Hi everyone, I hope you can stand another post about our trip in the sun. Alan and I just returned from road trip and now are here again in Lakewood. It was a spectacular trip of ocean hugging roads and hiking in the forest.

We started North from Lakewood (where Martha is, near Long Beach) on Sunday and went as far as San Simeon which is south of Carmel.  Monday morning our first stop was to see the enormous Elephant Seals on the beach head just beyond San Simeon. It is mating and calving season so there were hundreds of gigantic seals on the beach. The males grow to almost 3 tons and the females are only half of that size. There were lots of babies as well.     Ugly, loud and pretty aggressive they were amazing to watch.

We carried on up the coast and the views and beaches were spectacular. I keep using that word but not sure what else to use frankly. The color of the water was so exquisitely turquoise and the surf wherever we stopped was up at its best. Apparently now is the time of what they call “king tides” which we are assuming are our highest tides.

The coastal road is a bit on the death defying side as it hugs the coast – which is what we wanted – but it curves and curls in such a way that the speed limits run from 25-40 miles per hour for over 100 miles. What an afternoon.  There are no places where you can pass but every 10 miles or so there was a turnout where anyone who wants to go even slower must pull off and let the cars go by. They announce that if there are 5 cars behind you, you need to go to the next turnaround and pull off to let people by.

We then spent two fun days in San Francisco. We stayed in a hotel within a 15 minute walking distance of Fisherman,s Wharf so we spent lots of time crawling over historic ships and through the fishing vessel parts. We ate some great sea food. Took the double decker bus tour throughout the city and rode the trolley  and had our hearts stop on the way up and on the way down as well.

When we went out of the city we headed again to the sea coast and then to Muir Woods where there is a spectacular Redwood stand. It is hard to capture fully in a single snapshot as they are so magnificently tall. And again these are not the Sequoia’s that are now on our bucket list, and are farther North. One section is called Cathedral Grove and as you enter they ask you to walk and speak quietly to enhance the spiritual experience. Very lovely.

Finally we hit wine country and that was another epic couple of days. We drove through beautiful agricultural country, farm after farm – fruit trees, kiwis, pistachios and on and on . Then the next day we took a drive through the beautiful vineyards of which there are so many that they can,t possibly be counted. We ended the afternoon with a wine tasting at the Buena Vista vineyard which is the first vineyard in California. It was a great experience. The sommelier was from Romania and very knowledgeable about the wine business. Because we had spent the day in the vineyards we had lots of questions.

The biggest bonus of our trip was that we spent the final two nights with Lal and Ned Mundell.  It was wonderful to see them mid way between Tad seasons and not only in Tadoussac. Many of you know that Ned had a very catastrophic fall in early October. While his recovery has been slow we can tell you that he is well on his way to full recovery and has been working again. It was wonderful to see him so well and to spend time with them both at their beautiful farm.

And so we arrived back in Lakewood on Friday and Saturday night all of us headed to Oceanside south of here by 1 1/2 hours. Our nephew Ian lives there and guess what? Granny Anne was down caring for the kids for a week so we got together with her and the two girls, Hannah and Abigail. It was great fun to see them as well.

Now we are getting ready for our trek home. I see by the weather map that there is big snow expected on the eastern seaboard over the next couple of days. We hope that there will still be lots of snow when we get to Tad but would just as gladly not be driving in it when we spend our first few days back. We go to Peterborough for a Christmas celebration with my family on the 31st, then to Renfrew to fetch our pooches – I hope they actually want to come home. If I understand it correctly they have forgotten we even existed and are now sleeping on Susie’s couch!! February 2nd – home in Tadoussac So next post will be full of snow again.