San Diego to ???

If you remember from the last post -- yes I know it was a while ago - Karen and I had been in San Diego. I was working? and Karen was enjoying the pools. Meetings were over so it was time to hit the road and head north.

We rented a car and headed out on Int. 5 toward Long Beach. Interstate highways, while efficient for getting around, do not provide the best scenery. We decided to take local highways up along the coast as much as possible and stopped and walked around in one of the state parks. Not many people around so we had to resort to taking are own picture. Does anyone think I look tough with those sunglasses?



I have family in the Long Beach area. Aunt Jane and her family were out of town for the week but lucky for us -- Aunt Alice was in town. She offered that we could stay at her place (Riley's place). We got the tour of Bellflower and Long Beach from a local and got to check out beach and the shipping yards.
Alice has been working on the house getting ready for the large gathering of family that will be coming from around the US to celebrate her 50th birthday. When we were there the back yard was bare soil and cement still needed to be poured. I got the report from my parents who were there for the party and they said the place looked great -- way to go Alice! I hope everyone took notice of the level house numbers (De Bruin's have a thing about everything being perfectly level!)

Left Bellflower on Thursday morning and headed North again towards Visalia, CA to see friends. What a great drive through the grape vineyards, fruit orchards, and even a few corn fields. Agriculture is large, diverse, and productive as long as there is water!

Dan and Rachelle are friends that we got to know when they lived in Ames as Dan attended vet school and Rachelle taught (and carpooled) at Des Moines Christian School with Karen.

We had a great evening catching up even had time for a round of miniature golf. Dan was keeping score but I don't recall if final score or overall winner was ever determined? A couple of us (Karen and Rachelle - right) are fairly competitive so it was probably for the best:)

After a great breakfast (didn't get one of those again for several days) we headed toward the mountains. I don't want to give it away yet but take a look below and guess where we are heading. Hint - some of the biggest trees in the world can be found here

Keep coming back - the good pictures will be posted soon. The real adventure has just begun. Karen is already talking about all the animals she hopes to see and I am talking about how big of a mountain I want to climb. We have very different goals - how is this going to work? To those that have hiked with us (Michelle and Joe and Lacey) you have a good idea. For the rest of you I will sum it up as -- compromise!