Driving To The Championship Day 4: Modesto & The Del Toro Family

CBS4's Jamie Leary is driving to California's Bay area with photographer Mike Abeyta for Super Bowl 50. They left from Denver early Monday morning will be filing reports about the Denver Broncos along the way.

Leaving Las Vegas was not difficult. I was eager to leave the smokey hotels, over-priced meals and seizure inducing lights. We were up once again at the crack of dawn and headed to Modesto to meet the Del Toro family.

I knew they were a large energetic family but like I was telling our News Director, Tim, what we expected to find and what we found when we got there were two completely different things. In the best way… But I will get to that in a minute.

The drive there was beautiful… We couldn't see initially because our car was so dirty. There wasn't a car wash for 130 miles so we did the next best thing. I washed the entire car with squeegee and we could once again see. The views were stunning. We hit the California border as the sun was rising. Through our newly cleaned windshield, Mike spotted the 'Welcome to California' sign and as tired as we were we had to take a photo. Thank god for sunglasses. I felt tired and looked it too. I think I smoked a pack of cigarettes just walking through our hotel which only exacerbated the way I felt.

We faced a long seven hour drive but it went by quickly. We were not used to the desert landscape and talked about it the entire way. When we hit the area near Edwards Airforce base where the great Neal Armstong and Buzz Aldrin trained for their mission to the moon, it seemed that everything had frozen in time. Mike called it decaying Americana. Perfect. We stopped to take some photos in the town of Boron.

Just like in Utah (aside from the obvious landscape changes) we hit another enormous wind farm. I didn't mention this in my blog about Utah because I felt bad but Mike said windmills scare him.

Keep in mind that before this trip I knew little about Mike. I had only met him once. I am now comfortable enough to laugh directly at him and go one step further and post this picture:

The most spectacular thing we saw was the green. Green everywhere. It covered the rocky hillsides and as much as I wanted to close my eyes and take a nap, I didn't.

Fast forward to Modesto. We arrived to the Del Toros and it was already a full house we when arrived. There was what seemed like 100 Del Toros (only about 12) all clad in orange running around. Eric, the man of the house greeted Mike and I with open arms.

I told the family that they were the happiest looking bunch and I couldn't tell if it was just the way they naturally were or the orange glow from their jerseys ... We all busted out laughing. So much positivity from this crew despite watching a member of their family struggle with a terminal illness.

There is no cure for what 32-year-old Jessica Del Toro has. Pulmonary hyper tension. The doctors at Denver Health Medical Center called her the miracle baby and she continues to defy odds.

She is engaged to be married and even though she has yet to make the lung transplant list, this girl is a fighter. Her dad has big plans for her wedding too. Mile High stadium baby!

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