Road Trip! (Day 1 of 12)

As I've mentioned in a couple of posts, my sister and parents came to visit for three weeks in late June and early July. Because we like to go see things (and it's really hot here!) we went on a 12-day road trip - see the route below:


View California Road trip: mom and dad in a larger map

The green houses indicate where we stayed the night (going counter-clockwise from Phoenix):

• Vegas (2 nights)
• Mono Lake / Lee Vining (1 night)
• Fairfield / Napa Valley (2 nights)
• San Francisco (2 nights)
• Carmel (2 nights)
• Santa Maria (1 night)
• Palm Desert (1 night)

In order to keep this bearable, I'm dividing up the trip into about one post per day, and I'm including a handful of pictures in each post. So, here goes...

Day 1 - Tuesday, June 23

We left Phoenix in the morning and headed north for Sedona. Our first activity: Pink Jeep Tour!

Here are a couple of links for those not familiar with Sedona or the Pink Jeep Tours. Both highly recommended. Our next stop was lunch at l'Auberge: good food in a great setting down by the creek!

After leaving Sedona, we drove across the Hoover Dam and into Las Vegas and checked in at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay. We had a nice evening at the bar at Charlie Palmer's Aureole. Great food and wine list, and always fun to watch the "wine angels" do their high-wire act and ascend the 4-story wine tower to fetch the wine (see the virtual tour on the web site.)