After a fun week visiting with Chris and Lorna and their family for Christmas, and a few more days with David, we had a quiet News Year's Eve - then a big day at the temple (our annul Stake Temple Day) on January 1st. By the time all that was over, Mom and I were ready for a few days to ourselves. So she went her way and I went mine... just kidding.
We took a trip to Fort Bragg (together), where we hadn't been since the Christmas vacation debacle of 2003. You all well remember the brief visit (in the pouring rain) to Wages Creek., but this time was quite different. We had absolutely gorgeous weather the whole three days. (There are some advantages to being in the middle of a drought.) Melody even got to see some whales breach as she stood on the shore watching through the binoculars.
Every day was split between walking along the shores around Fort Bragg, and walking around the second-hand stores in town. (Sorry, no pictures of those.) I really like the photo on the left. Makes me think of Hitchcock's "The Birds." I really like the one on the right because of who's in it. We didn't find a whole lot of stuff worth buying in the thrift shops, but we had fun and the time spent on the beaches was well worth it.
On one of our forays out of town we visited the Cabrillo Point Light House, which is still operational. The picture below the lighthouse is actually from the lighthouse keeper's home. It was pretty interesting how they had restored everything.
The hotel we stayed at gave us a free round of miniature golf at the place next door. It really wasn't as chilly as Melody looks, but this was the end of the game and the sun was going down. She did really well, beating me on several holes. But I did get a hole in one (the 8th). We had a blast!
We took Nate's approach to traveling (i.e. find as many good places to eat as you can, and hit them all) and were never disappointed. Cafe's, deli's, a home-style restaurant, the hand-made ice cream shop, and the place below that had a train in the center of it. No kidding. It was our last day there and we shared a bowl of clam chowder and a fried ham and Australian Cheddar cheese sandwich on grilled sourdough. Wow!
Believe it or not, some of the best food we ate was from the local Harvest supermarket. They had a great salad and soup bar with daily themed offerings of other food (Indian, Fish, Italian, etc.) The soups were fantastic. The fish was great. The salads were wonderful. And we supplemented each meal with bread and treats from the store's bakery. Okay, maybe the food tasted better because we were hungry, and at the end of the day we didn't feel like being out any more. So we'd pick out our meals and take them home to eat in our room `while we watched movies on TV. All this, and being together, was like heaven.
The sunset from our first night there. We really ought to do this kind of thing more often.
