I will try to continue to keep with Life around the Food, but in addition I will be sharing some other wonderful experiences in my life: trips to wonderful destinations that I have planned very scrupulously.
A recent (well a few month ago) adventure was trip to Northern California, a little bit of Nevada and Oregon.
I started to plan this trip way in advance with going through California and Oregon trip planning books. At that moment I realized that if I want to camp in Yosemite National Park, I have to book on the day when camp ground locations become available. I also was trying to get plane tickets with points, so I started to plan about 9 month in advance
Note: Yosemite is a very popular destination May through September and if you are new to booking campgrounds or usually do it at the last moment you might be lucky, but most of the campground in Yosemite are gone within 20-30 minutes after they become available for sale. There are a few campgrounds that can be reserved ahead of the time. Campgrounds become available for reservation on 15th of the month 6 month in advance at 10am EST. Choose the site you want in advance, login to reservation website about 10 minutes ahead of time on 15th of the month 6 month in advance, continually re-new the page until the site is released for booking. Book it without hesitation. I was booking the site for the Memorial Day weekend. I've got the site I wanted within minutes. Then I went back 20 minutes later to check how many site left available and I was bemused that about 99% were sold out. If you can't get the site don't tell me I did not worn you. You might get lucky to get the spot in a few campgrounds that are First-Come-First-Serve.
Note: If you want to spend least amount of points on tickets (United Airlines), book tickets as soon as they are at the reasonable price (~300/each) at that time more flight times and sits will be available to choose from for the same number of points
I wanted to see as much as possible in California and eventually I settled on the following (in chronological order):
San Francisco
Yosemite National Park
Kings Canyon National Park
Sequoya National Park
Death Valley National Park
Reno
Crater Lake National Park
Red Woods State and National Parks
Russian Valley, and
The Big Sur
I can assure you that during this planning a lot of different food was consumed. I hoped to to loose some weight, but I am not sure it worked out to be significant. I most likely enjoyed Five Guys, Chepotle, The Noodle Gourmet, Aja and some home cooking, but mostly I anticipated the upcoming trip.
I promise to write more often and complete my entire trip with pictures.
Here is one, just for starters
