Life-a learning experience: The Sanctity of Southern California

We left Las Vegas and made our way way to Southern California to spend some time with Jon's cousin and her husband who live in Encinitas. Just after crossing the boarder into California and moments after Jon uttered that he could really go for some good jerky, we passed a sign advertising Alien Jerky....coincidence, I think not.

The beauty of a road trip is that when a desire or impulse strikes, you detour off the path and cease the moment. So, there we were in Alien Jerky sampling away to decided which ones to buy. After chatting it up with the sales clerk, Jon asked which flavors he thought were the best. Turns out that two of them were not even in the sample bins. So we put our faith in the clerk, buy one jerky that we sampled and get two others recommended by the guy. We head out to the parking lot and tear open the bags for a little treat before we hit the road. Turns out that our chatty sales clerk had horrible taste in jerky.

We arrived to Kelly and CJ's house in the late evening and settled in for the next few days. With the necessary supplies of groceries and wine in hand, we had a couple of wonderful evenings making home cooked meals and sharing in good conversation.

By Saturday afternoon it seemed about time to break the sanctity of the house, so we decided to venture into downtown San Diego. Some of Kelly and CJ's friends joined us for the outing. We took the train into the city and figured we could just catch cabs back when necessary.

After having a wonderful dinner we decided to try out some of the locals bars. Over the course of the night the group split up but we all found each other in the early morning hours. Two members had already made their way back, so that left another two cabs worth of people to get home. Kelly had already warned me that the cab fare could be expensive to take us so far out of the city. As a result, I negotiated a rate with our driver before he even set out.

We arrived home and compared rates. The first group had paid $100, Kelly's group had paid $90 and my group paid $60...and we stopped along the way to drop one of the girls off. Yup, leave it to the Arab in the group to negotiate the best rate :)

Before leaving Southern California for Santa Rosa, we visited Witch Creek Winery in Carlsbad. Turns out the wine maker there, Ryan, had trained in Santa Rosa and he gave us a number of local recommendations off the beaten path for when we arrived up north.

So we said goodbye to Southern California and our wonderful hosts (Kelly and CJ) on December 4 to start our journey to Northern California.

Jon outside Alien Jerky