This past weekend I had a blast taking a little Road Trip with my family to San Francisco. We had no itinerary except that I was going to teach classes on Sunday at Our Paper Place in Newark, CA – I'll be posting pics of my class later this week!! I'm going to share out little trip over a few different blog posts :)

It was nice to just take our time and hit the road. We saw points of interest along the way, we stopped and explored. It was fun! Stressful sometimes as we veered off road onto dirt roads to get to the California Poppy Reserve (another “gift” from Google), drove in circles to get across the street (another Google “favor”) and got a flat tire! But it's those things that you look back on later and laugh about–that's what makes a trip an adventure, right?! LOL

We also dusted off the DVD player for the car — it had been two years since we used it! The kids loved it and so did we ;) Seven hours is a bit long for the kids to stay in the car and live to tell about it. So if you are going on a trip with the kidlets, DVD players with head phones are a MUST! Xaver and I had alot of fairly quiet hours to just chat about things we wanted to chat about without the kids interrupting.

While driving through Lancaster we saw the signs for the California Poppy Preserve–woohoo, I've always wanted to see that! After a detour through some muddy vertical dirt roads (we passed people working on the power lines and they thought we were crazy) we found it. The crazy part is, the “Poppy Preserve” side of the hill was ugly with few poppies. It wasn't set to bloom for another couple weeks. But the “Google Maps” side of the hill was fabulous!! Here are some pics of our dirt road adventure:

After that bit of fun, we got back on the road to head North again. We stopped in Paso Robles at Tortilla Town for dinner. It wasn't as good as we remembered but hit the spot after a long car ride. 

And when I say remember, I am referring back to 2008, when, on April 1, the exact same day as this trip, we drove to Monterey on the same route. That was for some personal business we had to attend to with regards to buying our house. It was crazy to be driving on the same day 3 years later on the same route but I am so glad the circumstances were better this time around :)

We rolled into Newark at about 10pm and I headed over to Our Paper Place–my hunch was correct–they were cropping! I hung out with Sarah De Guzman, Suzy West, and their great group of friendly croppers for a couple of hours, chatting and having a great time. It was such a warm and welcoming store–I wish I had brought stuff to crop with!!

Tomorrow I will share a little more about our trip!!

Author: Jennifer Priest

It started with jewelry, beading, sewing, home decor, painting, basket weaving, pottery, and cross-stitch. Marry that to an entrepreneurial spirit & at 9 years old a girl is selling her wares at craft fairs as far as her parents and grandparents would drive her. These days, Jennifer enjoys crafts of all genres from sewing to scrapbooking to jewelry with a little dabbling in the mixed media world. Her style is approachable and she wants everyone who sees her work to feel that they too can embrace creativity and make their home and life beautiful.

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