Crazy California. . . the beginning of our adventure!

A few weeks ago, Bonnie (my anti road trip sister) made some big announcement over facebook about a random roadtrip she was taking with her kids. weird. In search of Bigfoot. Ok. . . but where was my invite? She said she was taking a friend of hers, with his kids too, but I was welcome to come along. Me, in the back seat with four kids? No way! So I convinced her that I would make a much better travel buddy than he ever could and I was in! Bonnie had plans for a six day trip which would take us up the coast of California, to end up in a dinky little town to go white water rafting and to find bigfoot. That sounded like a decent start, but I was sure we could do much better than that.

So the planning began!

Soon enough. . . our "Bigfoot or Bust" road trip, turned into our "Crazy Caravan through California (with a stop to find Bigfoot)" trip instead. It was going to be awesome!

I undertook the planning for this adventure, which made me the navigator. With no other options, that left Bonnie to be our driver, and the kids in the back, to be just that, the kids in the back!

The goal of the trip was to see the most odd, the most interesting, the most weird, and a few important sites of the good ole state of California. So I scoured the internet for just that! I picked our stops, I created a travel plan, and on Thursday morning, we loaded into the car and were off!

And who would've guessed that our very first stop would land us smack in the middle of where we started?

Must see # 1: Grape Slide - - Escondido, CA

A grape-themed park, with a Fruit-of-the-loom zoom! Who knows what inspired the artist to associate fruit with children's amusement, but the result is a bunch of grapes with a slide and "twigs" for climbing.

We came, we saw, we kodaked it, and were off! Now the adventure begins. . . for real!