California Excitement

Hi Everyone! We made it to California and while we aren't to Walnut Creek yet, we are only about 4 hours away. For the next couple of days we are going to chill in Lake Tahoe and act like we are on vacation, beach and sun! Thanks to our friend and roommate, Keith and his cabin here!

First of all I take back all those things i said about not getting comments. All of our faithful friends and family members made our day by writing today (more about why later in the blog!) But we had a record making 14 comments today!!!!! Thanks! By the way, if my mom can share our blog address with tourists from Iceland, i think it's safe to include your coworkers at First Penn Denise!

You will all be happy and relieved to know that Jeff fed his "taco john craving" today and to our surprise - it was taco Tuesday! Don't you think every Tuesday should involve tacos (I know it did when I was growing up - yay for Adolphs!) so let's bring back that tradition!

You know it's the end of the road trip when Jeff jumps for joy about spending only $1.49 on lunch!!



Before I go any further, I must clarify the exciting contest we have going on. I was so excited to see all your guessing and wanted to find out who the winner was right away and then Jeff reminded me that we still have some road to cover and so you won't find out the official number until Friday after we've gotten to the East Bay area!

So feel free to modify your guess if you must when you read this: We are asking for the number of states in the U.S. that we have seen from the time we left East Moline, IL on Monday, July 17th and headed west to Walnut Creek, CA, arriving Friday, July 28th. This will only include the 50 U.S. states. Sorry Greg, Mexico and Canada don't count this time. We are only counting each state once! We listed them as we went and so if we saw another IL plate for example we said "Oh already have that one!" Hope that helps and we will reveal the winner shortly so there is still time to get your guess in!

We arrived in California shortly after 2pm. We were taking the scenic route around Lake Tahoe. Gorgeous!

I was so happy to finally step foot onto California soil that I had to get a picture. I'm officially here, can you believe it????

Now about the adventure that we had today. I'd like to begin by quoting my stepdad, George from an email that he sent Jeff and I today after this thrilling incident took place. See if you can guess where I am going with this... "it's not unlikely that a cross country trip will have some sort of automotive repair involved." As we mentioned in the previous blog entry, my car "Molly" has taken us nearly 2,000 miles since we started our trip 8 days ago. And she's only got about 200 to go before we arrive home. Well she decided to give us a scare today! We were taking the long way around the CA side of Lake Tahoe this afternoon. Enjoying the breath-taking views and hoping to see "Emerald Bay" where the water is literally that green! We went to turn into the state park's parking lot when all of a sudden the car made this horrible metal scraping noise. We hoped it was the car in front of us but no luck! IT WAS US! After some careful examination by Jeff (taking the tire off, examining the brake pads, etc.) we couldn't find a problem but didn't want to take our chances down the mountain any longer. Thank goodness for free towing service included with my car insurance. They pinpointed our location and sent a tow truck on the way. When the guy got there and asked us to move the car to put it on the truck (by this time Jeff had reassembled the wheel) Wouldn't you know it - the sound was gone! But we took the tow to Keith's cabin and the driver was just what we needed, an official tour guide suggesting where to spend the next couple of days, and a regular jokester which is what we needed since we hadn't laughed in about 3 hours and I had been on the brink of tears about the whole situation! He even took a look at it for us after getting us to our destination and had Jeff test drive it around the block. No sound, no problem! So at this point we are thinking perhaps a rock got into it! But we will drive it alittle around town before leaving on Friday and once we get back to Walnut Creek, maybe get it checked out further. Whew! I'm thinking it could have been much worse and we are lucky to be safe and in one piece!
Now you can see why all your comments were much appreciated after the day we had!
Tonight's plan are to chill out and be thankful that we got here! We are planning on cooking a meal for the first time in a week!


I'm leaving you with a great picture of this beautiful area! For those of you that might not know (random coworkers and Iceland residents) Lake Tahoe is where Jeff and I met last November. We are both extremely happy to be here again and hope that nothing will keep us from enjoying the next few days in this place together. If any of you have been to Tahoe before and have suggestions on what we should do. Feel free to let us know and we will add them to the list from the tow truck man!

Take care and write soon!

~Jamie