So, here’s an early “before” picture.  This was taken this past summer:

Below is a picture from November with a bunch of my junk moved/thrown in, but not set up or organized in any way.

I’ve been working on the room for a while now and here’s how it has turned out (as of January):

Every single thing you see in these pictures has a story.  It makes me happy to have my own space and  to be surrounded by all that inspire me so much.  Good memories, creativity, comfort and nostalgia immediately come to mind.  I’m excited to put this room to good use now that I’ve got it almost completely set up!  Santa (mom and dad) brought me a sewing machine for Christmas, so that’s first on my creativity agenda.  If I sew something epic (good or bad!) I’ll be sure to share it with you.

…and living room after.

Yeah.  That’s a rubber chicken in the middle of the living room.  It’s one of Dexter’s toys.  The big recliner chair to the left is where I like to relax, read, watch TV and surf the net.  In fact, I’m typing this post from that chair right now!  The chair that you see Charles sleeping in is a family heirloom that I got fixed up and reupholstered.  The leaded glass door came with the house.  Just beyond that door is a nice wide front porch…a great place to chill and watch the traffic go by.

Here’s another before and after view of the living room from the opposite side:

I’m really happy with our paint choice for the living room.  It is cozy and inviting.  I really like how it warmed up the fireplace too.  The Victorian rocking chair is another family heirloom I got fixed up.  The cool Ikea lamp in the corner is David’s.  I love the subtle light it casts at night.  Even though my mom is an avid quilter, the quilt you see on the back of the couch is actually one that I was awarded for a charitable donation I made.  It was to help Pete’s Greens CSA in Craftsbury, VT to rebuild after a horrific barn fire earlier this year.  The beautiful quilt is from Kelly Ann’s Quilting in Warrenton, VA.  The carpeting is the original that came with the house.  It was in good shape…even moreso after we got it cleaned.  The fireplace has nice gas logs, but we hope to install a wood stove some day.  Outside the door to the left is a screened in porch that overlooks the backyard.

In the above picture, the wicker chair in the foreground has been moved to accommodate for the Christmas tree shown in the below picture.  I have all the antique ornaments on the tree and of course, dads LGB train set, which David set up.  We love the whole shebang!  My friend Gwen said she could see the tree from the street when she drove by – YAY!

I know this last one is  not the clearest picture in the world, but I still like how it turned out.  Bonus points for you if you can find our Nanny cat!  Merry Christmas, y’all!

I really struggled with the color for the kitchen.  It boiled down to a pale yellow or a pale blue.  The countertops were a grayish blue, so I decided to go with the blue (called “Sigh” believe it or not!).  I wasn’t in love with it when we first got in the walls, but I like it moreso now that we’ve moved all the furniture in.  You can see it best in the picture of the dining area below.

But first, here’s a bunch of junk in the kitchen on move-in day!

…and here is the kitchen after most everything was cleaned up and put away.  I think it turned out well!

Below you can see our new fridge. We got a KILLER deal on a counter-depth GE Profile from the friendly folks at Britts in Lawrenceville.  We had initially bought a fridge from Sears.  BIG mistake.  As a result of that horrid experience, we will never buy anything from Sears (or any store affiliated with Sears) ever again.  Yeah, our experience with Sears was THAT bad.  I had pretty much given up finding good new appliances at a decent price until we found Britts.  Not only did we buy a refrigerator from them, but we bought an awesome GE Profile gas stove for a great deal too.  Customers for life, we are!

The kitchen was soon put to the ultimate test…as we hosted Thanksgiving at the new house!  All went very well, indeed.  David and I had plenty of room to do our thang and we made a fabulous feast to share with mom, dad, Mako, and brother Dave (all of whom also contributed to the spoils).

We certainly were thankful, not only for this wonderful food, but for everything…an amazing family, our health, our livelihoods and this cozy home to celebrate together.  Life is good, y’all!

One of the first things we needed to do was install a fence in the backyard to keep our doggies safe.  The property is on an one acre of land (not in a HOA).  The fence was our most expensive upgrade, but it was also a critical need.  It had to be done!  With the property as large as it was, we couldn’t afford a fancy fence.  I would have loved to have an iron fence, but we got a black chain link fence instead, and it looks fine!  Here are the before and after pics:

Next up will be some before and after pics of the inside!

 Next to our ferry boat, I saw this hybrid ferry  boat.  Aren’t the wind turbines on it neat?  The morning was a sunny one.  Our ferry pushed away from the dock and we were on our way.  As the sun rose, so did the temperature.  Amazingly, I didn’t need all those layers afterall!  Soon we were at Alcatraz island and we disembarked.  We were fortunate to be able to take advantage of, all things, a free garden tour of the grounds.  What?  GARDEN tour?  At Alcatraz?  Yes, indeed.  Gardens, we came to find out, were an integral part of the island and its history.  You can click on alcatrazgardens.org for more info.  

We learned some neat things on the garden tour.  We met one volunteer who’s specialty is composting and vermiculture.  He’s even won awards for that stuff!  Even more impressive is that he’s been able to get a compost pile to generate heat up to 170 degrees – wow!  (I am SUCH a green nerd!).  Another neat thing we learned was that, among all the beautiful flowers, the Welsh Rose was grown on Alcatraz.  It’s a good thing that it was, because in the meantime, the Welsh Rose went extinct in Wales, England.  Clippings of the rose were sent from Alcatraz back to Wales so that country could have its flower back!

The fireplace you see in the ruins is from the Warden’s house (actually a mansion).  The mansion was built on the highest point of the island.  I’m sure it was quite something before it burnt.  The views from there were beautiful.  When our garden tour was done, we went on the sheeple walking tour of the prison.  Here’s David in a jail cell!  The cells with the thick doors are solitary confinement – eeek!

Here’s the cell of one of the guys that may have actually successfully escaped from the prison.  

And this picture  is just for Janine, since she made several requests to see me behind bars.  With my sunglasses and walking tour headset on, I TOTALLY look like a sad Valley Girl that just got thrown in the can!  

After our tour, we got back on the ferry boat to get back to the wharf. As we left Alcatraz, I saw this sign.

When we got back, we grabbed lunch, then walked back to our suite where we dumped our stuff, and headed back out to explore.  We went to the Musee Mechanique.  What a wild place!  It had all sorts of old arcade games.  The admission was free, but where they make their money is when you play the games.  Yep, they alll worked!  There were games, music machines, claw machines, old risque movies and other cool oddities, as you can see from some of my pics below:

The trollop featured on this machine (above) is showin’ her but-tocks!!!             This is a steam-powered motorcycle.  It doesn’t really qualify as an arcade game, but it sure was neat to see!

After exploring Musee Mecanique, we walked down Pier 45.  Hey, is this Rosie or Wendy the Riveter?!?

You can see the walkway for the U.S.S. Pamanito submarine in the background.  It was our next stop, where we did an interesting walking tour inside the sub.  I don’t know how the Navy guys could live in such a confined place for several months at a time in such tight quarters.  Could you live here?

From here we walked down to see the turn-aroundfor the Cable Hyde cable car.  The line to get on was super-long, so we skipped that.  We went back to Pier 39 to see the Sea Lions.  On the way there we saw some neat things:

There weren’t a whole lot of sea lions at Pier 39, but they were fun to watch nonetheless.  We also watched the boats going by, even the Rocket Boat take off.

It was nice hanging out at the pier, just chillin and observing the activity around us.  After a while, we decided to have our last supper back at Boudin Bakery.  As we approached, I saw an awesome 2 person table on the small balcony upstairs at their restaurant.   I had a feeling, sort of a gravitational pull, to that spot.  We went inside and as we made our way upstairs, I spied another interesting bread animal.  This one was of a huge sourdough alligator eating a smaller bread alligator!

We walked up to the hostess and asked if we could sit outside.  Almost immediately, we were whisked away to that very balcony table that I saw from outside.  It was meant to be!  We had a great view and were able to chat and reflect on all of our awesome adventures.  After our tasty dinner, we walked back to our hotel and packed up for our flight back to Atlanta.  Out plane was taking off at 7am PT, so we had to get up at 4:30am.  Yeahhh, it was an early night for us!  As I finished packing, I was a little sad that our trip was coming to a close…but then I remembered the quote, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”  I’m bringing home with me, much more than the few clothes I was packing.  Indeed, I was bring home a whole new set of fabulous memories shared with my best friend, whom I love so dearly.  I wonder where our next trip will bring us?

In the last picture, the unicycle dude went for several miles, riding his unicycle the whole way down the beach and back.  I could tell he loved the attention he was getting.  Rightly so!

We drove on and we stopped for lunch at Half Moon Bay at a place called Joe’s.  It was diner-like and hit the spot.  Back on the road, we kept an eye out for Mavericks, a popular surfing spot.  It’s not supposed to be easy to find and with the weather as yucky as it was we just kept on truckin’.  Besides, we were close to San Francisco!  As soon as we got there, we made our way to the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was still foggy, darn it, but we got to see at least some of it.

When we were at the other side, we stopped at a vista to take a look at the bridge.  I happened to notice an interesting group of buildings a couple of miles away below us.  We decided to investigate.  It ended up being a place called Fort Baker.  We were able to walk around the battery where the monster-guns used to be housed.  It was a lot of fun to explore the area.  It makes you wonder what this place looked like when it was running full-time back in the day. After hiking around the area, we decided to go check out our hotel.  Some of you may remember my facebook post about trying to find good lodging at a decent price in San Francisco several months ago.  It’s nearly impossible!  I did a ton of research and decided to stay somewhere in the Fisherman’s Wharf area.  I ultimately decided to splurge on our hotel.  I reserved the penthouse suite at the Wharf Inn.  Why?  1) the price per square foot couldn’t be beat (the penthouse suite is 1000 sq feet)  2)  Free parking (most hotels charge at least $30/night!)  3)  We could walk to a ton of attractions or easily catch mass transit from this location  4) It had decent reviews on tripadvisor  5)  Last but certainly not least, it was our anniversary!  We checked in and took a look at our suite.  We were not disappointed.

The suite was lovely and we felt like a king and queen during our stay!  We quickly unloaded our stuff and we were checking out the view from our decks on either side.  We noticed a couple newish double-decker busses loading up tourists on the street below.  I quickly asked David if he wanted to do a tour of the city on the bus.  He said “YES!” so we grabbed our stuff and headed back out to see if we could catch that bus.  The outfit was called Open Top Sightseeing Bus Tours.  We got our tickets and, of course, headed to the top of the bus.  David wanted to sit all the way in the back.  I am SO glad we did this tour.  It was great!  Here are some of the cool things we saw along the way.

We had a knowledgeable (and adorable) tour guide, Katie.  She told us all sorts of neat stuff as we drove all over the city, including… another ride over the Golden Gate Bridge!  This time it was sunny and clear and perfect!   Here’s a picture of the entrance to China Town.  The Bay Bridge was really pretty too.  We even got to see the Occupy dingalings camping out in a park.  By the time the tour was over, the sun was setting and I was a frozen solid mass of Wendy.  It was awesome though and completely worth it.  We didn’t have much time in San Francisco and were happy to have a quick tour to see so many cool things.  The bus dropped us off right next to our hotel.  We went back to our suite so I could warm up a bit.  We then walked to the famous Boudin Bakery.  

It was a short stroll there and we got a great supper, which included their famous sourdough bread, to take back to the hotel.  We ate in our dining room while looking at the awesome nighttime views of both the city and the bay.

After dinner we reflected on our amazing our first day in San Francisco.  We settled into the living room and made hot chocolate, chatted and watched tv.  David took a smoke break and took a pic of me from outside

Very soon after this picture was taken, at 8:16 PM Pacific Time, we experienced an earthquake!  It was a 3.9, so not huge (thank goodness).  The whole suite shook…slightly at first, then hard at the end.  We sat in silence throughout, even though it didn’t last long.  After it ended, we responded differently.  David yelled out several expletives over and over.  I yelled out “COOOL!!!!!”.  I ran to look outside and it was business as usual.  People were walkin’ down the street as if nothing had happened.  Wow.  By the way, we learned on our tour that all the flat land in San Francisco is actually not land.  It is land FILL.  The ground is not stable where there is fill, so I think both that and being on the top floor of our building was why we felt the quake as strongly as we did.  …and do you want to see something ironic?  Check out this poster that I saw the next day:

How wild that an earthquake occurred on the same day as The Great California Shake Out!!!  Too funny!

Sooooo what’s on tap for tomorrow?  ALCATRAZ!

Here are some other neat things that we saw on our walk:

After our stroll around town, we packed up, checked out and headed down  the road. First thing we did was  drive right up to Morro Rock.  We walked around and and checked that out for a bit, then we began our journey north on PCH1. We intended to go to Hearst Castle next.  We pulled in and parked next to this FABULOUS Maserati.  I literally drooled when I saw it!  

We made our way to the visitor center and quickly dismissed visiting the castle.  It was far from the visitor center (requiring shuttle bus rides) and we realized that 1) it was going to be very expensive and 2) it was going to take most of the day to go on the tour.  We simply didn’t have the time.  So, we saw it from afar and headed back to the car.  This time, when I saw the Maserati, I noticed something peculiar, which I’ll share with you in the below video.

TOO CUTE!!!

We next drove down to Hearst’s Pier and walked the length of that.  When the busloads of school children arrived, our pier delight left…and so did we.

We continued the gorgeous drive north on PCH1.  Our next stop was not on the agenda, but was an awesome surprise.  An Elephant Seal Colony!

While there, another interesting thing we saw was a Bricklin!  An older couple was driving it and unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get much of a shot, but here’s what I did get.  Neat gull wing doors, huh?

As we continued on, we saw beautiful views of the coastline.  It was amazing, but our hunger and our need to pee was impeding our ability to enjoy the sites.  There really wasn’t anything out here, so there was no place to stop and relieve ourselves.  We finally came upon the Whale Watcher Cafe.  We literally ran to the restrooms.  Oh NO!  There was someone in the women’s room!  David, being the fabulous husband that he is, told me to go in the men’s room and he would be my lookout.  I LOVE this man!  We had lunch outside with a view of the endless ocean across the street.  

Time to hit the road again! Once again, we drove north on insanely beautiful PCH1. Here are some highlights of what we saw:

As we approached Monterey, which was our next stop for the evening, David pulled into a park where I was able to get this neat shot of him.  As you can see the sun is starting to get low.  We kept on truckin’ and as soon as we got into Monterey, we immediately did the famous 17-mile Drive at Pebble Beach.  It was a pretty drive through several golf courses, past fancy mansions and through more gorgeous coastline.  One stop was particularly cool.  It was right on the coast and all around where beautiful stacks of rocks.  Of course, I felt compelled to jump out of the car and create my own stack of rocks.  I wonder if it is still standing?  Anyway, we continued on.  We saw more sea lions and birds at Bird Rock.  I didn’t take any pictures of the golf courses.  David and I are not fans of golf anyway.  We were more interested in all the other scenery!  Speaking of which, Pebble Beach’s logo, since 1919, is of a lone Cypress tree.  THIS is that tree!  I have to wonder how it’s doing, because it looked like it was rigged up with wires/ropes holding it in place.  Poor tree.  The sun was going down quickly now and as you can see behind the lone cypress, a “marine layer” was beginning to roll in.  We next stopped at Pescadaro Point, where we watched the sun set through the clouds.

After 17-mile drive, we drove to our hotel, The Mariposa Inn.  It was a cozy place and we had a nice fireplace in our room!  We were so hungry, so we dumped our stuff and headed out to Cannery Row.  We parked in a parking garage for the Intercontinental Hotel.  The garage had special lifts where two cars could be parked, one on top of the other!  I didn’t snap a picture of it, darn it, but it’s exactly as you would imagine it to be.  Not sure if I trust that….

It was SO cold outside and we couldn’t find the restaurant we wanted to go to after walking all over Cannery Row.  We ended up going to The Fish Hopper.  I’m so glad we didn’t find the other place, because we had a DELICIOUS dinner here!  We got seated immediately on their heated porch next to a window with a view.  I was so happy with the view and extremely thankful for the HEAT!  We thawed out and ordered drinks.  I snapped a neat picture….more for artsy fartsy reasons rather than to show you something in particular.  I love this pic!  Soon, our seafood dinners arrived and we were not disappointed.  It was among the best that we had on our whole trip!  Expensive, but totally worth it.  Here’s David’s, which was Macadamia Nut Encrusted Halibut with some kind of sweet potato side…

Mine was a Thai Ginger fish dish with coconut prawns and some of the best asparagus I’ve ever eaten. YUM!

After our din din, we went back to the hotel and pretty much collapsed.  We took crappy showers, as the scald valve was either broken or not calibrated correctly.  Basically, the water ran between cool and warm and required constant adjustments.  UGH!  How can such a nice inn have such a messed up shower?!?  We planned on letting them know so future guests wouldn’t have the same poor experience.  Would the hotel care?  Stay tuned to find out…..

  We had a nice continental breakfast in the office (shown below).  

While there, I spied a unique game called “Dutch Blitz” on the top of a stack of board games available for guests to play.  I had “vonderful goot fun” just reading the description!

After a nice breakfast we began planning our route.  David decided to drive to Ventura, so we headed out, away from the pretty mountains and back to the flatlands of the San Joaquin Valley, but not before we came upon a beautiful lake called Kaweah.  We learned that it is used for flood control by the US Army Corps of Engineers.  We made a brief stop, where I saw a real live road runner birdie!  I didn’t get a picture though, darn it.  We continued our journey and passed by lots of fields of artichokes, brussel sprouts and strawberries.  After a while, the fields disappeared and the land was just dry and desert-like.  We found ourselves on something called the “Petroleum Highway” aka Highway 33.  Apparently bumper stickers have been made saying, “Pray for me.  I drive Hwy 33.”  It is an oddity for sure.  It’s oil rigs, power and pipelines for miles and miles, for as far as the eye can see.  It was fascinating, strange, ugly yet oddly admirable all at the same time.  To give you an idea of what I’m talkin’ about check out this video clip:

We were getting a little low on fuel…for both the car and us, but there really wasn’t anywhere to stop, and I had to pee!  We finally came upon a place called Blackwell’s Corner.  Yay!  We gassed up and went inside to potty.   Get this, inside the front door there was a blower machine that blew a strong gust of air on each person that entered.  There were a lot of flies around (not sure why) so I can only assume it was to help keep flies out of the facility.  Sooo weird!  Once inside, we found ourselves in a large building that housed a convenience store, restrooms (yes!), a souvenir store and even a diner!  All this out in the middle of NOWHERE.  We pottied and when I came out from the restroom, David told me that this place was the last place that James Dean stopped at before his horrific car accident that ended his life on September 30th, 1955.  Interesting!  We never intended to see or visit here, but I’m glad we did. 

We decided to grab a bite to eat at the diner. Once again, it was odd.   There was a mannequin of James Dean sitting at the counter.  I sat a couple of seats down from him while we waited for our food, which took FOREVER to arrive. When it finally came, we ate and ran. BTW – the food was really good.  The looooong wait really sucked though.  That’s all I’m gonna say about that.

We continued our drive, and made destination adjustments as we went.  Ventura got nixed.  We took 33 all the way to Pacific Highway 1.  Finally, we made it back to the coast!!!  We drove up PCH1 from Santa Barbara to Morrow Bay, where we were going to stay for the night.  The drive up the coast was ok, but not very photogenic…yet.  Morrow Bay was really pretty though!  We stayed at Ascot Suites and once again, we got a complimentary upgrade on our room!  It had a sitting area, huge walk in closet, king bed and a balcony.  We had a great view of Morrow Rock!  Ascot Suites also has a complimentary wine pour from 5:30-6:30.   I took full advantage of this, as you can see.

Morrow Bay is only about 20 minutes from where Templeton, CA.  This is where our friend Austin Lawless lives (or lived, at that point in time).  Austin is a drifting friend of ours.  …not that he drifts like a hobo (although he IS back in Georgia now), but drifts cars, and does so quite well.  Anyway, David was able to arrange dinner together with him – yay!  Austin drove to Morrow Bay and we three walked to Dorn’s Breakers Cafe for a fabulous dinner together.  I learned that Austin grew up in much the same (crazy) way David did.  I really enjoyed hearing all their stories of old, and new too.
Great times!  Afterward, we ambled back to the hotel, where both guys had to (of COURSE) check out the engine on the Mercedes.

After Austin headed back home, I took David up to the “secret” rooftop deck of the hotel.  It was neat up there with some cool views, but it was super cold, so we didn’t hang out long.  We went back to our room and settled in the for the night.  I peeked out our windows and saw The Rock Espresso Bar across the street.  It was closed for the day, but a guy inside was still workin’ away into the wee hours.  I admired that a lot.  I closed the curtains, and my eyes for the night.  Slumber beckoned….

Next stop was the General Grant grove of giant sequoias.  Here’s David checking out the enormity of these amazing trees.

…and here’s me touching the bark on a big ‘ol sequoia:

I’d show you a pic of the Grant Tree, but I can’t get the whole thing in one shot!  It was big, but not the biggest tree we were going to see on this trip.  That was General Sherman tree…more to come on that.

We hiked among the beautiful trees on this glorious morning, but I had full intentions of driving the entire Kings Canyon Scenic Byway.  It is Highway 180…a road that travels deep into the park and has amazing vistas.  It doesn’t go anywhere in particular.  It just comes to an end, and you turn around and come back.  It’s often closed for winter in late fall, so we were lucky in being able to go.  I planned for an hour to the end and an hour to come back.  Ha ha ha!  I didn’t think we would stop so much to see stuff!  We did….  Here are snippets of some of the cool things we saw.

Soon after we walked back to the car after seeing that last waterfall, David told me in a very stern voice, “Get in the car.  NOW.”  I didn’t understand what the problem was, and he had to repeat himself, even more urgently.  I did as I was told and soon found out why.  We had an unexpected visitor nearby.  We encountered the first of SEVEN bears that we would see this day!  This one was the only one that we saw that had been tagged.  Also interesting was that s/he had a whitish muzzle and a white fur on his/her chest.

Very close to this bear was a tourist who stood completely motionless.  The bear walked around and began approaching him, but then turned back toward the woods.  The tourist was hugely relieved!!!

Soon after this, we reached the end of the road and began making our way back from whence we came.  It was already late in the day and we still had to get to the General Sherman tree, which was a good bit further south in the park with no direct route from where we were.  Of course, David enjoyed having a reason to drive at a rapid clip on a curvy mountain road, so we made better time than I thought we would.  :-)

We made it to the General Sherman Tree and were surprised to find a lot of people there, especially so late in the year.  Makes sense though since this giant sequoia is the largest living tree (by volume) on earth!  The branches were just like trees themselves growing out the sides of it.

It’s estimated that General Sherman is around 2700 years old.  Can you imagine being 2700 years old?!?  I wonder what stories that tree can tell….

Our next stop was Moro Rock.  (This is a different Moro Rock than the one that we were going to see at Morro Bay back on the west coast).  I read that it was a hike of 400 steps to the top, but it was worth it to see the 365 degree views.  I wasn’t sure if David was up for such an adventure, but when he saw it, he was TOTALLY into it!

So, yeah, as you can see it was a lot of steps!  In the below video you can hear me say (breathlessly) “We’re old and fat!!!”  lol lol lol!  I’m glad we made it to the top.  The views were awesome!

After a brief respite at the top, we clambered back down to the car.

Next, can you make out the guy standing amongst the trees in this picture?  You may have to click on the picture to find him.  Do me a favor and click on the picture anyway.  It really shows how gigantic these trees are!

We saw our 6th bear of the day next.  We were still enthralled with them even though siting them was becoming a common occurence!

After this, we then drove through a fallen sequoia that had been hollowed out to form a short Tunnel.

That burning smell we mentioned became more pungent as we drove on.  Forest fires are a common occurrence, many of which are purposely set and controlled since they (the fires) are a part of the natural growth cycle of the sequoias.  We came upon the final stages of one such fire, we think.  I did find it odd that this particular tree was burning from the top though!

The sun was starting to set and we really needed to get a move-on to get down to Three Rivers, where we planned to stop for the night.  As we began driving down the mountain, the road was once again, very curvy with steep cliffs off to the sides on the switchbacks.  Then, we came to a temporary red light.  Yep, in the middle of nowhere.  I looked through all my guides and found that roadwork was being done during the day and that the road was a single lane ahead of us for the next several weeks.  The wait was going to be 20 minutes!  So we sat and waited, as other cars bunched up behind us…some people getting out of their cars and walking down to see what the hold-up was.  We finally got the green light to go and David was off like a rocket down this insane, single-lane road (no one was working on it now, thank goodness).  We made it back to two lanes and just as twilight approached, we got a glimpse of our 7th and last bear of the day.

We finally made it to our hotel, The Sierra Lodge in Three Rivers.  It’s a funky, eclectic hotel that was built in the ’50s.  I wasn’t able to take pictures of it this night when we checked in since it was dark, so you’ll have to wait for my next post to see what it looked like.

We were starving (we never did have lunch, just a couple snacks since there was no place to eat where we were) and exhausted, so we went to find some grub.   We found a great little Mexican place (Serrano’s) and had a wonderful dinner out on their deck.  Lucky again ’cause for this little town, the food ROCKED.  Maybe we were just really hungry.  ;-)

I as so thankful we were able to do alll the stuff we hoped to do today.  After all that, I finally slept well (in a big ‘ol comfy king bed).  AHHHhhhhhh!  Tomorrow, we head back to the west coast.  What a long, strange trip THAT was!