In a Western Place

The weather was beautiful and oh so warm over the weekend! Like, drink coffee on the back deck while wearing flip flops and short sleeves warm! Hooray!

M was recording most of Saturday so I drove up to Sacramento to spend the afternoon with friends. On my way back, I took a detour through a section of Napa. Beautiful.

On Sunday, we stopped by our neighborhood’s annual gig, the Glen Park Festival. Er, festival is misleading, more like a block party with local vendors. We went last year, and like last year, we stayed for a whopping 5 minutes then walked home. More fun for people with kids, I think. Not to disrespect our beloved hood, but Cole Valley does it better.

Because the weather was so unusually warm, we hopped into the car and drove up to Livermore for some minature golf! But first, we stopped by our favorite SF suburb, Pleasanton, for lunch. Despite all the creepy life-like sculptures placed randomly in the downtown area, it’s such a clean, friendly and pretty town. We’d move there in a heartbeat if the weekday commute to SF wasn’t such a drag.

See? Creepy.

See? Pretty.

Aaaaaand here’s Grandpa, playing golf.

What’s up? Only us Sea Lions out here…

M and I had the best intentions during our small weekend getaway down in Half Moon Bay. We started our trip early Saturday morning with a whale watch at Pillar Point Yacht Harbor. The 3 hour rocky boat ride turned up zero gray whale sightings, so we fed our disappointment with lunch at the Moss Beach Distillery. We enjoyed some great food, excellent service with an awesome view… until the second dose of Dramamine that I ingested during the whale search hit. Drowsiness is an understatement. Once checked into our Bed and Breakfast, I could hardly keep my eyes open. I lied down to take a nap, only to find that I could hear every sound in the historic building from our room — doors slamming, people talking (down) in the restaurant, it was quite unbearable. So we checked out and drove 30 minutes back to San Francisco. Once home, I slipped into a sea-sick medicine induced coma until 10:00am Sunday morning. Ah well, Happy 6th month Wedding Anniversary to us, at least I feel well rested!

Pescadero, CA

We were traveling toward Eugene, about 60 miles from Crescent Lake when we spotted Lost Creek Lake from the roadside. Without another soul around, we hiked and soaked up all the color.

After a restful slumber at our B&B in Fort Jones, M and I hit the road and drove 158 miles toward Crescent Lake, located on the eastern slope of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. Sadly, it was too cloudy to see the actual lake… but, look! SNOW!

It was pouring throughout Northern California the day we left San Francisco. Despite all the rain we drove about 285 miles North to a small remote mountain town off highway 5 called Fort Charles. Along the way we passed the Black Butte* Summit (which, unlike Mount Shasta, was clearly visible from the highway) and Shasta lake. Eventually the clouds did part, paving the way for some of the largest rainbows that I’ve ever seen.

I can still smell the air. So clean.

*Giggle.

Mt. Shasta | October 2009

Standing nearly 10,000 feet tall, can you believe that we couldn’t see this darn mountain during our first pass? (It monsooned as we drove from San Francisco to our first stop in Fort Jones.) Thankfully, we got a good glimpse on our way home. Beautiful. I can’t think of a better Grand Finale for our trip.