Road Trip, Day One
We're taking a small road trip, partly for its own sake, and partly to gague whether more ambitious road trips are practical for us as a family at this stage. Day one went well.
We started by driving to Berkeley. We had planned to have lunch at an Ethiopian place near campus, but it was closed, so we ended up having yummy Peruvian instead. Rebecca loved a lot of the things, including ceviche (she's quite fond of sushi, so this is not a surprise). Then Harold and the girls strolled up Telegraph Avenue to Sproul Plaza, shopping along the way -- they bought gumdrops, a hat for Harold, and books for the girls. And while they did that, I got to shop at Lacis for an hour! I bought vintage trims, hand-dyed silk ribbons, silk organza ribbon, vintage silk ribbons, vintage and modern trims, pearl cotton thread, a half yard of gorgeaous silk fabric thats purplish-blue or blueish-green depending on how the light hits it, and five kinds of silk thread in seven colors total! Woohoo! I'm getting interested in crazy quilting, and I knew for sure that Lacis would have more intriguing materials for it than Joann's.
Then we drove up to Calistoga and took the girls to a little Petrified Forest attraction there. It's one of these little for-profit places you can find when you travel, like a roadside museum or something. They have a nice little 0.4 mi loop hike through trees with nice signage. There are some great big petrified trees there -- coast redwoods. One is estimated to have been 2000 years old when it was knocked down by a volcanic eruption 3.4 million years ago! The petrified trees are gray and slightly sparkly, not deep red and shiny the way I think some of the Arizona petrified trees are. We saw a little brown lizard and a cute little black snake with yellow stripes.
Then we had an ok dinner and retired to our motel in Santa Rosa. The girls are in their room next door (connecting door) making lots of noise. I'm sure they'll sleep eventually.
It was a nice day, all in all.
Tomorrow: onward to Sacramento!