Reflections of My Travel

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Today was a leisurely drive along the coast and through Redwood National Forest. The coastal redwoods are much taller than the sequoias (tallest redwood=379’; tallest sequoia=286’) but only about half as girthy. It was a very pretty drive. We considered doing some hiking into the Tall Trees grove but we were both feeling a little unwell so we figured a nice drive good enough. The coast was much prettier today than yesterday. Crescent City is by far the nicest beach we’ve seen. It’s a pretty little town. On a side note, we did some negotiating today with the potential home-buyer and we’ll see what happens. The important thing is that they love my house.

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We finally got to sleep in a little bit today so, of course, I was awake at 05:11. Figures. Luckily, I did at least have the luxury of being able to lay there and doze on and off a while. Once everyone else in the house was up, we gathered up and headed to the airport to get our rental car. I was amused to find that we were at the Snoopy Airport! I really am easily amused, you see. After transferring all of our stuff (you’d really think we moved out here) to the rental car, we followed Sylvia to the Korbel Winery for lunch followed by the champagne tour and tasting. The property was beautiful, the tour was educational, the champagne was bubbly. It was a great Saturday activity. I believe I’ve only really had champagne once before (wedding toast, of course) so it was interesting to learn about it and then taste some different varieties. I found it fascinating that, while I only like sweet wines, I liked the dryer champagnes the best. Is that common? Korbel is where we took our leave of Sylvia and the kids. We had contemplated going to the beach with them but we had a destination in mind for the day and wanted to have plenty of time to get there. It was a good call. We drove up the coast and it took us all day to get to not-quite-where-we-wanted-to. We finally stopped in Fortuna, just a little below Eureka which was our original destination. Turned out that there was something big going on in Eureka so all of the hotels were booked, even in Fortuna. We managed to find a room but, the Ritz it ain’t. However, the truly exciting part of today happened at approximately 19:30 (that’s 10:30 pm back home!). We got a call (luckily, they called in the mile or so that we had coverage while driving) from some people that had looked at the house this afternoon. They called (at 10:30 at night!) to make an offer on my cute little house!!! I am so very excited about this. Today is exactly three weeks since we put the sign in the yard. Their offer was low, of course, but we’re really not that far off. Tomorrow we’ll make the counter offer. I feel practically homeless!

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This afternoon we got to go to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. It’s a smaller park than Six Flags Over Georgia but that was fine by us since we had a shorter amount of time to spend there. It was actually a little reversed from ours in that ours has a ton of adult rides and a relatively small kiddie section. This one has a handful of adult rides and an enormous kiddie section. Plus, it has a mini Sea World (not nearly as extensive but an outdoor aquarium world nonetheless). Apparently this park started out as a Marine World kind of place before Six Flags bought it and built roller coasters. The big coaster was Medusa. Randal and I rode it thrice; twice on the front and once in the middle. The front, as always, is the only way to ride. We also rode Kong twice. It was a much jerkier and shorter ride, but much tighter and more thrilling. They were both fun, all in all. We then rode Cobra – The Largest Junior Coaster in Northern CA – twice with the kids. Having nothing much else on the adult side to do, we walked through the fishy stuff, saw a bunch of sharks, missed the walruses (must have been a union break, which is a shame because one of them is Jocko, star of 50 First Dates). Since the kids were getting tired and so were we, we decided to try to make it to the San Francisco bridge before sunset. Though we didn’t actually get to see the bridge, what we did see was absolutely beautiful. We caught it just as the coastal fog was rolling in. It covered the bridge but it was just so pretty. No regrets at all there. We finally headed to Sylvia’s mom’s house to crash for the night.