Saturday afternoon, but got stuck on the later flight anyways. It was cloudy and a bit bouncy flying into SFO, but the views of the bay were still gorgeous - I guess fog is par for the course in the Bay Area, yeah? ;)

So, my annoyance aside, we then had about six hours to kill at SFO. Of all the airports I've had to kill time in, SFO was definitely not the worst. I highly recommend the wine bar in Terminal 3 - SF Uncork'd. They had a pretty decent small plates menu, and a significant wine list for an airport bar. We spent some time walking around, exploring the Duty Free store (although we didn't buy anything). We had dinner at Sankaku Sushi & Noodle, which was delicious. Finally, we got a couple more drinks at Yankee Pier before catching our flight.

We landed at IAD around 5:30am, and hit up Chick-Fil-A for breakfast (because I do love me some sweet bigoted chicken sandwiches). The drive from Dulles to Charlottesville is approximately two hours, and once you get out of Prince William County, it gets very rural very fast. It's a gorgeous drive, especially in the fall. Last time I was in Charlottesville, it was early spring after a pretty major snowstorm, so it was nice to get a different view of the area.

                          

(In keeping with the theme of "not great photos" - trying to capture fall foliage from a moving car is tough!)

We arrived at the hotel, took a much needed nap, stopped by to pay our respects to the church of Wegmans (I am still not used to life without Wegmans and I haven't lived near one in two years), and headed out to the wedding at a winery in the area. Despite the rain and the necessity to execute the rain plan, the wedding was absolutely beautiful. I love weddings - I love love - I love the happiness that surrounds the people in the room. As we discussed ad nauseum before our wedding, the group of people in the room are most likely never all going to be in the same place again; it's a once in a lifetime occurrence to have all of these people together - and that's just so awesome to me.

And, of course, I love a reason to dress up (shout out to Rent the Runway for this awesome dress!!)

The morning after the wedding, we headed out to grab some breakfast before heading back to Dulles to catch our flight home. We completely forgot it was family weekend at UVA, so we scrapped our first stop and headed to another because the wait was too long. And then, once we got to our second place, realized we were going to be waiting an entire hour for breakfast regardless of where we were. So we got our names on the list at Bluegrass Grill & Bakery and hung out for a while. I got to enjoy all the fall weather that I miss so much while we were waiting, and then it was time for some good southern breakfast - GRITS.

                                                       

 I had the breakfast Black Bean burrito, grits, and biscuit (so delicious) and a mimosa. Because it's always time for mimosas! Max ordered an omelet with the Porcus Infernum hot sauce - a bacon flavored hot sauce, which was delicious - and cheese grits, because we are simple people to please.

After breakfast, we had to head back to Dulles to catch our flight home - and guys, if you are able to get TSA Pre-check, you absolutely must use it at Dulles. I flew out of Dulles pretty frequently when I lived in the area, and security at Dulles is always full of long lines (even when they say it's a short wait) and Pre-check was a game changer. We got through security in under ten minutes - the shortest I've ever gone through regular security at Dulles was 35 minutes. Highly, highly recommend.

We flew from IAD to LAX and grabbed some snacks at LAX once we arrived. I have now flown through LAX a handful of times without ever having been to Los Angeles (yet).

But...luckily for me, the second weekend of November brought me to Los Angeles, for real, for the first time...

October roundup: San Jose Sharks, Laguna Seca, Mission Ranch, California life [23]

Hey y'all! It's been a while. We've been pretty busy, between things around Monterey and traveling a whole bunch in the beginning of November. Before I get into our November travels, here's a summary of our October adventures!





First up, some sports. We are about an hour and change away from San Jose, and for these hockey fans, it's the closest we've been to an NHL team in a few years. Because we are both fans of east coast teams, we generally will only get one opportunity per season to see our teams in San Jose - so when the Sabres came to town on a Thursday night, we were all in. We scored some reasonably affordable tickets via StubHub and headed up to the arena. This snowy-town native will never get used to seeing hockey arenas with palm trees outside, by the way.






The arena itself was pretty great. Small, but rockin'. We were up at the very top and still had a great view of just about everything.

 

 In standard Sabres fashion, they looked good for the first little bit of the game and just couldn't hold onto it. We had a lot of fun, though, and thanks to our seats that we bought from a season ticket holder, met some longtime SJS fans. We also ended up sitting behind another Sabres fan who alerted us to the "Displaced Buffalo Sabres Fan" facebook group who takes pictures at away games:

Photo from Displaced Buffalo Sabres Fans (facebook)

Our next adventure took us to the Pirelli World Challenge at Laguna Seca racetrack in Monterey. A friend of ours got us tickets to this event as a farewell gift when we learned we'd be moving out here; Max is a pretty big car guy, so he was thrilled to have a chance to go check it out. Me, I'm not so into cars or races, but photo ops and beers are enough to convince me to go along for the ride (heh).

Oh, also, we bought a Lotus Elise:

So we took the Lotus up to Laguna Seca to check out the race. We spent some time exploring the assorted parts of the racetrack - including the hill and the Corkscrew. Here's Max's feelings about the race, in contrast with mine:

And even though I don't particularly care for car racing, some of these views were pretty great:

The "Corkscrew," Turn 8 and according to all the car guys I know, a very infamous turn in racing. (shrug emoji). It was pretty cool to be able to get up close to the cars, though - this is not zoomed at all.

Some gorgeous views of Monterey Bay heading towards the final turns of the race.

A tip: if you plan to go to Laguna Seca, bring sunscreen! And don't wear flip flops. There's a lot of dirt.

Some other adventures that found us during October: 

I ran the Honor Our Fallen 5k...

...which we followed up with a visit to Hahn Winery, where we're wine club members, in Soledad...

We had brunch at Mission Ranch in Carmel, which we found out later is owned by Clint Eastwood. Sunday brunch is a buffet for $40/person, including one beverage (mimosas!!!!). It has a gorgeous view of the shore along Carmel, and these sheep just casually roam around which was pretty spectacular:

           

 


And, of course, a visit to Fieldwork, where I finally remembered to take pictures! We met up with a friend and enjoyed some beers and card games.

          

 

October kept us pretty busy - but somehow, November is even busier. Stay tuned!