Matt and Leyla: See you soon!!!
Mame: Our prayers for a BC WIN!!!!
APRIL 11, 2008
Our drive to the Osentons in the San Francisco Bay Area was pretty uneventful! We drove straight north on Interstate 5 through the smog and freeway system of LA. At one point we counted 5 levels of freeway as we went under the first one! We started traveling through farmland with fruit trees and cattle ranches; there was one feed lot with thousands and thousands of cattle. For the next hundred miles we followed a massive cement aqueduct used to irrigate all of the fruit trees and agricultural fields. The route to Tiburon was pretty simple although we got talking and admiring the scenery and didn’t hear Marilyn tell us to take a turn so we ended up going through downtown San Francisco at rush hour and crossing the Golden Gate Bridge! It is a classy way to enter Marin County!
Bill and Francine were ready for us with a spaghetti and meatball dinner after which we started our “Hand and Foot” tournament-----men vs. women. On Tuesday we traveled to Rachel and Larry’s by the scenic route through rolling hills and beautiful farmland including an olive farm. We had a great dinner at the Gradys in Petaluma where we admired their newly renovated home and enjoyed visiting with their family and also Jason and Lisa. Francine and Bill entertained the Flynn cousins (Patti Flynn Belleci and Russ and Diane Flynn-Fox and Alan), for dinner with a meal fit for a king! The Flynn girls are doing well and we caught up on all of their family news. One day for lunch we drove into San Francisco for lunch at A16, a pizzeria with a brick oven…….Peter thought the pizza was excellent! In our spare time, we continued the “Hand and Foot” four day tournament. We had some late nights (midnight!) and the Men, in the end, beat the Women 6 games to 4 games. We’ve scheduled a rematch for the fall! Heather Grady, one of Bill and Francine’s granddaughters, is currently living with them and going to high school at Marin Catholic. We loved getting to know Heather better and we were impressed with what a fine young lady she is. Our stay in Tiburon was relaxing and enjoyable but all too short!
We left Tiburon early this morning for, perhaps, the longest drive of our trip. It’s 644 miles to Matt and Leyla’s in Portland OR. Again we drove on the interstate since we had done the coast route a couple of years ago. The scenery on Interstate 5 was green, grassy and hilly between the Coast Range and the Sierra Nevadas. Along the way we saw lots of olive trees and fruit trees which are grown on farms in the area. Another great day to drive! A hundred miles before we arrived there, we could see snow-covered, majestic Mt. Shasta (in the Cascades) looming in the distance while we were driving along with the temperature in the high 70s. The most unforgettable sight on the trip was Shasta Lake. It is a beautiful blue color but the water level was obviously very low as we’ve seen in other reservoirs. And, Marilyn did redeem herself when she successfully led us to a drive-thru Starbuck’s just off the interstate.
We crossed into Oregon a little after two o’clock with a little over 300 miles to go to Matt and Leyla’s. John Mooney will join us for our stay in Portland; he’s due to arrive at 7:30 tonight on United Airlines after changing his ticket from American because his flight was canceled. He returns to Tampa on Tuesday on Frontier; hopefully they’ll still be flying!!! That’s it for now………………more to follow when we leave Portland on the 16th to begin our trip back to the East Coast via the Oregon Trail.
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