Weekend Log: Sunnyvale Visit

As usual, I had planned the weekends well before the weekdays, once my one month visit to Sunnyvale was confirmed.

• Yosemite National Park
• A long drive through Pacific Coast Highway
• Bay to Breakers run in San Francisco
• Lake Tahoe/Reno
• Las Vegas
• Grand Canyons
  

Hurrah ! The plan has been executed perfectly ( actually, a little better than planned, as the long weekend allowed us to visit Grand Canyons as well, during our Las Vegas trip )

One month stint started as we reached Sunnyvale on a Friday afternoon after a boringly long journey (except for the 'Big Bang Theory' videos in plane). Rajiv, a colleague and an old friend, was accompanying me (One good thing about him is he doesn't drive. So, no competition to drive :)). We directly went to the rental car office and picked up a Nissan Altima, a car that I loved among several I tried during my last visit.

The next morning, we left for Yosemite National Park, a 350 KM drive from Sunnyvale, famous for its lakes, streams, and waterfalls. As we had a very little time to spend there, we enjoyed the drive more than the park. Last 50 KM drive through a narrow spiraling road passing right next to a stream/river was the best part of the trip.

We did the most awaited Pacific Coast Highway drive the following weekend. We had a simple plan. Divide the day into 2 halves. Drive away from Sunnyvale for the first half and drive back in the second half. The serene blue sea one side and dark mountains on the other and a never ending smooth serpentine road and almost zero traffic. What a bliss ! We went to San Francisco on Sunday to watch Bay to Breakers run, the craziest crowd that I ever witnessed. Everyone were dressed uniquely to show their creative zeal and some appear to had felt that the creator is creative enough and came on to the roads as they were sent to the earth (yes, stark naked). And, I could hardly find anyone startled by looking at them. We spent the later part of the Sunday, walking through de Young art museum in Golden Gate Park and roaming near Golden Gate bridge.

The third weekend had been reserved for Lake Tahoe, a huge 500 square KM lake bordering California and Nevada states. The mere size itself makes a million beautiful views. After a nice early morning run in the chilly Tahoe, we drove around the lake and trekked a bit in snow covered hills in the vicinity. We drove to Reno, a mini Las Vegas, in the evening and fooled around a bit in the Casinos.

The best had been kept for the last weekend. A 10 hour drive on Friday evening took us to Las Vegas at 1 AM (and of course, whole Vegas was awake to receive us). As I was not interested in the sin offerings of the sin city, I chose to watch The Beatle's Love by cirque du soleil, a show that is a mix of circus, acrobatics, gymnastics, dance, music, at Bellagio Hotel/Casino. It is hard to exaggerate the precision, perfection, and use of technology by cirque du soleil. Even the grandness of Vegas would be humbled on viewing their performance. They perform all over the world, it seems. Whenever I see their name in future, I would just walk in (Thanks Apoorv for recommending this)

The most memorable part of the entire month would be the visit to Grand Canyons. As someone in our bus said (we took a bus trip from Vegas to Grand Canyons), "one word is enough, GRAND". Grand Canyons show the layers of earth formed over the past 1800 million years i.e, almost half the age of earth, worn and exposed by water courses. It is hard to imagine how a water course created a 1.6 KM deep and 30 KM wide canyon. One can stand on a rim of canyons and see Colorado river flowing at 5000 feet down. Trying to describe Grand Canyons using my modest vocabulary would be an insult to their grandness. Apparently, human artifacts that are as old as 12000 years were found in these canyons. Nat Geo has made an IMAX movie about canyons covering the places which are otherwise inaccessible. We visited south rim of canyons after watching Nat Geo's movie in their IMAX theater close to the Grand Canyon National Park. I would love to keep a couple days for this place, when I visit next time, to walk down all the way to the bottom of the canyons and trek back.

That exhausts all the weekends we had and car's trip meter shows 5000 KM, and a few more hours to go before we leave for Bangalore. But, it is not over yet. We have 15 hours of transit time in HongKong and we will be visiting a couple of places in HongKong too.