The 1988 San Francisco Expedition

In late July 1988, Mom and Dad loaded the family into the van and drove straight through the night from Chandler to San Francisco. Mom drove most of the night while Dad slept. By 3:30 AM, Dad and teenager Binki took over, cruising through the Imperial Valley as sunrise painted the landscape. Dad noted that they "saw the sun come up over rose fields on immaculate farms" and described the valleys on the approach as filled with "oaks, grasslands, beautiful farms and many roadside fruit stands".

At a McDonald's breakfast stop (with "incredibly dirty restrooms, but that is usually the case with busy McDonald's"), Dad picked up a San Francisco Examiner and discovered they were arriving just in time for two major events: the Humming Toadfish Festival and the Gilroy Garlic Festival. They opted for the garlic, since Mom's driving pace had put them ahead of schedule, "largely due to Dina's ability to convince herself that 75 mph is close enough to the speed limit".

Gilroy was unforgettable. Dad wrote, "As it turned out, you can follow your nose to Gilroy. It's a nice little town nestled in a beautiful valley, but if you're not big on garlic, stay away". An estimated 75,000 people had descended on a large city park on the edge of town, "most of them wearing little in the way of clothing and getting very sunburned". Dad could foresee the consequences: "Generations of dermatologists will call the name of events like this blessed".

The event "featured garlic everything: ice cream, pasta, chicken, bar-b-que, candy, you name it. The Gilroy Rotary Club had a wine tasting booth, featuring local wines. Yes, there was a garlic wine". He also noted that "there were booth-type games for the kids, at which Mikey excelled, to the chagrin of Matthias and Dana, who couldn't toss basketballs and beanbags nearly as accurately as the little one did".

Getting a hotel in San Francisco proved difficult. Mom "had thought that we wouldn't need reservations if we got to San Francisco fairly early," but they were too late for any Embassy Suites. They "fooled around for about three hours, including a fruitless but fun search in the Wharf area (looked around a lot, checked into the boat to Alcatraz, smelled the seafood) and across the Golden Gate Bridge" before settling on an airport hotel.

The rest of the trip was filled with memorable stops. They visited the Winchester Mystery House, which Dad said "was another sight that was worth the trip if we'd seen nothing else," though Mom "unfortunately missed most of it because Mikey was cranky and she insisted on being the one to take him out and stay with him in the van". They drove down the Big Sur coast, which Dad had never seen, enjoying "the fantastic coastline and coast road".

The family eventually got lost and ended up in the town of Lompoc for the night. Dad seized the opportunity. "I had a lot of fun on the way down kidding the kids about Lompoc's being the Belly Button Lint Capital of the World, about the Belly Button Lint Festival, and so on," he wrote. "As usual, by the time we got around to discussing Lompoc's real forte, growing flowers and vegetables for seed (they do claim to be the World Capital for that!), they didn't believe me on that, either".

The next day, they detoured through Solvang, "the city that capitalizes on being done up to look like a Danish village," and eventually made it to their usual Embassy Suites in Arcadia, where Mom's sister Sharen met them for supper.