ThanksGiving weekend - SF - LA - SF

Thanksgiving weekend…

The whole of America waits for this. There are several reasons for this wait. It can be having the turkey dinner with large family, waiting for these family get together, wait for the drop down prices, the black Friday when you get stuff for as good as free, and for some it’s the long holiday weekend where they can just roam around this beautiful country.

Since my family is in India, I surely cannot celebrate the get together and am a veggie so no turkey day for me either. Somehow when such huge sale is on, I cannot decide what to buy so that leaves me with bunch who belong to the last group, exploring places in US.

G came on Wed night and we enjoyed the yummy bisi bele bhat and ambode.

Thursday:
started off late, we had a lunch at a Asian restaurant and then decided to start to LA. We reached the interstate and stopped at a rest area. The view from there was beautiful. I wouldn’t say breathtaking, as I have seen better ones earlier.





From here we again started and stopped next near a gas station. We were searching for some place to eat and luckily found a Indian restaurant. We were luckier as the restaurant actually served good Indian food. We took some of the left over biryani for later in the night. LA was another 2 hrs from this place. Since G was driving all this time, I took over from him as he was feeling sleepy. I started driving and suddenly for nearly 10 miles it was completely foggy. Once we came out of that I was relieved and then we reached a mountaineous road. It was zig zag all the way. We dint get lost anywhere inspite of not having GPS. We checked into a 4* hotel. We were on the 11th floor. And the view from the room was gorgeous. It seemed like white lights on the sky and yellow lights on the ground.





Friday:
We wanted to get a GPS so that we could roam around easily without actually worrying about losing our way. So we were off to circuit city and had a new GPS in hand. Next in agenda was to rent a bike. We went to the eagle riders in LA, and I was so thrilled to see so many Harleys in one place… Wow I always wanted to sit on one of them. After a hr long discussion and formalities, we had our Harley(Gold wings). It felt gr8 to sit behind G on Harley. He was equally thrilled; he s always wanted me to come with him on all his bike rides.







In the evening when we were thinking of dinner, we decided on a Moroccan Restaurant. This one had Belle dancing too (that was the main reason of trying out new cusine). As soon as we went near the door… 2 metal doors opened and we could see a mini palace like environment. One person with costume I presume Moroccons wear, came upto us and led us into one of the dining areas. It was a big room with high roofing and nice paintings and lighting. The seating was like a sofa in all corners with comfy cushions with traditional covers and round tables in front of us. We already saw the dancer in front of one of the tables.





Everybody was dressed in traditional robes and costumes. There was no menu card. All you had to tell them was if you are veg or non-veg and it was a 3 course meal. Its strange but I loved most of the food. And finally when the desserts came, loads of fruits, nuts, moroccon tea, cookies. All we wanted after this super heavy meal was to go back to hotel and sleep, and that’s what we did.

Saturday:
The plan was to wake up early and reach to Mallibu temple by 9 on the Harley. And we were pretty good at it. We reached the temple by 8.45. It was such a peaceful place. It was cold, foggy and quite templish (by that I mean calm and peaceful with no hustle). They had 2 temples, one with Venkateshwara (Balaji), Padmavati, Hanuman. Other with Shiva, Parvati, Ganesha, subramanya. That day it was Abhishekam time. Lot of devotees came with milk and curd etc. We were there for quite some time and saw little bit of Abhishekam. 1 guy asked us.. oh u came in harley… I was nodding my head with a great smile. Some time later the pujari also asked

Pujari (P) : Isn’t it cold how come you people came in cold.

G : Oh its pretty ok… Its still a drivable condition

Me (in the mind) : Ofcourse with leather jackets and all the gears

P: You people are still young, once you have a kid na (with actions) then it will all be difficult

Me (in the mind) : Why do all the married people get targeted like this? Ofcourse pujaari tata, that’s why we are doing all this now while we are still young

G (in the mind) : Ya… looking at you we can make out you have a lot of kids

P: Before leaving… eat puliogre in the canteen

Me : Yes sure (yippe yippe… temple food temple food)

Once we came out.. I told G… even if Pujaari tata dint tell we would have gone for the puliogre coz as soon as we entered temple, the aroma just made its way into our nose.

After puliogre(tamrind rice) and tayyir sadam/ mosaranna (curd rice) we took a few pics of the temple and us with bikes. The cold had reduced and it was getting sunny.





Once we came back, we returned the bike, it was my turn to drive the car on the beautiful CA 1 (west coast highway). We started off and I was half driving and half admiring. Also, I was telling G to take pics. After quire some time we took a break. G very nicely told me that he’ll drive so that I could admire the scenary and also take pics… I agreed to it, I knew he was getting bored not driving. We then zoomed off for quite some time, until we were hungry. By this time it was hot n sunny, we both wanted a break. So we entered a beautiful place, ate and left from there. In a few minutes we again took an exit to go to Santa Barbara beach. It took us a while to reach the exact beach. It was so sunny, but water was so cold. We dint spend too much time in water, sat on the beach for a while. I was running behind the birds. G was taking funny videos of the same. We had fun… After this refreshing break we started to drive again.



Multi tire cycles





Then we entered the highway between the mountains. It was such an awesome sight. Mountain ranges on either side and a road in between. I just turn right and I can see Green Mountain, behind that I could see brown ones and after a while those brown ones looked red due to sunlight. By now, I had reduced my wow!!!!! Look at that!!!!!!!! How beautiful!!!!!!!!! Amazing!!!!!! and many more exclaimations. It was getting dark so the view dint matter. We reached a place Morro Bay that night. We searched for an Indian restaurant had food and slept early since we had a long drive the next day.






Sunday:
We got ready by 10 and I got some breakfast to the room and I just looked out and I could see a huge rock in front of me. And after some googling found out that’s the morro rock (once upon a time volcanic).





We had already cancelled going to Hearst castle (supposed to be a cathedral – I so wanted to go to this place, G has promised he will take me there some other time). We reached a point where the elephant sea lions could be seen. It was amazing to see them in their world without human intervention.






The coastline is so beautiful. There are no words to describe the feeling which we had when we drove by the coast.. On the right were the huge mountains and on the left was the gigantic magnificent pacific ocean. We even saw a bunch (must be 15-20) dolphins playing in water from the top... And when we zoomed our camera to check... it was actually true. Its as if sky and the ocean were tocuhing each other... After a few hours we reached back home.

A few pics

























The wonderful trip came to an end