Guest blogger coming up, maybe

Well first, the guest blogger thing. My nephew the artist Nathan is heading for New Zealand in the middle of January, and I invite him to blog his trip here on my travel blog. So watch for that.

Me? I haven't been traveling much. We made the move and we settled in. We had the anniversary trip, previous post, and if you want to know the truth we actually had a fight as we were leaving Santa Barbara and hardly spoke all day on the train ride home. After 50 years! Yes, fights still happen. But that evened out, as it always does. (Of course I was right, by the way.) That's the nice thing about 50 years. You've put in so much time, you put these things in perspective.

Well we have been to Sacramento and Petaluma, the week before Thanksgiving. Even though I swore I would not travel I-5 again, we took the car. Had a good time with dear friends in Sacramento and dear kids/grandkids in Petaluma. Traffic jam on the way home on the 210 through Pasadena and east that we could have done without. Then Thanksgiving the next weekend in Palm Desert with sister-in-law and four nieces. And that's about it for the road, except to look for an independent bookstore which required going all the way to Del Mar.

Have I mentioned that Southern California is everything I remembered from my kid days? We had a spate of serious rain (some folks even got flooded) but mostly it's been lovely. It's my climate and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Okay, next trip is the Sacramento/Petaluma thing again, NOT driving, and I will report on what it is like to take the Amtrak bus to Bakersfield from LA and then up the Valley on the San Joaquin. I go first and spend two nights with Judy (sometimes known as Eeyore) in Sacramento and then catch another train and a thru-way bus to Petaluma, and meet up with the old guy there. We'll be spending a week at sesshin, which is a Buddhist retreat, in Santa Rosa and then another weekend with the kids before training home.

This is probably boring in the planning stages, but maybe there will be adventures to report. And we are talking about going back to Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) for three weeks in May, when the off-season hits. So you'll hear more about that. Frequent flyer miles and off-season rates, a very reasonable way to go. Now that we live in Lotus Land we don't have to escape in the winter. Thank you very much.

50 Years and Counting

In October of 1960 we got married in Altadena on a Friday afternoon, in the back yard of the house where I grew up, and then went out for Chinese food, just the two of us newlyweds. I remember we kept holding our left hands up side by side, admiring our new matching gold bands, so I suppose anyone observing us could have guessed what we'd been up to that day. The plan was to drive to Santa Barbara for Friday and Saturday nights, because Mike had to be back at work on Monday. It's about 100 miles. But we got a late start and stayed in Ventura or Oxnard the first night. That left us with a one-night honeymoon at the beach. I remember we ate fried scallops and chips from a beachside fast food place, sitting at a picnic table, and I have never managed to replicate that experience. I suspect -- no, by now I'm sure -- that it wasn't just the scallops.

Last week we commemorated the 50th anniversary of that weekend by returning to Santa Barbara, this time for three nights and no work to come back to. It was actually next door to the place we stayed in 1960! This one was nicer though, and a great internet special price that made it cheaper too. We're not that sentimental.

The fast food fish place is gone. But there are so many wonderful restaurants, and we took advantage. There's a walk around the yacht harbor to the end of the breakwater, and lots of the recovering population of brown pelicans are in view. The wharf is another nice water walk. And the famous El Paseo mall, smack in the middle of downtown, is beautifully laid out with elegant architectural deail. Santa Barbara is unusual in having such a complete downtown mall, with Nordstrom's and Macy's as anchors. There's a 25¢ shuttle from the foot of the wharf that traverses State Street every 15 minutes or so.

This is only one of the blooming things we saw as we walked the blocks inland from the beach, on our way to and from downtown. Maybe it's the most exotic one, but there are huge hibiscus everywhere, and hundreds of other blooming bushes, and ancient trees with thick trunks, just practically a jungle.

We didn't drive this time. A local bus stops just outside our driveway, and it delivered us to the Escondido Transit Center. From there a light rail line goes to Oceanside. From Oceanside we caught Amtrak's Surfliner to Santa Barbara, and ended up in walking distance from our hotel. It excites my imagination that I can roll my bag out my front door and go anywhere in the world, because there's a frequent shuttle from the train at Union Station in L.A. directly to LAX. It makes me feel viscerally connected.

What happens in reality is a little bit of a drag though -- the romance of the rails isn't so romantic on these commuter runs. It's important to have a book. The 15 miles or so to the coast from Escondido takes an hour on the light rail, because there are 15 stops. The Surfliner train is packed, and in order to get seats together we had to sit backwards, because single individuals take up at least half of the forward facing seats. You have to try not to be irritated by that. We spent the whole way from Oceanside to Los Angeles watching for a chance to get seats together where we could face forward, and at about Anaheim we succeeded. Guess what. In LA the train changes direction on the way out of the station and goes in reverse. On the way home again we just sat backwards from Santa Barbara to L.A., because we knew the game.

But here's the thing. You don't have to drive. You don't have to drive through Los Angeles! And the travel times are very close -- 5-6 hours. The round trip price is good, especially if you are old enough to be celebrating your 50th anniversary.

Too much mall travel

The days have been filled with moving in and getting settled chores, and the only traveling we've done once we made the third and final drive down I-5 from Bellingham WA to Escondido CA is shopping. We've done serious Ikea shopping, and hardware stores, and have spent way too much time in parking lots. I do have a few favorite stores, and my sister-in-law who lives here has introduced me to a cool consignment place called Debra's, where I found the Mexican pottery cat who now presides over our living room.

But yesterday we went on a non-retail outing (although we ended up at the mall, again, looking for lunch and chairs). Kit Carson Park in the south part of Escondido is one of those sprawling regional parks, almost 300 acres, with trails and ponds and picnic tables. And all those trees that brought me back here -- eucalyptus and pepper trees, sycamore and live oak. Those silhouettes, and those smells.

We walked a bit, around the aboretum (not much developed), and hidden away in the middle is Queen Califia's Magic Circle. I don't yet have the words for this. Overwhelming. Here's an image hint, but there's so much more. Like they say, you kinda have to be there. You need to walk through and look closely, see the details, and touch stuff. I think I will go back soon and sit on one of the curvy mosaic benches in the shade and try to get my words around it. If you are in Escondido, maybe to see the Wild Animal Park, it's right on your way from San Diego.

Well it's March. The last post was May. Sorry about that. In the meantime we canceled our winter trip to Arizona for a medical difficulty, decided we should think about where we would want to be "stuck" if something more serious came along, like being way too old to travel, and shopped for a new place in Escondido, CA, the place that feels the most like home to me even though I never actually lived there (but my mom was born there), and are in the process of relocating. More later. I never thought I'd have these great tile floors. Yep, they're mine.

Home is a destination

We just had the big Ski to Sea relay race weekend in Bellingham. The race is on the Sunday of every Memorial Day weekend, pretty much since 1911. The total race is about 90 miles, with seven legs. It starts on Mount Baker, with downhill and cross country skiing, followed by running, a road bike and a mountain bike course, canoeing on the Nooksack River, and kayaking from the mouth of the river to the beach here in Fairhaven. 

And then Fairhaven has a big party. The Village Green has booths from non-profits, and music all day on the stage. The place was packed with people coming and going, sitting on the grass for the music or getting something tasty to eat from one of the local restaurant food booths there, or from the Colophon Cafe which has outdoor seating on the Green. The statue of Fairhaven's founder,  Dirty Dan Harris, is always popular. Some of the town center streets are blocked off so that vendors can put up booths. Lots of food choices. I had jerk chicken skewers with mango salsa and salad, and Mike had a falafel sandwich. Other booths have things to buy. Most of it is frankly junk, but some nice things. I bought a hat. There are pony rides and one of those inflated bouncing places for the kids. 

There's more music, with local bands playing all day on the stage next to the beer garden. We got a desperation e-mail on Saturday night asking if we could take a shift selling beer tickets, which we did. I wish I'd taken a picture of the beer garden--which is no way a garden. Basically it's a big section of parking lot surrounded by a high chain link fence, with security guards at the entrance to check IDs, and some tents for shade. But it is way popular, full of people wall to wall. This is a college town, which probably accounts for the fact that so many people find this an entertaining place to be. Really, Fairhaven has a couple of good pubs, and plenty of restaurants where you can get a draft beer. I guess standing on asphalt drinking shoulder to shoulder with a thousand or so people has something more to offer. Anyway, it's a cheerful crowd, and we sold tickets for two hours non-stop before someone relieved us and we got our reward, a free beer.

Down at Boulevard Park, a mile away along a waterfront path, there's a huge car show every year. This picture is from a few years ago, because we forgot our camera this time.

We had perfect weather. Almost 70 degrees. There were a reported 35,000 people in town. That's for an area about 6 square blocks. And we live right smack in the middle of it. When I was a kid I always wanted to live somewhere that people wanted to come. So this is really fun.

Winter Escape Part 2

My previous post about this trip ended as we boarded our ferry to Bequia from St. Vincent on December 16. We got to Bequia at sunset, an hour or so later. While Mike and Noel were collecting our bags, I shot a picture from Noel's taxi on the ferry dock. It was less than a week short of the Winter Solstice. When we were ready to leave Bequia in March, we were very close to the Equinox, and I took another photo from the same spot. Even though the length of the days are closer to equal at this latitude, you can still see that sunset is noticeably farther north at the Equinox.

We were in the Caribbean for a full three months plus a few days, the longest
we've traveled. And instead of island hopping through the Grenadines, between St. Vincent and Grenada, we rented an apartment on Bequia for three months. It's a nice roomy and spotless place, one of two apartments upstairs from Lawson Sargeant's Maritime Museum. Lawson and his wife Mercy built the museum and apartments on the property where Mercy grew up, a block off the harbor-side road at the edge of the villages of Hamilton and Ocar. (Or O'car. Or Ocar Reform. I'm still not sure.) It's not a resort area, but there are a sprinkling of visitor accommodations in the neighborhood. It's about a ten minute walk from downtown Port Elizabeth, but we had a market and bakery practically next door, and close by restaurants too. The market is the pink building, and our apartment is in the white building with the green roof in the background. The harbor is just across the street, viewed from our balcony.

Commando Traveling

I was just in California for a long weekend. The good news is that my flights (two down and two back) were all on time. More good news is that I got to see everyone on my list and had good visits, and my grandkids are still handsome and smart, and the weather was balmy, unlike here at home. There isn't any bad news, except for the overeating.

This was a solo trip, because for Mike it would have been the trip from hell. Lucky for him he was on call for jury duty so he couldn't go along anyway. I flew into Sacramento on Wednesday afternoon and spent two nights with old friends from the years we lived there. On Thursday I hung out with my best buddy from grad school. We couldn't visit as much as we'd hoped, because we spent all afternoon in court (long story). But afterwards we had a delicious al fresco dinner at the Tower restaurant, the place we usually go when I'm in town.

On Friday I rented a car just up the street from my hosts' house, and drove to Novato to see a couple Mike and I met in the Caribbean this winter. They're in an RV park there for three weeks. Then on up the road a few miles to Petaluma to spend the weekend with my son and his family. On Saturday, another Caribbean acquaintance, who lives in Sebastopol, came to visit me there, and we shared our pictures from Bequia. And on Sunday we had a Mother's Day picnic. The photo is of the park where we walked, and then had a meal under a big spreading oak.

And on Monday morning I drove back to Sacramento and had brunch with yet another old friend, before heading back to the airport and home. That adds up to visits with six parties in five days. Might be a record for me. And as I describe it, I can see that it might sound frenetic. Funny thing is, if I'm on my own it's really quite relaxing. I just do the next thing and the next thing. I've finally learned not to make a trip like this with a traveling companion. I used to try. Boy was that stupid! Why in the world would anyone want to be dragged along when I'm in this mode?