Steph, insending....

Jet Blue and Southwest are very reasonably priced airlines flying in/out of Oakland, FYI. eta: neither of which will show up on any of the travel search sites; you have to go their sites.

Are there any thoughts of looking for group hotel rates and a hosp. suite and/or party location outside of people's homes, kind of like the big F2F?

LA to San Fran is about 400 miles and a four hour drive depending on time and day you leave.

Um, yikes, I don't drive that fast. I was also thinking that I'd drive up the 101 since you get to see some great scenery that way. That route takes between 7 and 8 hours.

As for theme parks and such, if Nilly wants to go to any I'm happy to go. I loveses them. I'll also introduce you to Roller Coasters if you are crazy enough to try them. I may be able to get us a few passes to Universal Studios, I'll check on it.

Are there any thoughts of looking for group hotel rates and a hosp. suite and/or party location outside of people's homes, kind of like the big F2F?

I don't know about group rates, but as for a hospitality suite, I'd resist that strenuously. I've been working out the details for the weekend with Nilly for awhile now; since I've got room to host anywhere up to 40 people outdoors at our place, I'd rather not upset my own planning by adding a lot of outside factors, and centering half the party arrangements elsewhere.

Heh. My eyebrows went up at the 100 miles per hour figure, as well. We generally take six or so hours, but we also usually take I5, just for the speed factor. If you guys are leaving LA reasonably early, you have the whole day to cruise on up the coast.

Yeah, I almost always use the 5 as well, but the 101 is much prettier. I love driving through the rolling hills. Also, that way Nilly can see some of the coastline and drive through Santa Barbara and things like that.

I was about to suggest stopping in Santa Barbara for lunch. Minds working alike, and all that.

Not the enforced cheeriness, or the millions of crying and puking children, or the long lines, or the annoying characters, or THE MOUSE?

These things make me insane, but the sun makes me violently ill.

t clapping hands gleefully

This is so much fun!

Maybe a possibility that Cass and I could meet you (ND and Nilly) in LA and travel up to San Fran as a caravan? We'll likely be traveling up on Thursday, which is when I think that you were planning to head up, and I'm going to pester Cass to go 101 so we can see the pretties. Then again, that might be way more coordination than it's worth. Also, I think we'd talked about going halfway up on Thursday and the rest of the way on Friday.

So ignore that last paragraph and replace it with the following:

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Nilly's coming!