23) My most memorable vacation

It was last year, and we were on the road to California.
Dad had scheduled everything where we could travel so many miles per day, arrive in a particular city, and sleep in a booked hotel room. It was perfect. All our plans were perfect. All our tickets were bought. Every little thing was preplanned and accounted for.
What could go wrong?

Waaaaaayyyyyy out in Oklahoma our van died.

It was the middle of nowhere.

There were ity bity teeny tiny towns that had not a Kia Dealership in them.

What were we to do but just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming swimming swimming....

I think we were going 45 on the Interstate.

Out in Texas, we discovered that there was a Kia Dealership in Amarillo. Could we get there? We certainly would try!

Try as we might, the van decided to pucker out in a little ghost town, where the only hotel seemed to be gangster central.
Feeling mighty unsafe, yet extremely tired, we ventured into this musty habitation.
This was where we spent the night, in fear and trembling, awaiting our van to reboot, and then charging with all our might to Amarillo.

By now, our schedule was two days off. All of our plans in San Fransisco were to be cancelled. We had booked a tour of Alcatraz (which can only be done 6 months in advance!) as well as riding the trolleys....
And all our hotel reservations had to be undone.

We stayed in Amarillo for two days. We had no van. We had to eat in places within walking distance.
Mom and my big brother had to cross the interstate on foot to get to Target...
The hotel was very nice though. It had a fantastic swimming pool and a super fancy buffet for all the meals of the day!

Finally, our van was fixed and we could go on our way. We stopped by the Painted Desert, Petrified Forrest, and the Grand Canyon.
We got to Cali and a hotel that smelled like smoke. Since we had no itinerary, we were free as birds. We looked up tons of different things to do around San Fransisco and although we lost a bunch of money from missing those tours, we were still able to catch a boat tour around the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and the San Fran shoreline. We went to a Japanese tea garden, walked around a big park in the middle of the city, drove across the Golden Gate, went to Pier 39, Ghirardelli Square, an awesome pirate store, a sourdough bread shop, and saw Lombard Street.




 

Although we missed everything we had planned, we had the time of our lives.

On our way home, we stopped by Sequoia and saw all the big trees.

In conclusion, it was incredibly relaxing exploring the city at our leisure, going at our own pace, and stopping by Ghirardelli Square as often as we liked...

It was incredibly memorable, despite not having seen Alcatraz. Maybe I'll add that to my bucket list. :-)