{"id":51361,"date":"2017-12-29T13:18:54","date_gmt":"2017-12-29T18:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dinkel.us\/?p=51361"},"modified":"2018-01-01T17:32:52","modified_gmt":"2018-01-01T22:32:52","slug":"california-all-the-waynot-japanese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/?p=51361","title":{"rendered":"California All the Way \/ &#8220;Not Japanese&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_51362\" style=\"width: 810px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-51362\" class=\"size-full wp-image-51362\" src=\"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/IMG_1083.jpg\" alt=\"Somewhere in Utah\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/IMG_1083.jpg 800w, https:\/\/dinkel.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/IMG_1083-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-51362\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Somewhere in Utah<\/p><\/div>\n<p>When my friend Tony texted and asked if I was interested in driving with him across the country to San Francisco, I jumped at the opportunity.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve never been to many of the central US states and driving across the country was always something I wanted to do. Tony is in the process of moving to Italy for a year and no longer needed his car&#8211;the idea was to drive from NYC to San Fran to sell his car to his mother-in-law and to pick me up in Louisville along the way.<\/p>\n<p>The plan was to break the drive up into 4 days:&nbsp; Louisville to Kansas City, KC to Laramie, WY, Laramie to Elko, NV then Elko to San Fran.&nbsp; We were a little concerned with the Laramie&nbsp;snow&nbsp;forecast but it turned out to be a minor storm and all four legs of the trip went swimmingly.<\/p>\n<p>I wish I had some super-thrilling stories to relay but spending most of the time in a car&nbsp;doesn\u2019t typically yield much excitement.&nbsp; Still, we did have a great time catching up and we did manage to visit many good restaurants and see some things that were a bit out of the ordinary\u2014most notably, a hotel check-in gentleman dressed as a Christmas tree.<\/p>\n<p>Highlights of the trip were:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Great barbecue at Jack Stack in Kansas City.<\/li>\n<li>Tour of the Lincoln, Nebraska Capitol building.<\/li>\n<li>Waking up in Laramie to a minor snow storm.<\/li>\n<li>Finally seeing Kansas and Nebraska.<\/li>\n<li>The long stretches of emptiness\u2026which were mesmerizing in their own way.<\/li>\n<li>Toki Ona restaurant (see more below).<\/li>\n<li>Lake Tahoe.<\/li>\n<li>Best of all was the Christmas party hosted by Tamaron\u2019s (Tony\u2019s wife) grandmother.&nbsp; I want to thank Tamaron\u2019s family for making me feel so welcomed and at home.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A special mention goes out to the Toki Ona restaurant in Elko, Nevada.&nbsp; As we perused Trip Advisor for an eatery in Elko, we stumbled upon a review that described Toki Ona as, \u201cNot Japanese.\u201d&nbsp; &nbsp;We weren\u2019t sure if that was a contemptuous or flattering remark, but it caught our eye, nonetheless.&nbsp; It turns out that Toki Ona is a Basque influenced restaurant\u2014who would have guessed such a thing existed in small-town Nevada.&nbsp; We shared a few dishes and were glad we did&#8211;portions were very large and the food turned out to be surprisingly good\u2026definitely not Japanese!<\/p>\n<p>As usual, here are some photos from the trip\u2026enjoy:<\/p>\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When my friend Tony texted and asked if I was interested in driving with him across the country to San Francisco, I jumped at the opportunity.&nbsp; I&#8217;ve never been to many of the central US states and driving across the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/?p=51361\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,45,18,61,39,12,15,20,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-california","category-idaho","category-kentucky","category-midwest","category-northwest","category-us","category-utah","category-west","category-wyoming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51361"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51514,"href":"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51361\/revisions\/51514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dinkel.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}