1. We are going with family.
2. We are going to visit family.
3. One of us had already been there.

Since this trip didn’t meet any of the normal criteria it was pretty exciting.

After researching for months, we settled on the Westin Puerto Vallarta. Here are some pictures of it.

Westin Lobby

More of the Westin Lobby

We really liked the Westin, the entrance grounds were equisite, the lobby was quite nice.

This was the view from our balcony. We spent a lot of time just hanging outside talking and taking in the view.

Another view of the bay, you can see downtown in the distance.

Our bathroom had a divider that would open and allow you to look out or in.

We really liked our shower, it was an open (no door) marble lined shower, with 2 shower heads.

Us!

This is the other side of our hotel, it shows some of the restaurants and shops we visited.

Us before we eat at Si Senoirs.

Another of Us

One of the Marina restaurants we at dinner at.

Interesting name for a shop. Their tag line is even "We don't Jerk you around"

Si Senoir and its table made Guacamole! Yumm.

Danielle and the Pirate Ship.

This guy setup this big sand version of the last supper to earn tips. Mexico is mericless in people asking for money.

Kris at the Aquarium

Just happy I’m going downhill.

The latest of these events was the Endurance Challenge in San Francisco. I has several different distances, but I went the easy route and did the 10k. 

This race is a bit different then most I’ve done in the past, its a trail run, so its on hiking trails, and its has a pretty major elevation factor involved. This particular race went up 1000 ft within 3 miles, then down in about 1.5 and then general flatness to the finish. 

Thankfully San francisco is known for its massive hills, I was able to run some pretty monstorous hills before the race, which was definietly helpful as the hill wasn’t nearly as steep but it went on forever. 

I really wanted to push this race and get a good time, which I did succeed at, I finished in 55 minutes, which for me would suck on flat terrain, but for up-hill I’m sure was great. I ended up in 31st place, which I was excited about, I’ve never gotten that close to first so its a big success for me.

I don’t have pictures yet, so I’ll post them later, but I’m looking forward to signing up for my next 10k and beating that time. Obviously I’d like to get a better position as well, but for the next few months/years? I’ll focus on time and hopefully I can start thinking about winning one of these.

The california state fair is in Sacramento, which is about a 2 hour drive from San Francisco, so we got there around noon with a very warm day ahead of us. 

As is typicall for us, we wandered around, trying to see all the major attractions of the day. Though since its a state fair, the fun is spread out over several weeks so theirs a lot you miss by only hitting one day. We did get to see the animals, I even got to touch a pig’s nose, which had been a mission of Danielle’s for me for quite a while.

Oink oink!

This is the really great thing about the state fair. The food. This guy is making the state fair famous Cinnamon rolls. He did the whole job in about 5 minutes. The sucky part was that we saw this place at the end of the day and we were both pretty full so we didn’t get to sample them this time. This will be the primary purpose we return next year, as I want one of them suckers.

The best event at the fair was the Hypnotist. When Danielle stopped me to see the show, I was a bit frustrated as I felt like I just wanted to go. It was a long day and we still had one more stop to make before we could head home. But as the guy got going, the show got really good and I’m totally glad I stayed.

Giving a list of all the things the hypnotist did to these poor folk would be boring for me, and pointless for you. It really wouldn’t translate very well, I’m just going to encourage you to find your next state fair, and attend the same time as your regions hypnotist.  I will say though that everything your affraid of doing while being under their influence is just about true, but everyone that did these things had so much fun. 

Sacramento

Since we were in Sacramento anyway, we decided to stop by an area known as Old Sacramento to see what the touristy area was like. Here’s some pictures.

As you can see, its pretty true to its name as Old Sacramento. Apparently though for that weekend they had trucked in a bunch of dirt to lay over the streets, so it really added to the effect.

Then we went home, the end. 

Well. There was this one embarrassing picture of Danielle that we took but you wouldn’t want to see that would you? Oh, well then here ya go.

This was a bit of a hassle, because I misinterpreted the directions and we ended up going about a 1/4 of a mile in the wrong direction. Danielle wanting to look her best wore these great little shoes, but they were not comfortable at all to walk in and she ended up having to take them off and walk barefoot part of the way.

Once there, dinner was fantastic.

Morton’s has this wonderfull bread, its sweet, has a tinge of onion flavor, and is really fluffy. We knew we shouldn’t eat it, but we couldn’t stop and nearlly finished it.

I got steak of course, and Danielle got the Lobster.

We didn’t get a picture of Danielle’s lobster, but we did get a nice picture of us!

Then we went home and got ready for Disneyland the next day.

Sorry but we decided to leave our camera’s at home and just enjoy the day. That means we don’t really have any pictures for you. We did get one that one of the rides had and was emailed to us, so here ya go.

This was a really fun ride too, you drive around in this little Buzz Lightyear ship and shoot at targets with your gun. Plus this ride has literally a never ending chain of ships that people can just walk into so you don’t need to wait at all.

And that is the end of Disneyland. Sorry this is kind of a picture based blog, so I comment on what I got pictures for.

On Tuesday, we had something arranged for dinner (more on that later), but since we had nothing to do we drove around and ended up in Huntington Beach.

This is a pleasant area, which is primarily a surf city.

Lots of people out even on a Tuesday afternoon.

We hung out for a few hours, walked around their food market, and then headed back because we had an appointment at… Mid-evil Times!

Mid-evil Times is a themed event where guys are dressed up in as you would assume the mid-evil style clothes, rides on horses and does some jousting, sword fighting, and various other combative weapons.

We were on the blue team, so we got our blue crowns and cheered for our knight.

Here is the announcer, introducing our knight. He was very good at his part. He spent the whole night riling up the crowd, joking with the king, and presiding over the jousts.

The parade of pawns.

In the end our knight lost his first joust. The red knight, beat him, and then ended up winning the whole thing before falling to the bad guy.

The event was great, we even got a lot of food that we had to eat with our hands. Half a chicken, a rib, some garlic bread, and some dessert thingy.

This was nearly the end of our trip. We went back to the hotel, got lots of sleep and then made one more stop before our long drive back to San Francisco.

IHOP! We actually went to IHOP all 3 days in Anaheim, which seems weird, but the first day we wanted to eat really healthy. The other days, we just couldn’t get to everything that looked good on the menu, so we had to keep going back.

Well, that was the trip. I hope you all enjoyed reading about it.

Me in Boston Commons as I walk around after my recent Conference trip.

Taken at lunch on Sunday while eating at a nice little cafe in San Francisco’s South Park.

Seen while walking around Boston. Those east coasters, masters of the obvious. 

More later.