San Diego for Jimmy Buffett October 08

We headed out for the California for a whirl wind week to see Jimmy Buffett twice, a Raider's game and wine tasting. We left October 15th in the evening and drove all night (well Eric and Walt drove I mostly slept) to make it to Mission Beach for sunrise and a beautiful breakfast on the beach.

After breakfast we were off straight away to Chula Vista to the verizon amphiteather for some serious parrothead tailgating!! My liver hurts just thinking about it. We prevailed at whoooing the crowd with our matching "Jimmy Buffett for President" shirts that Dave Bell made for us.

Our friend Bucket won the "hero" of the concert award. There is a video on the photo's link of him dancing on a stripper pole....need I say more. As always the tailgating was amazing I think parrotheads are some of the most creative people out there with there decoration and great costume ideas.

Jimmy put on a fabulous show as always, but that stadium needs way more "blue rooms" for the drinking crowd. I was in line for almost three song (we think the girl in front of us passed out in the port o potty) and almost wet my pants.

The next morning we were on the road again heading up north to Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is where Barry grew up so we were on our way to check out some of his old haunts and visit his mother Betsy. Betsy was so great she let us invade her house for a couple of days and took us all to a wonderful dinner. Pull in to the drive way we took a big chunk out of the asphalt on the road so when it was time to pull out we had to become creative with some wood so we would not take out any more of the road. The original Margaritaville
From Santa Cruz we were off to Oakland for a Raider's football game. What a great crowd. Raiders fans take it very serious and they know how to tailgate. They won the Jets that day and I was just excited to see Bret Farve play. The only down fall is we were in the shade and it was damn cold. Once the game was over we headed off to Calistoga for a litte okay a lot of wine tasting. Our first stop on the tour was Castello Di Amorosa. This castle looks like something from Tuscany but it was built here. It was started in 1993 and took 15 years to finish. It's 121,000 square feet and it's authentic. We left Napa on the road to San Jose to see Buffett again but we stopped along the way to visit Eric's friend Kelly who lives in Mill Valley. What a beautiful home with amazing views of San Fransico. Kelly was such a great host letting us over run his house and play in his pool and hot tub. His dogs are awesome and great lap swimmers.
We then headed off to San Jose to the shoreline ampitheater for the last and final show of the trip.