Cali by Car

Last weekend, Brendan and I drove from Portland down to the Bay Area for a couple days. The drive from Portland to San Francisco is about 11 hours once traffic is considered, and that doesn't even include all the driving we did once we were in California. All in all, we spent about 30 hours in the car in the 4 days we were on the trip. I've seen the Bay Area before, but it's certainly a different experience when you experience it all from inside the car.

We went down to California to see some of our closest friends from school who all happened to be living in the Bay Area this summer. Brendan planned the trip around a soccer game the Timbers played in San Jose that Sunday. With only 4 days and seven destinations, we knew it was going to be a hectic weekend.

The first stop was to see Brendan's family at their beach house just north of San Francisco. I'm always happy to see the sea!

On Saturday, I went to go see Emily while Brendan spent some time with his family. From there, we headed to Berkeley to see Maddie. It was so nice seeing some of my best friends, even if it was just for a couple of hours. It was such an awesome experience to visit the places they'd grown up in – I think you can learn a lot about a person by seeing their hometown.

Brendan's roommates from school are in Silicon Valley this summer doing awesome internship work. We picked them up and drove around Palo Alto, where Brendan was born, to see where Brendan started his life and to check out the beautiful Stanford campus.

After spending Sunday at the soccer game in San Jose, we headed to Santa Rosa with Brendan's grandparents. We drove through San Francisco on the way there, and got to see the city (if through the window of the car).

We spent all day Monday on the road back to Portland. I didn't get back to Seattle until 11:30 PM. After having been in the car or on the bus since 7 that morning, I was positively relieved to be back home!