California - September 2014
For our Fall trip this year we decided to combine a few things we'd been wanting to do for a while. My sister and niece live in Santa Rosa and it had been a while since we had seen them. So this trip combined a family visit, a business trip to Berkeley to meet a customer followed by a trip to Camp Lair, a visit to Yosemite National Park, a trip to the coast around Monterey and points north and finally a day trip into San Francisco.
Santa Rosa - We stayed in a place up in the hills, a little northeast of the city. It was different than what we usually pick--somewhat rustic and peaceful but with reasonable amenities. The owner's dog Din was the only visitor we had during the three day stay. We had dinner with Pat, Leslie and Kevin all three nights. The family shots came from the restaurant on the last night. Too bad we left the camera at home when we were at Leslie and Kevin's place.
Berkeley, Pinecrest and Lair of the Golden Bear - I've been doing systems development for the Cal Alumni Association for about 5 years but have never met anyone from their organization in person. So on this trip we stopped at Berkeley where Sharon and I met Cathy Connelly (my primary contact) and Julie de Bourbon in the Lair office. We then traveled up to Pinecrest, stayed overnight at the Pinecrest Chalet and had a tour of the Lair of the Golden Bear camps, where we met Mike Yaley, Daniel Prelip and Ken Hutz. A few of the pictures turned out a little on the dark side because there are so many tall trees, so I have touched them up a little to recover the images. I've tried to capture the feel of the camps, even though they were not in use (a special reunion event was starting just after we left).
Groveland - We stayed outside Yosemite in a cute little town called Groveland. We played golf at Pine Mountain Lake and met up with an old GUIDE friend, Darlene Brown. It was a good location to use for access to Yosemite.
Yosemite - Yosemite is quite striking. Unfortunately we traveled in September when the water falls are non-existent and there were fires in the area, which made for less than ideal viewing conditions. We are told that in spring it is a lot more scenic. Nevertheless, we found it quite compelling. Were we a little younger we might have been able to take advantage of the trails and hiking. We took the valley floor tour which gave us a good overview of the many formations. Unfortunately the guide was a dufus who spent more time offering his philosophy of life (a little hard to take from him) rather than giving us interesting information on Yosemite. I'm sure with a decent guide it would have been a better tour.
Hetch Hetchy - Hetch Hetchy is a major water reservoir that feeds California's water supply and is part of the Yosemite National Park. In spite of the drought there was still a lot of water in the reservoir and we found it quite scenic and interesting.
Monterey - After visiting the Yosemite area we drove down to Santa Cruz, which is not terribly scenic, so we didn't take any pictures there. The high point was Monterey where we walked along the ocean and enjoyed some more beauty of nature. Many of the waves coming in reminded us of Hawaii, but without the lava rocks. We met up with Ron and Pat Higgin (also old GUIDE friends) for some reminiscing and dinner, again without the camera.
Pacifica - Our last stop was a small town called Pacifica which is just south of San Francisco. It was conveniently located, not that far from the airport and accessible via Bart to downtown San Francisco. We dropped in on "Fog Fest" which is a big street fair in Pacifica and played golf nearby.
San Francisco - On Saturday we took the Bart in to the Embarcadero stop and then walked along the Embarcadero to the Hyde Street Cable Car terminus (only to find out that the Hyde cable car wasn't running). We figure that we walked nearly 6 miles which is a new record for Sharon. We took a cab back to the Bart stop.
