This year my son and I took our third annual "Father-Son Vacation" to sunny California. It was his choice and having similar interests as his Dad, it was a no brainer that we would visit Silicon Valley. Our minimum places to visit included the Computer History Museum, Google, the Apple Store on the Apple campus, spend a whole day in San Francisco, and take a drive up to Petaluma to visit the TWiT studios. Our first FSV trip was a drive to Dearborn Michigan to visit The Henry Ford, since we both have an interest in cars as well. Last year we drove down to Washington, DC to see several sights we didn't get to see on our first visit back in 2006.
We spent all day Monday traveling, leaving the house at 6:30 AM to sit in traffic on the Mass Pike on the way to Logan Airport. We arrived about 8:00 which gave us plenty of time to get through security and grab some breakfast before making our way to the US Airways gate. The first flight to Phoenix was long, over 5 hours and 2 or 3 time zones. Now, I thought Phoenix was in the Mountain time zone which would be two hours behind the east coast, but when we arrived it was 12:40, 3 hours behind our home state. We both found that strange. We later learned that Arizona does not observe Daylight Savings Time which explains the mystery.
The last leg of the journey into San Jose went smoothly and after we picked up our Nissan Sentra (hoping for a Ford Fusion) we arrived at the hotel in Milpitas in short order. First order of business was dinner and we had an intention to only eat at places that we can't find back home. Nearby to the hotel was a Black Bear Diner which seemed to fit the bill. Lots of good old fashioned comfort food, but probably not all that healthy!
After dinner we took a little drive toward the hills of the Diablo Range that were nearby. It was very interesting driving through residential areas one minute and then farm lands with large expanses of grass hills with cattle grazing peacefully. We also saw lots of jackrabbits living in holes in the sides of the hills. We didn’t drive too far since we were both tired from traveling and it was starting to get dark. Back to the hotel to relax and get ready for our first full day.