The other day I started to write about my recent Roller Coaster Adventure Trip to California and the first stop on our tour was Six Flag’s Discovery Kingdom. However, besides roller coasters and thrill rides, I also wanted to visit with some of my friends.  With Facebook, it was been nice to see what they are doing but a face to face visit is much more fun!

Our first stop was beautiful Sacramento, California. Most people from Seattle know Sacramento as the city of the Sacramento Kings basketball team. And that we tried to take the Sacramento Kings away from this fair city and bring them to Seattle. We had hoped to turn them into the new Seattle Sonics. Needless to say, this didn’t happen. I didn’t wear my Seattle Sonics gear just in case there were any hard feelings from the citizens about this whole basketball team purchase.
We flew down from Seattle to Sacramento and stayed with our good friends Joe and Gavan and their two daughters. You know they are good friends when they let you crash at your house without a hesitation (or a moment’s notice)Zdx5. They have encouraged us to come and visit for the past several years and I was looking forward to this leg of the trip. Our friendship was built upon our years at Benson Hill Coop Preschool together as preschool parents. On a side note, we have a lot of friends from being coop preschool parents together that we still see and hang out with. I’m a big fan of the coop preschool system.
Of course, our daughters don’t remember each other but we (the parents) certainly do! It honestly seems like yesterday but it has been roughly eight years since Joe and Gavan moved back to California from Washington State. We picked up right where we left off.
I could ramble on about how time flies but we pretty much all know that already. Time does fly so you might as well enjoy life the best you can. Hmm, that really isn’t worthless advice so perhaps you should disregard that good advice. I don’t want you to think you could learn something from me.
I have to thank Joe and Gavan for opening up their home to us and allowing us to stay with them. They also picked us up from the airport, drove us to and from the Discovery Kingdom Park, showed us the Jelly Belly Factory Store, and then drove us to the airport on Monday for our flight to Burbank. You have to appreciate friends that will do that.

I want to say that on the way back from Vallejo, we stopped at the Jelly Belly Factory to load up on Jelly Belly and it was a great choice for a tourist stop. Joe kept telling me about “Jelly Belly Flops”. “Flops” are the mistakes from the Jelly Belly bean process. They still taste like Jelly Belly beans but they are the rejects. You might have two or three Jelly Belly beans merged into one or a jelly belly bean might have a funny flatness to it. Most of the jelly belly beans in the “Flops” bag look and taste awesome to me. I love them! I can’t wait to drop into a deep diabetic coma caused from my massive sugar intake from eating as many Jelly Belly beans as I can fit into my mouth.
Since we only had 15 minutes at the Jelly Belly store before it closed, we grabbed a bunch of “Flops”, ate some ice cream, sampled numerous different flavors, and started the journey back to Elk Grove.

Now, that would be the end of a prefect day of roller coasters and candy, right? Nope! We topped it off with some excellent tri-tip steak, homemade mash potatoes, wine, beer, Caesar salad, and some delicious (onolicious) Hawaiian style Macaroni salad. Then we topped it off with a nice relaxing soak in the hot tub under the stars. It doesn’t get much better than that!
Again, a big “thanks” to Gavan and Joe for being fantastic hosts for our first leg of our Daughter-Dad Roller Coaster Trip!
On tomorrow’s blog, we talk about our next leg of the trip: Six Flag’s Magic Mountain!