We ate a lite breakfast of fruit and muffins then spent the next couple hours on our social networking and laying out a plan for the trip to central California to avoid the wild fires which have evolved all around us. Although we are several hours from all of those areas we want to see. Its close to finally becoming a reality that we want to see it all, but with only a few days to do so. We are still planning on the San Francisco areas; the bunkers near the Golden Gate, the Wharf area and now lunch at a place called Tommy's Joynt which was recommended by a neighbor here in this sub-division who lived in the city, a trip down to Carmel, Monterrey area and along the Big Sur and the redwoods and finally a trip to the Hearst Castle at San Simeon all in two nights stay in Santa Cruz. Wow is that a lot to see and visit and some of these attractions are hours inbetween.
We took off around 10:30 for Truckee which is just about 15 minutes or so from where we are staying. We were trying to find a Mexican place to eat lunch before heading out to possibly the gold fields and maybe do some exploring and possibly some panning for the yellow stuff. When I was stationed at Travis AFB I use to go with another airman to this area and we would actually bring the yellow stuff out of the ground and wash it through a sluice box. We would camp for a couple days and load up several pill boxes of the stuff at 40 bucks an ounce; my how times have changed with the price of gold now a days..
I was taking a few pictures of the old town and noticed an artist on the other side of the street painting and Old Flying A Service gas station portrait. I got to talking with Earline Lund who has a home here in Truckee as well as Hawaii. We had a nice conversation and shared some of life experiences before we headed out to a rather new eatery across the street called Margs Truckee. Well we had a super nice server and some hot sauce that would light you up and the food wasn't your usual fare. We would eat there again as it was gourmet and the metal art being displayed was some of the best I've ever seen.
Well we have had all types of natural occurrences with high heat, wild fires and now a 3.2 earthquake. Lets hope that we don't encounter a major quake while we are in the south. I remember years back when a major quake struck the bay area and several folks were killed when overpasses collapsed. We went from shorts and now to sweaters and long pants all in one day. We dropped the girls off in Truckee and they shopped while we stopped at a club for this sub-division and found a really nice recreation complex including two pickle ball courts with paddles and balls. Wow was this ever a nice complex and because the owner of this cabin has membership included we could play. I did give Patrick and Dan a demonstration of the game as we played around for a few minutes. We stopped in the neighborhood and found a huge outcropping of rocks in one backyard and climbed around on them before heading back to the warm cabin. The girls came in a couple hours later and put on a pork roast for supper.
Patrick, Nancy and myself took a long walk in the hood and met up with a couple neighbors who moved here from San Francisco. They built a beautiful home here and we learned it takes 70 thousand bucks just to get in this neighbor and the For Sales we did look at all started somewhere close to a million bucks. The walk was invigorating and helped to work up an appetite for the pork roast with sauerkraut, kielbasa, hot dogs and smashed taters. It was delicious and after the clean up we played several rounds of the golf card game. We had a raucous game and for once I smoked the gang with a rousing victory.
Well it wasn't long before I hit the showers as we stagger them so we have plenty of hot water. Nancy found out the hard way a couple nights ago when she was left with hair conditioner in her hair and only plenty of cold water, yikes what a wake up that was, LATER
