Friday, March 29
Three days sleeping indoors ... in three different beds.
After breakfast with the Berry-Smiths on Friday morning, Jennifer persuaded me to take their pass for the Monterey Aquarium and pay a visit. I left Eliot behind in Rodney’s care for a couple of hours. The aquarium is really worth a visit although the adult admission fee is $34.99. There are several really large tanks containing sharks, tuna, rays and other large fish. I particularly liked the areas featuring jelly fish and sea horses. There was also an aviary with an interesting collection of sea birds. When I looked in through the door of the aviary I assumed that the birds must be animatronic. They were right there in front of you ... some merely arms length away quite unconcerned about the people watching them. You’d never, ever get this close to these birds on the beach . One of the volunteers explained to me that the birds are mostly rescue birds that have been in captivity quite a while and have been acclimatized to people and the aviary space.
After about an hour of wandering around, the aquarium really filled up ... mostly with hyper-active children who’d been given one too many espressos that morning. So I made my escape back to collect Eliot.
Around lunch time we began driving further up Hwy 1 to Menlo Park which is one of the communities south of San Francisco. (I think it would be considered part of Silicon Valley ... Palo Alto is right next door.)
We arrived at my friend John’s townhouse in Menlo Park by late afternoon. I hadn’t seen John for a very long time and so we spent a few hours catching up. Later in the evening John treated me to dinner at a lovely Italian restaurant in Palo Alto where Eliot was welcomed on the back patio. John knows the owners and they were very gracious and accommodating. The food was delicious especially the beet salad and caramel ice cream with sea salt and olive oil. When we got up to leave, the owner came over and gave us both a hug good-bye. Totally charming.
After dinner we walked along Palo Alto’s University Avenue (Palo Alto is home to Stanford University.) I only vaguely recalled some of the buildings from a visit three decades ago. But I did recognize the open air courtyard and fountain from an old movie theatre that had since been turned into a Borders Bookstore which has since closed. And I had my first visit to an Apple Store where Eliot was fussed over by the gal at the door.
Saturday, March 30
On Saturday, John went off to lunch with a friend and I steeled myself for the drive into San Francisco. Shortly before I left on this road trip I’d had a friend request from my old friend, Jeffrey whom I’d met around the same time as I was getting to know John in the 1980s. Jeffrey had invited the dog and me to drop by for a night when we were passing through heading north. Jeffrey lives with his husband, Thomas and their Portuguese Water Dog, Mooka, in the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood of San Francisco. There was no way to program the GPS to avoid steep hills but I managed to find Jeffrey and Thomas without having to pull away from a stop sign at the top of one of San Francisco’s notoriously steep hills. (The van has a standard transmission.)
We spent the afternoon roaming the Haight-Ashbury neighbourhood and had a delicious lunch at a place specializing in crepes. Later they showed me a record store that was huge with an amazing collection of new and used CDs. There were also a lot of LPs which I was amused to note seemed to cost way more than the CDs. What a treat to browse such a large store now that they have become a rare thing.
Some of the more intricately decorated houses in the neighbourhood.
Sunday, March 31
The following morning when I was giving Eliot a walk, I discovered that I was going to get to experience a neighbourhood tradition:
Sure enough at 9 am, you could hear the shouts and squeals of neighbourhood kids running up and down the street looking for egg treats. A little later the adults gathered for coffee and baked goodies while the kids all ate too much chocolate.
A house elsewhere in the neighbourhood decorated with two foot high eggs
Visit to the local dog off-leash area with a pretty stunning view.
After lunch, Eliot and I headed north over the Golden Gate Bridge not having decided exactly what route we would take. Just as we started to cross the bridge, the rains came down and it was all eyes on the road with little view to enjoy through the fog and the pouring rain. We headed up the coast road and, since the weather had cleared, headed out to see the lighthouse at Point Reyes. No luck. As we approached the headland at the bottom of the cape, the fog and clouds and rain moved in. A disappointing end to a 45 minute drive over some very rough road.
We ended up spending the night camped at Cassini’s Family Campground just up river from Jenner, CA. We had a lovely spot on the Russian River. But it was unserviced (no water, no electricity) and I was a bit surprised when it turned out to be our most expensive California camping spot so far: $45.00 + tax. Yikes! They did have showers that didn’t require coins. Too bad most of our short stay was damp and rainy.
Camping on the Russian River
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