On the Road

Springfieldians Jim and Esther Shultz took to the roads in the American west for a driving tour that took them from Vegas, up the California coast, out to Lake Tahoe and back again.

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Step one on the Shultz's road trip through the west: The shining lights of Las Vegas. They flew into Sin City from Springfield and started a driving tour that took in dozens of sights. Esther tells the couples' story, with help from Jim. You'll only find this story on 417mag.com.

"We spent four nights in Las Vegas. I don't know, what can I say about Las Vegas," Esther says with a laugh. "We stayed at Treasure Island. We've been out there before several times. We just do the usual things; we shop, we gamble, we eat a lot, we walk a lot. We went to a show, O, it's an aquadic Cirque du Soleil show at the Bellagio. That's about all you can say about Las Vegas. I just play penny or nickel machines, and I do pretty good, don't I?"

"Yep, you do," Jim says. "And we eat at Paris, what is it? Le Village?

"Well, it's their buffet," Esther says. "It's wonderful. We have taken day trips out of Vegas in the past. We'll rent a car and drive up to, like, Mount Charlston. It's about an hour, what direction from Las Vegas?"

"North," Jim says.

"North," says Esther. "Especially in the summertime it's nice to go up there because it's real cool when you get up in the mountains. It's really hot in Vegas. You can drive up there in the winter, too. But of course sometimes the roads are closed because of snow. But we've gone down to Laughlin and Hoover Dam. We've done that a couple times, and that's always fun. They have a boat tour in Hoover Dam on Lake Mead. It's interesting. That's quite a thing that they built. When you look at it when you're in an airplane, when you look at it from up above, it's quite something.

"After Las Vegas, we rented a car, and we drove to Santa Barbara, California, and we just spent the night there, didn't we?"

"We got there mid-afternoon and—," Jim says.

"—just did site-seeing," Esther finishes. "We just drove around. To get to Santa Barbara, we drove through Burbank where all the TV shows are. And you could immediately see the traffic increase when you got to that particular area. But we sailed right through and didn't have any problems. We didn't stop because we had been there before, to the touristy Hollywood homes and all that. So we just went on to Santa Barbara. Then the next day, we drove up to Hearst Castle."

"Near Cambria," Jim adds.

"That's the town that's close to San Simeon, where the castle is," Esther says. "Until you see it, you don't have any idea how big it is. But they have different tours, and most of the tours last two or three hours. They have one they recommend if it's your first time. And if you do that and then go to the little town of Cambria, they have a lot of unique little shops and restaurants and places to eat. You could spend a half a day there. And then the hotel that we stayed at, the Best Western, they have a bonfire on the beach at night every night.".

"Hearst Castle was William Randolph Hearst's," Jim says.

"And the swimming pool is awesome," Esther adds.

"Actually, there are two of them, an indoor one and an outdoor one," Jim says.

"They're huge!" says Esther. "A lot of the movie stars spent a lot of time there back in the olden days. For my taste, it was just really tacky. Too much. All the furniture was big and massive. Huge. But the grounds around it are beautiful. They keep it up. The state of California owns that now, I think.

"In Cambria, we ate at a place called Robin's that was really good. We also ate at a place called the Moonstone Bar & Grill on Moonstone Beach. The food was a little pricy. It was good, but a bit pricy. But yeah, we ate at Robin's in town in Cambria, and it was very good. It was like gourmet cooking. It wasn't burgers and things like that. The presentation was really different and interesting.[…] After that, we went to—"

"Monterey," Jim says.

"Yes, and Carmel," says Esther. "We stayed at once place, though. Carmel and Monterey are side-by-side. Carmel has lots of good shopping and boutiques and lots of neat restaurants. Not your chain restaurants. All privately owned. Everyone has their own little neat thing that they do, and lots of outdoor restaurants. Monterey also has Cannery Row with waterfront shopping and dining and things. We happened to hit it on the weekend, and they were having a restored car show. On weekends almost anywhere you go on a road trip, you can find something going on in the towns that maybe you didn't plan on, and that's always kind of fun."

"We also took the 17-Mile Drive from Carmel to San Francisco through Pebble Beach," Jim says. "It runs past the edge of the ocean through the Pebble Beach Golf Course, and you just kind of drive through it, sightseeing."

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