Mr. Plum relaxes in the balmy breeze (with us nearby, of course). The view of the Pacific Ocean was slightly obscured by smoke from this far away because of wind-driven wild fires from north of San Diego. We all enjoyed it anyway. I could live here, for sure... The water was very cold, but your feet got used to it quickly.
We made it to San Diego! We are staying at a Navy Lodge on North Island and it's quite beautiful! We recorded the historic event of me getting my feet wet for the very first time in the Pacific Ocean, on my 49th birthday. You can see the San Diego skyline in the background above.
10.17.07 - We spent the afternoon at the Reagan Library. It sits high on a hill overlooking the Simi Valley. Just beautiful! It felt peaceful here. We saw the de-commissioned Air Force One. I really liked that. It reminded me of my dad (only he flew much smaller aircraft!) We are standing in front of the final resting place of Ronald Reagan.
I started this sketch on Sunday and finished last night. It's been hard to keep up with any sketching on this trip. We're going at a pace much faster than we do normally, so there's not much down time. We leave in an hour heading for San Diego.
Mr. Plum gets to meet Paul and Denise, who were kind enough to let us take their picture with our purple bear friend! We had a blast with them. Bret and Paul both have a wacky sense of humor and I hardly stopped laughing the whole time we were together!
We ended our very exciting Hollywood-express day having dinner with our "tour-guide", Bret's college buddy, Paul Fleck and his lovely wife Denise. They are such a fun couple! This restaurant, called The Castaway, sits high on a hill overlooking the entire LA area. It was beautiful even with the fog. (We can't seem to shake the foggy weather - we keep bringing it with us.) We tried to get a shot of the famous Hollywood sign, but it didn't turn out very well.
Bret's friend, Paul Fleck, drove us all around the LA area for a high-speed overview tour of all the sights. He completely surprised us by handing us tickets for a taping of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. We had to wait in line for awhile with lots of other folks. We met this lovely lady, Glozell, who is trying to get into the Guiness Book of World Records for the most number of times being in the audience of the Tonight Show. I think she said this was her 271st time. We loved being in the taping. But we didn't end up seeing ourselves on camera, as we had to sit in the back row. It was very interesting having this quintessential Hollywood experience. Thanks, Paul! (FYI - Glozell has her own blog and she posted us on hers, too! Here's her link: http://glozelllovesjayleno.blogspot.com/
We stopped to see dozens of Elephant Seals sleeping on the beach. We were told by one of the volunteers who watch them that this group had been swimming for months and now it was their rest time. At first I was afraid they were all dead, but we could see them breathing, scratching their heads, and climbing on one another to get warm. They were so cute!
We arrived at the Navy Lodge in Monterey on Saturday, Oct. 13th. (Still no real access to the Internet. I had to wait until we got to LA for this post.) Here's Mr. Plum and his first taste of Halloween - posing with Mr. Pumpkin Man!
We celebrated anniversary #10 in San Francisco at the Ruth's Chris Steak House on Van Ness Ave. It was an adventure getting there. The city is about 40 miles north from where we are staying in Mountain View, CA. We took the BART Train into the city (Bay Area Rapid Transit). This is not for the faint of heart. We won't do that again anytime soon...
We got to Groveland at around 6 p.m. and we all went out to dinner at the Pine Mountain Lake Country Club. Yummy food! Above are Bret's Uncle Bob, Becky's husband Jim, the two stooges, and Becky, Bret's cousin. We saw many deer, especially young ones, within a few feet of the car -deer were everywhere! We can hear horses nearby. This is a mountainous region, but I'm not sure of the elevation...maybe around 2,000 feet.
In the early afternoon before we had to get back on the train, Ron drove us to the top of the Grand Mesa, elevation 10,500 feet. The aspens were changing into this lovely yellow color and you could see for miles. Felt like being on top of the world.
We made it to the train in time, thanks to Sarah! Here's a shot of us inside our "sleeper car" (which is more like a closet). I think they should have called it a "dozer car" because we got very little sleep. Between the train whistle noises and the constant jostling, sleep was hard to come by. I'll tell you more about the train later.
