By the end of the trip, Grace was able to utter those three words in a row, which made the occasionally trying times in the car seem completely worth it. The trip was a lot of fun, and Grace did an amazing job adapting to days spent in the car and nights in strange new hotels. In fact, she occasionally asks if we’re going to a hotel now that we’re home. She didn’t love being in the car, but she napped when we asked her to and was otherwise occupied by the books, toys, and songs we provided to distract her.

We explored Big Sur, Carmel, Monterey, Santa Cruz, Los Gatos, Cupertino, San Jose, Alameda, Emeryville, Napa, Sonoma, Fairfield, Davis, Sacramento, and Fresno, over the course of six days. There’s still a lot more to see, as we lopped off planned stays in Chino and Yosemite, plus all of the other spots in the state we hadn’t planned on visiting this time around, so there’s plenty of material for another trip in a few years.

Aimee and I usually keep a little journal for each trip we go on, but by the time we thought about it, it was a little late, and with Grace around, we didn’t have as much quiet time as we needed to keep it up. I had just heard about the new Paper app for the iPad, and had just received the new Cosmonaut stylus I’d ordered, so I decided to try to keep a little visual account of the trip as we went.

Day one featured a lot of driving, but I was surprised that we reached Big Sur by the middle of the afternoon, with plenty of time to take in the scenery and for Grace to do what Grace loves best, play in the dirt, albeit overlooking some amazing coastal scenery.

We spent some time at the world famous Monterey Bay Aquarium, which Grace really enjoyed, from the close encounter with a shark that sped by her face just on the other side of the glass, to the chance to watch penguins eating and jellyfish floating through the water.

Thanks to a friend from Cambridge days, I was able to arrange a walk onto Apple’s Infinite Loop campus, where he and I enjoyed lunch at the most incredible cafeteria I’ve ever seen, and a quick look around the very few non-secret parts of the campus.

We spent a lovely afternoon wandering around the legendarily beautiful Stanford campus, which we’d never visited but had long heard about. It was even more picturesque than we could imagine; so different from the New England college look, but so breathtaking in its own way.

The next day, we headed toward Pixar’s home in Emeryville, for another lunch and tour with a fellow Amherst alum. On our way to Emeryville, we stopped on the island of Alameda, where we had lunch, saw the Spite House, toured the USS Hornet, and had some great ice cream at Tucker’s, all thanks to Huell Howser’s recommendations.

One of the highlights of the trip was a visit to the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield, not far from Napa.

The California State Railroad Museum was hugely impressive, a really amazing collection of locomotives, cars, and visual history that tells the story of the railroad in California. I look forward to going back when Grace is a little older, but she enjoyed it well enough this time around.

Grace loved playing in the dirt in the park around the state capitol building in Sacramento. It was a gorgeous day, and she really had fun. “More dirt!” was the mantra of the day.

View all of the photos in the Flickr set.