San Diego to Vegas

From San Diego, we weren't sure whether to head up to Yosemite and stay a few days, or take a diversion through Nevada... We decided on Neon over Nature, and hit the road to Vegas!

First stop was Temecula, in wine country just outside San Diego, but we were heading to wine country out of San Francisco in a few days, so no time for tasting just yet.

Along the way, we passed through Corona, California - home of Fender guitars. I couldn't resist the pilgrimage, so we took a short diversion to the birthplace of my Stratocaster to pay my respects and witness the magic!

The factory tour was great, and recommended to any rock and roll nerds out there... The guitar bodies might be precision cut using robotic machines, and the environmental management systems are state of the art (the air coming out of the factory is cleaner than the air going in!) but pretty much every step of the build is hands-on craftsmanship. We even met a lady who has been hand-winding the magnetic pickups since 1956 - she's something of a celebrity there!

 


Best of all, I got to spend time in the ultimate guitar players toyshop... you can pull down any guitar from the wall in their "playroom" and plug it into any amp... Nice!

The rest of the day's drive was long... not helped by major traffic jams that added a few hours to the trip, but before too long, we were rolling out of the desert and into the insanity of Las Vegas!

This is a heavily condensed version of events - hopefully once I catch up on the blog we'll start updating as we go again. Next chapter... Vegas and Yosemite!

Steve.

Time for a catchup!

Things have been a bit quiet on the blog front, so I'd better post an update...

Our princess in hollywood, as promised:

 

After LA, we swapped our little convertible for an enormous Chevy Suburban SUV, and hit the road for San Diego (with one more stop off at Disneyland for good measure!)

Flying by the seat of our pants as usual, we rolled into San Diego with no accommodation pre-booked. We wandered around and found a place called the Handlery Hotel, which ended up being exactly what we needed - our room stepped straight onto the (huge) pool, where Caitlin and Estella made some new friends, and on our second night they even had a live band poolside!
Seaworld San Diego was great fun, but by the end of the day we were all theme-parked out.

Given how close we were to Mexico, we decided to slip over the border for lunch in Tijuana... If you're in that neck of the woods my advice would be "Don't bother!!" Apparently it used to be a happening place, but since the rise of the criminal cartels, there's an eerie air of dread around the almost empty streets on the Mexico side of the border. Still, we pushed on to the main street and stopped in for a bite of lunch. Not sure if it was authentic, but as far as Mexican food goes, we had much better in Hawaii and later in New Orleans...

As we came back across the border after lunch, the US Customs guy was quite amused that we were there... wondering if perhaps we'd got lost and accidentally stumbled across to Mexico!

Next stop... Vegas!