We hope you are all well? We have had busy Thanksgiving week I took some days off as one of Faith's friends came to visit and we have been out exploring California a little more. More of that later, to start with I want to tell you about our night walk around SF, (See photo); Donna and Faith went for a walk up to Pier 39 to see the sea lions and as the night closed in I left work and went to meet them. It was dark and the city seems a very different place to SF in the day. The city is still as busy but it is lit up and seems even more beautiful. The bridge has lights strung along the towers and suspension cables and about half a dozen of the buildings have their corners lit by strings of lights! They are like big square Christmas trees!
Tuesday we went up to the Napa valley for a day wandering the low relief rounded hills and enjoying the vine yards stretching off in the distance - well that was the plan anyway. Arriving on the outskirts of Napa around midmorning I decided to have a 5 minute stop to consult the guidebook for a suitable vineyard to visit etc. From the freeway I saw a shopping centre and thought that might a good place to stop to gather our thoughts, as I pulled in to the car park the shrieks of excitement from Donna & Faith made my heart sink. Inadvertently I had driven into a designer retail park and the shrieks were for a Coach shop. The car had barely stopped before the girls exited the car and tore across the car park. A few minutes later The Sazberry and I were trundling across the car park to join the shopping frenzy. Now I won't embarrass the girls by telling you how many bags they bought (two each - whoops), or how many pairs of shoes they got from Nine West (one each - how careless I am, again), but I shall say we nearly had to leave the buggy to fit all their shopping in. Now do you remember the time we arrived at the shopping centre? Well after a quick bite to eat we drove to a vineyard called Artesia in time to watch the sunset over the rolling hills (see photo)... ....
On Wednesday we went to Alcatraz on the touristy route with Donna. It was a pretty amazing place and a National Park to boot. It is a geologist dream as originally it was a totally rock (sandstone) void of any soil, hence the name 'the rock' I suppose! Anyway we saw all the cells and the sights of some of the more notorious moments in Alcatraz's short history. We even saw the cells and the holes and heard the real life story that inspired Stephen King's 'Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption' - very cool.
Thanksgiving was on Thursday and spent at church, the church put on a meal for those who wanted to come. I was helping with the service and Faithy, Donna and the Sazberry were helping by eating it! In the end there was about 60 people there and the food (cooked by a chef from one of the large down town hotels) was delicious, I even managed to secure some left overs for second lunch / tea! After the food we had party games then watched part of the football game (American not proper football) on the church's projection screen.
On Friday we went for a walk in the woods. We headed south to try and find one of the elusive ancient groves of giant sequoia. It was a little wet but despite the rain we got some excellent views along the Pacific Highway. As we wound our way up the Coastal Range mountains away from the sea the fields gave way to trees, patchy at first then thickening to primeval forests. A friend had suggested the location because of the buggy friendly footpaths and as we rounded the first bend and the car park disappeared from view the woods took on a very atmospheric Tolkein-esq like feel. I half expected an Ent to appear and whisk us away to a some epic battle. Alas, all we saw was a small lizard despite the sign say beware of the Mountain Lions! When the rain set in we headed back to the car despite my better judgment went to another Coach shop in "The Great Mall" (an oxymoron if ever there was one!). Now in case you don't know day after Thanksgiving is called 'Black Friday' and is the biggest sale day of the year and as it turns out we were not alone in going to one of the biggest malls on the biggest sales day of the year. We queued from the freeway to get to the mall and again I dropped the girls off and went to park, 20 minutes and a divine parking space intervention later, I parked and entered purgatory.
My therapist has suggested I don't talk about my experience in the Mall until I am ready, so maybe I'll tell you another time. Coach though did manage to part Donna from more of her money (and she became the proud owner of another three items)! OK, back to work tomorrow.
Take care, love Tom, Faithy & Sarah