Ate lunch in a saloon in a small town at the end of a stage coach line.
Stopped to show my elementary school and childhood home.
Swam.
Visited with my brother, Deputy Dog, and his wife.
Stopped in a museum in an old timber town. The curator let my children sit at the wheel of an eighty year old fire truck, and then let them sit in an old stage coach and rocked it, so they could feel the leather strap suspension.
Visited my father-in-law's family.
Went to a county fair.
Saw Chinese Acrobats perform.
For the first time, ate funnel cake.
Sweltered in the heat.
Read in a hammock by a creek at the bottom of a wooded ravine.
Drank fine micro-brews: Arrogant Bastard, Skull Spliter, Eel River? Yes, please.
Drove the Redwood Highway.
Swam. Nothing is better after a long drive. Mr. Cranky concurs.
Strode the forest moon of Endor. No, really. We walked Chetham Grove where Lucas filmed the scout bike chase scene.
Avoided poison oak.
Chucked rocks in the Eel River.
Found red jasper with quartz crystals on top.
Walked the main street of a historic Victorian town.
Bought old fashioned candy from mercantile. I choose cat shaped licorice chews.
Purchased a small painting of a hundred year old bridge.
Collected quartz from a vein in a headland on the Pacific.
Watched a pair of Osprey hunt over a lagoon.
Ran the trails by the Big Tree in Redwoods National Park.
Saw orange turban lilies in bloom.
Saw Paul Bunyan and Babe the Bull Ox. Avoided talking to him via the speaker in his crotch.
Watched brown pelicans fish a river harbor as I ate ice cream on a boardwalk of a small fishing wharf.
Saw a brittle star among tide pools of dozen haystacks.
Spotted four inch fiddler crab in the crack of another.
Fought fifty mile an hour wind to climb Battle Rock.
Walk through the sea cave under the same rock.
Drove a thousand miles.
Listened to the Behemoth as we travelled.
Somebody along the way backed into the front of my car, and bent a crease in my license plate.
Another person let their door fly in the wind to ding mine.
