California Part 2

The Fairfield-Berkeley transition went quite smoothly. After breakfast, we packed the car, looked for a few local caches with no luck, and headed south. We did a tour of the Jelly Belly factory - which was quite fun, and picked up a few souvenirs for the kids. (Actually that might have been Monday). We headed into Berkeley to find our new hotel, drop our luggage off, and look for a few caches in the Midpenisula Open Space area. I got a cache that I needed for the Cachiversary challenge (placed on the day I started geocaching, 6/8/2013), so that was cool. In NY, while geocaching, I mostly have to worry about whether it's hunting season or not. Here, it's rattlesnakes, poison oak and mountain lions. Mountain lions?!

We ended up doing our most challenging hike, being a 3 terrain that was about a mile total length. The challenge was in how steep the trail was. All downhill to the cache, all uphill to the car. Hard work, but I'm proud to say, John handled it like a walk to the corner store, even though it was much harder for me.

When we finally decided about 2PM to head to SFO I was pleasantly surprised at how easy that trip was. No major traffic jams. Got the car returned with no major incidents (a minor one, I discovered on the AirTrain out of the garage that I had left my new hat in the car and we had to go back - wasted about 45 minutes that we could have been investigating SF - or not). Got our BART tickets, and with the help of a very nice lady found our way to Downtown Berkeley. More later.

California (Sat-Mon)

John and I are out in California for a combination vacation/business trip. We left Saturday, 10/5, and will be here until next Saturday. Reluctant fliers, we were pretty low key in the weeks leading up to the trip, but surprisingly packed early and ready to go. Saturday morning I decided to go for an "emergency" manicure and in honor of the trip picked "Lost on Lombard" from the O.P.I. San Francisco collection. It's a deep burgundy, a color family (red/pink) that I never wear. Nice, though.

The flight from BUF to ORD was in a small plane. I had diarrhea the whole trip. But by the time we boarded the plane in Chicago, my stomach had settled down and this flight went off without remark. It was a bigger plane, 6 seats across instead of 4, and it turned out that the 3rd seat in our row was empty, so we had some extra space. We got into SFO about 5:30, and by the time we retrieved our luggage, got a rental car (that was a mess) and got to our hotel, an hour north of San Francisco it was 8:00 (think 11PM, EST) and we still hadn't eaten anything. We drove through the nearby Wendy's and I wolfed down a small sandwich and prepared for a night of heartburn. But, to my surprise, it never happened.

On Sunday, we decided to drop off as many of the travel bugs we brought, as possible. I did a route query from Fairfield to Reno NV, and we were off. As we approached the NV area, we decided to forgo the quicky divorce and see Lake Tahoe, instead. We came upon a young couple there taking pictures of each other, and offered to take their picture together. In return they took one of us:

After a short hike, we went into Tahoe for an ice cream cone and something to drink, and watched a little of the Bronco/Cowboys game that was on in the burger place. There were two other couples there, both Broncos fans, so it was a fun time. When we finally got back to the hotel, it was once again late (8:30 EST), but we walked over to Straw Hat Pizza and had dinner - again without incident!

Monday we went to the coast. It didn't work out as well, since with the government shutdown, we couldn't access the public beach to go dip my toes in the ocean. And then we drove on Highway 1, which is long, winding, and on the side of a cliff. Not my idea of a good time. Regardless, sharing the day with John made it worthwhile. We were back to the hotel a little earlier, and took a 2 mile walk around Fairfield, picking up some local caches and eating once again at the Pizza Place.

Today we check out, drop off our luggage at the Berkeley City Club, our car at the airport and figure out how we get back to Berkeley (on BART, I believe).