Over the Freeway and Through Cow Country...

Here I am with my Nutcracker Prince.

It was around May of 2000 (this one thing I go to every year always occurs around the same time in May). This year's event was in Modesto, California- up near San Jose, San Francisco, Sacramento and Oakland. By car, the trip took 6 hours. Plane tickets within California aren't exactly cheap, you know. We left on Wednesday morning, around 10am, traveling up the 5 freeway, which goes almost right into Modesto. It was a long drive, but it wasn't too bad in an almost-new Honda Oddessey. Unfortunately, the radio reception went bad around Bakersfield (about 2 hours away from Los Angeles). We stopped off at a Denny's for lunch, where I had a hamburger and fries. Yummy!

There's not that much to look at on the freeway, besides other cars. Along the freeway, it was just open land, farms, and rimrocks. And then we hit cow country. There were a bunch of cow farms in one area and you can just imagine what it smelled like! There was no avoiding it, let me tell you. Finally, after getting off the 5 freeway and driving through some small farm roads? (by the way, some of the roads had signs instructing us to turn on the car lights in the daytime- how weird!), we got to Modesto. I can't remember which hotel we stayed at- The Doubletree? Anyways, we got free cookies when we checked in! We were in a corner room, which is nice because corner rooms are typically bigger, but I've also heard that they have more occurrences of ghostly activity. At the opening party, I got to eat pizza!!!! As you will discover later, I LOVE PIZZA! Anyways...

I was anxious to get home... traveling without good friends and family can be quite a drag. We were supposed to leave around 7am, but one of the girls traveling with us didn't show up. Turns out that they had accidentally left the phone off the hook and thus couldn't get the wake-up call. Anyways, the ride home was pleasant, more pleasant than the ride there. There was a big rock-divide on the freeway, so we didn't have to smell the cows. We stopped off at a Denny's to get breakfast. I got the Grand Slam, which was yummy, but didn't it used to cost only $1.99? Anyways, when we arrived back in L.A., it was around noontime and after meeting up with my family, we went out to eat at a yummy Chinese Restaurant. It was delicious!