“Well, right off the bat I would like to say we have a “”new to us car.”” For those not in the know, we got a 1992 Subaru Legacy. That sounds old, and it is, but it has air conditioning. My Aunt and Uncle up in Santa Rosa got it at a good price at a auto auction last month, but our schedules hadn’t coordinated right until last week. So last Friday we made a slow trip up the coast line to get the car. It started at 5:30PM when I got off of work and we traveled to Bakersfield. We got there around 9:30 and got up at 4:00AM to get to the Bakersfield train station:
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Normally, we drive, but it didn’t make any sense to take two cars up and two cars down the coast. The price wasn’t that bad and AJ got to ride for free. It wasn’t much different than the Metrolink in that the passenger cars were double deckers. Much nicer than a plane in that AJ was free to run around all he wanted. Plus, there were tables, a dining car, and electricity to run my i-Pod:

After meeting my Grandma, Aunt, and Uncle for lunch we slowly made our way back to Crestline. On the way we stopped in Fairfield at the Jelly Belly Factory:
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For those not familiar with Jelly Bellies, they are gourmet Jelly Beans that were made famous by Ronald Reagan (he served them on Airforce1). If you go to the factory they offer free tours daily 7-4 pm (of course we got there at 4:30pm, or I would of posted tour pictures) and they give you all the free samples you want. It is kind of fun, plus we bought “”belly flops”” (misformed Jelly Bellies) for really cheap (we now have 4 big bags of them). After that we stopped at a different Aunt’s house in Orangevale (close to Sacramento). Stayed till Sunday and continued back down the 99 to Bakerfield (our other old car was still there). On Monday, we made another quick stop to the Sunmaid Raisin factory in Kingsburg, California. They don’t offer tours, but they do offer free samples, plus you get to the see the world’s largest raisin box! No really, its a raisin box:
<%image(20090730-sunmaidfamweb.jpg|448|336|There were raisins in there...)%>
After inhaling lots of raisins smells, it is quite a scent. We finally made it to Bakersfield to Denise’s parent’s house. We picked up the Kia and made our way back to Crestline. It was a long trip, but it was fun, and now we have (gasp) and AIR CONDITIONED CAR!!!”