9/2/07

Here's something exciting: we just booked the cruise that we've been saving money for 4 years! Four years ago Brian looked at a Greek Isles calendar and said "That can't be a real place." I guess we'll find out next year if it's real. Our friends Claire & Arlene are going and have invited us to go with them to Paris afterwards (their aunt lives there). Does anyone else want to go on the cruise with us?

Working & working out

We've been working quite a bit. Our RV park has a workout facility. We finally started using it last week. Ouch! But it will be worth it when we're buff and toned. Tonight we went on a tour of a huge vineyard and learned how they plant, grow, water, & prune the grapes. We tasted the different grape varieties. What a lot of work! They let us bring a picnic and we sat on top a hill and watched the sunset. Of course I took a bunch of pictures. Since I don't have a digital camera yet, you'll have to wait.

Just down the road from us . . .

Day trip!

This was taken in King's Canyon Nat'l Park.
Look closely so that you can see our little traveler!

The last couple of weeks

On September 7th, we drove through Solvang on our way to Santa Barbara. Solvang is a town where a lot of Danes settled after they moved to America. The building downtown look very European. It's a very pretty little town and a great place to get breakfast. They still make Danish pastries like they do in Denmark. Santa Barbara was pretty. I think that I would like to live there. It has a beach-front park. It's kind of built up on the side of the mountains. It's a very expensive place. Because of that, we stayed overnight a little south of there in Carpenteria. I thought that I got a good deal on a hotel. Brian thinks that it's where all the illegal migrant workers live. It was a little scary, but funny now that we look back on the experience. We didn't sleep very well because you had to open the windows if you wanted any ventilation and I wasn't about to do that. There were some people that sat outside our door until very early in the morning talking. The large crack around the door enabled us to hear every word that they were saying. On the way back from Santa Barbara we drove through Lompoc which is where they grow a lot of flowers. We were a little late in the season, but we still got to see a couple of flower fields. On the way back from there, we saw field after field of lettuce in various stages of growth.
Last weekend Brian's mom came to visit! We enjoyed showing her around here. On Thursday we went to the Apple Farm (a restaurant and inn that has a lot of flowers and a water wheel/mill). In the evening we went to the SLO Farmer's Market. We always enjoy doing that. On Friday we went to an olive farm where they showed us how they make olive oil. After that we went to a couple of wineries. We went to a wine tasting. After we tasted it, we went out into the vineyard. Brenda tasted a grape and said, "That's really good. Whoever took this grape and ruined it by making that wine should be taken out back and beaten." After that we went to Morro Bay (the closest beach). It was really windy that day. On Saturday we went to the park in Paso Robles. They were having the "Taste of Paso." We had to buy a book of tickets. We then walked around the downtown area and a lot of the restaurants had samples of their food for us to taste. We really enjoyed that and we enjoyed having Brian's mom here for a few days.
We had three days off in a row this week and three days in a row off next week. We decided to just relax. We have been running around so much that we're rather worn out. I have been running around in the evenings when the light outside is a nice rosy gold taking pictures of the vineyards. Our company is having another photo contest. If we win anything, I'll post the picture(s) that win. I'm not sure that I want to enter the contest. I won honorable mention in 2001. They used my picture on the front of that calendar and in that calendar, on the front of one of their magazines, and again in this year's calendar. I figured, though, that I'm not doing anything else with the pictures, so I might as well. This year they're paying $250, which would pay for a lot of photo developing!

Huge trees

On September 1st & 2nd, we went to Yosemite and Sequoia Nat'l parks. We had been to the northern areas of Yosemite, but we wanted to see the sequoias. The tree in this picture (left) is called General Grant. It's the third largest living tree. It's so big that I had to piece two pictures together to get a picture of it. These trees are supposed to be around 3000 years old. Amazing!

San Francisco II

On August 5 - 7, we went to San Francisco. We were so surprised when we got there. The sun was shining! We had heard so much about how the summers there were cold and miserable. I think it was Mark Twain that said, "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." On Saturday (the 5th), we went to the cable car terminus and watched them turn the cable cars around and then rode one to Lombard street (look closely one of the pictures). It's the crookedest street in America and great fun to drive down. We then went to Fishermans' Wharf where we had some clam chowder in one of the famous San Francisco sourdough bread bowls. We rode the cable car back as close as we could get to our hotel. The cable cars are $5 to ride each way with no transfers (if you get off you have to pay $5 to get back on again). We were going to get a three day pass for $18 each, but when I was standing in line a nice English gentleman came up and gave me two one-day passes and said that they weren't going to need them anymore!! I was very thankful. We had gotten a great deal on a San Francisco hotel. On Priceline I offered $80 for a three-star hotel and got an upgrade to a 4-star Hilton!! We were so excited. It was in a nice area of town, too. There was one hitch: parking was $48/night!!!! We paid more to park the car than we did to spend one night there! Everyone told us that that was the average amount to pay for parking in San Francisco. If you go, don't take your car. One the way back on Saturday night, we walked into a Chinese night festival. Our hotel was right on the edge of Chinatown. San Francisco has the largest Chinatown in the U.S. It was so cool!! I could have spent hours there. On Sunday morning we walked through Chinatown and ate brunch at a local restaurant. We went back down to Fishermans' Wharf and just watched people until it was time for us to go to Alcatraz. You can see one of the prisoners there if you look at one of the pictures. That's also Alcatraz Island in that picture with the sailboat. We really enjoyed going to Alcatraz. We walked back to our hotel. On the way, we stopped at an Italian restaurant. They sat us right by the kitchen. We had a lot of fun watching the chefs and waiters yell at each other in Italian. Monday morning was overcast. We drove around San Francisco a little bit to see the "Painted Ladies" (row houses painted very extravagantly). We then went to the Golden Gate bridge. I could have spent more time there, but we needed to get back in time to get the dogs out of the kennel.

San Fransisco

Laundry

I have Brian convinced that if/when we build our house that I'm going to need 5 washers and 5 dryers. It is so nice to do my laundry all at once and get it done. I'm sitting here playing on the computer while my laundry finishes. I'm sitting here looking at the pool. Brian's mom is coming today. Next week we were going to go to Napa valley, but we've been running, running, running. I'm so exhausted that we just decided to stay home for once. Maybe I can kick Brian off of the computer long enough to update my blog. We're seriously thinking about getting a second computer. Anyway, I'll write more next week.