Wednesday August 8th

Couldn't sleep late, though I tried. I did find the tickets, and we had a relaxing morning getting packed and covering last minute details. There was stuff to do up to the minute Becky arrived. Getting into her van I remembered we didn't have a jacket for Matthew, which wouldn't have been fun. Pulled out at 1:20 pm.

The kids enjoyed the multimodal trip to the airport...van, elevator, MARTA train, escalator, walking, checking bags, security, tram, and more walking to faraway gate D2, arriving at 3:20 pm. Matthew seemed to get more excited on each leg of the journey. We first flew to Indy, and I had a great view of the Brickyard just before we landed. We were on the ground only long enough for passengers to deboard and board the plane.

Matthew got a kick out of the AirTran peanuts…he read the ‘how to eat’ instructions and laughed out loud. I read through four SI’s, and passed them on to Will and Ceil as I finished each one. Sitting separately, Will and I both listened to the satellite radio broadcast of the exciting Braves / Mets game. Chipper was robbed of a HR, Soriano gave up the game-winning homer, and then Andruw struck out with the bases loaded to end the game. Luckily we were about to land, because after that I couldn’t read or listen to anything else.

Our SF flight didn’t land until 8:30 PDT...12:30 our time. Our rental car turned out to be off-site, even though I checked to make sure there was an airport location. While waiting on the shuttle the kids laughed at another rental car company…Rent-A-Wreck. Then they were excited when our rental turned out to be a quite ordinary Dodge Avenger.

We crossed the lower bay bridge stretching from San Mateo to Hayward, and passed the hotel I’d originally booked. I had switched because the neighborhood sounded bad. We probably would’ve been ok and had free breakfasts for the whole trip, but it would’ve been much less convenient to everywhere we wanted to go. Good decision to switch.

All we found open was a Taco Bell, and then we completed the 1-1/2 hour drive to the Modesto hotel...halfway to Yosemite. We stayed in a nice Springhill Suites, with the ‘grand opening’ sign still up. Nicely outfitted, with Ansel Adams type photos. Again the kids were pumped, and no one had trouble going to sleep.