Nine Sleeps To Go

We're now into the single digits of the countdown to The Bonneville Run, with only 9 more sleeps to go. We have booked all the accommodation from when we leave San Jose on the 3rd of August until we depart Bakersfield after the Famoso Raceway Summer Nationals.

Along the way we'll be spending a few days in Los Angeles, checking out the Petersen Automotive Museum, the Wally Parks NHRA Museum, visiting the Moon Eyes shop and the Bobs Big Boy in Downey. We're also planning on getting to a Dodgers game while we're in town and have a few other things on the list as well.

After we leave Los Angeles, we're off towards Las Vegas, taking time out to stop in at Bakersfield and Death Valley along the way. We have hotel rooms booked in Beatty, Nevada, just a little way outside Death Valley and only a couple of miles from the Rhyolite Ghost Town, which I intend to visit around sunset and hang around to take a few night photos.

In Las Vegas, we've booked a couple of nights at the Bellagio hotel and casino, home to the famous dancing fountains. We haven't made many plans for our time in Las Vegas yet, but will sort that out a little more while we're on the road. Once we leave Las Vegas, we are spending a night in a cabin on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and then heading north to Bonneville.

The Bonneville Salt Flats are located just outside the town of West Wendover, on the border of Utah and Nevada. They are home to the fastest land based motorsport on the planet, with many world land speed records being set here. We arrive in town on the Friday of the Southern California Timing Associations SpeedWeek event.

We have hotel rooms booked in West Wendover though till Tuesday morning, which is when we say goodbye to the salt and head onwards with the road trip. We have rooms booked on the southern shores of Lake Tahoe and at historic Wawowa hotel in California's Yosemite National Park. After we leave Yosemite, we're headed onwards to Bakersfield and the Famoso Auto Club's Famoso Raceway, home to the ANRA's Summer Nationals, a huge 2 day Nostalgia drag race meeting.

After we leave Bakersfield, we're probably going to make a few things up as we go along, thats where the booked accommodation runs out for now, unless we decide to add a few nights somewhere else as well. We are planning on getting to John's Charburger in Livermore for a Friday night cruise in the weekend after Bakersfield, and there's also a GoodGuys show in Pleasanton that weekend, so we might hit that up as well. I'd also like to head back down to Santa Cruz and Monterey, and perhaps spend some more time around that area, maybe as an overnight trip during the week, instead of going back and forth each day.

While we're back in North California's Bay Area, I'd love to get to the San Francisco 49ers' preseason game against the San Diego Chargers on the 2nd of September, and there are a number of things around the San Francisco area that I'd like to see, both things we didn't know about last time and things that we went and saw last time, but I'd like to see again. We'll nut out some of those ideas over a few drinks while we're on the road and come up with some sort of game plan at a later date.

At either end of the trip, we also have a lengthy stop over in Auckland, New Zealand, between flights, and on the way across, we've booked a hire car for the day and will spend some time exploring Auckland before returning to the airport to wait for our flights to San Francisco.

And The Countdown Continues With Four Months To Go

We are now just under 4 months from flying out for the United States. We're also at the point where we have enough organised that if we didn't do any more before we left, we could just wing it and we'd be fine. However, thats not my intention and we're going to be doing a lot more planning over the next month or so, as what is my intention is to at least have all our accommodation booked at least 2 months before we fly out.



Lately, I've been spending a bit of time looking at photos of San Francisco, trying to find some more places I'd like to visit and try to get some interesting shots of. Some of the places I've found so far include the ruins of an old military installation on Bakers Beach and the remains of the bath house at Sutro Beach. We're also intending to visit the former Nike Missile Site in Marin Country, which is just over the Golden Gate Bridge.



I'm not sure if k8 wants to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge again, but if the opportunity is there, I'm certainly up for another chance to take some more photos like the one above. The view from this engineering masterpiece is just amazing.

Less Than 5 Months To Go..

The days are starting to go by rather quickly, with under 5 months to go now until we fly out, we've still only actually booked the airfares, but we're close to booking a few more things, and we've got some more dates confirmed for some other events we're planning on attending.



The first event we're adding to the list is in Los Angeles on Wednesday the 4th of August. It's a cruise in at the Wally Parks NHRA museum at Pomona, and attracts hot rods, muscle cars, kustoms and street machines from all over the Los Angeles area.



In order to make it to Los Angeles in time for the Wally Parks Museum Cruise In, we've had to change our plans for the trip south from San Jose. Instead of spending a night in Bakersfield on the way to LA, we'll instead be going almost directly from San Jose to LA and visiting Bakersfield after we've left Bonneville. This actually works out quite well, as another event that we're very keen on attending is the ANRA's Summer Nationals at the Famoso Auto Club Raceway in Bakersfield, on August 21st and 22nd. This is a dedicated Nostalgia race meeting, and reports from those who have attended in the past suggest that it is an event not to be missed.



After Bakersfield we'll be heading back up to San Jose to relax and check out some of the sights of the San Francisco Bay area, including a planned trip to Sacramento Vintage Ford, a visit to the San Jose Flea Markets, one of, if not the, biggest flea markets in the world. Also on the short list for things to do around the Bay, is another visit to Alcatraz, as I believe that a single visit is not enough time to really come to terms with the history of The Rock.



Between Los Angeles and Bakersfield, we plan to visit Death Valley, Las Vegas, the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, the Bonneville Salt Flats, Lake Tahoe and Yosemite National Park. We're also very keen to get to the GoodGuys Hot Rod show in Pleasanton the weekend after the ANRA round in Bakersfield, and Kate would like to see a Dodgers game in LA. I'd also like to catch a 49er's game in San Francisco, or at least take a stadium tour, if such a thing exists, but the schedule for the 2010/11 NFL season isn't available yet, so we'll see what ends up happening there.