First of all, we couldn’t have asked for more beautiful weather… The ocean was PERFECT that day. Warm enough for sweatshirts, sunny, and just a gentle breeze. We took a few stops along the coast to get some prime photos. Somewhere along the way, we stopped at my favorite beach. I don’t know if it has a name, but it is really the only beach between Bodega and Jenner where you don’t have to descend down a big hill to get to the water.

After basking in the sun for a while, we continued our drive down through Tomales Bay and into Point Reyes. We picked up coffee and a snack then headed out to the lighthouse. I forgot how much I like driving for fun. It was great exploring with my dad. On our way out to the lighthouse we encountered some great wildlife…

We even saw a few whales spouting out in the ocean. It was pretty awesome. First time for both of us!

After the walk out to the lighthouse, we thought we would drive down to a beach to catch the sunset. Good lord! We were rushing around. Our first attempt took us to a cove where no sun could be found… and just as we abandoned the idea of catching the sun sinking below the water, the hills dipped and we caught it just in time.

These past few days with my dad have been some of the funnest I can remember. I am glad we had time by ourselves and with Eric, Lisa and Lam. Even Pebbles had a great time with him…

Now we just have to work on getting them to move out here!

My sister’s wedding was incredibly beautiful. I don’t think things could have possibly gone better. I hope that lisa and lam look back on it with great pleasure and happiness. I really glad to have gained such a great brother. I can’t wait to see what the future brings for them.

It was also great to spend time with the family out here. I wasn’t sure that any of my dad’s family would visit us up here.

All in all, it was a great time. And now I am going to go back to watching “it’s always sunny in philadelphia”.

The hosts had just bought an apartment in the city, right on the corner of Haight and Asbury. An apartment that is in the background of a lot of famous pictures, particularly of the Grateful Dead. (A band that one of the hosts really loves…)

Point of the story: Great night. I wish we could do it more often.

We went camping Mendocino this past weekend. I had worked enough overtime to take Friday off, thank goodness! It was a zillion degrees here in Northern CA and we (Winemonkey, Pebz, along with Siea and Brown Bear) wanted to escape to the coast! Winemonkey, Pebz and I got there on Friday night and found one of the last few spots in Van Damme State Park. It is one of my favorite places to camp because it is always incredibly lush with ferns, berries, and stinging nettle. Well… the stinging nettle doesn’t make it all that wonderful… The other thing that makes Van Damme such a great place is that it is in a gully, so the walk to the ocean is really really easy. No mountain climbing gear necessary.

Anyway, we took a chance going out on Friday as there were no reservations available online. I typically don’t like making reservations, but I knew with the heat everyone was going to run to the coast. Even there it was abnormally hot, in the 80′s (a far cry from the inland hundreds…). Our spot was really nice, good shading, level, pretty little flowers all around and no stinging nettle. It was nestled right next to a babbling creek. The bathrooms were located right across the street from the site, but it didn’t matter much as the light didn’t both us.

We spent the weekend cooking and relaxing, going to the beach, hanging out at a local bar in Mendocino, where they let my “service dog” in. The weather was perfect the entire time. The food was amazing. Winemonkey and I had our first grilled chicken thighs and grilled zucchini of the season. This is always one of my more favorite grilled dinners. We had tri-tip on Saturday night for dinner along with Siea’s perfect fruit salad and grilled sweet potatoes. I won’t even go into the killer ‘zza apps’ that Siea brought.

All in all, this weekend was beautiful. Even Pebz had a good time.

Click the picture to see the rest of the trip!

But back to this weekend. It was really cold. Hard to believe with the sunburn I am sporting… but because of the wind chill I only have burns on my shins and a patch on my chest. The rest of me was covered for warmth. Sleeping at night was an interesting experience. Pebbles did not have her own sleeping bag so she had to climb into the bottom of mine. Winemonkey and I were both a little nervous about her suffocating down there, but she emerged the next morning like a little ball of sunshine. She had somehow wiggled out of her sweater during the night. The second night we put the rain fly on and it was infinitely times warmer in the tent. Pebs spent the night blanket-free snuggling alternatively with me and Winemonkey.

All in all, Pebs was a great little camper. She is so mellow it is hard to tell if she liked or hated it. But at least she didn’t seem miserable.

If you want to see pictures from the weekend, click here.

Just thinking about it makes me want to bolt out of this office and get on the road!

The jelly fish were AWESOME as were the schools of anchovies and sardines (click the photo of the sign to see the rest of the pictures at my PicasaWeb).

In other news, I am tired of driving. I just moved and I am already sick of going back and forth. I admit that this time of year is usually pretty crazy with travel.

After a week without showering, we went over to Porter’s house. It was like a little slice of heaven. Warm shower, soft bed, and the best were toilets that didn’t want to make you gag everytime you went into one. It was a great weekend with their family and I got to see some friends who I don’t see very often. We had a shrimp taco extravaganza. Lisa and lam came over too! It was such a good time. And again, I really don’t remember feeling particularly down at any point during our visit. We played games after dinner and even had time to go to market on Sunday before we headed home.

Today is my first day of work at the winery as their “harvest intern”. I am really looking forward to it, except that I shaved all of the callouses off the bottoms of my heels and it turns out that I had built them up for a reason. So hopefully I will be able to find a pair of shoes that don’t make my feet hurt. Other than that… it’s going to be a great day! We might be getting grapes as early as this week!

And I don’t even have a good excuse. I am not working full-time anywhere. I am not hanging out with friends. I am not even changing out of my pj’s every day.

Should I be admitting that… hmmm… well there it is.

But what brought me to my sad, dejected, little space of a blog today was to tell you about the Gilroy Garlic Festival. I am sure that all of you garlic-lovers are scooting to the edge of your seat. I mean, you might have heard tale that this extravaganza includes garlic treats from garlic french fries and garlic popcorn to garlic ice cream. You might be persuaded to go just for garlic bread and garlic sausages. And with all of that tempting, you might think there is even more unexpected garlic goodness that they couldn’t fit into their ad campaign. But alas, you would be the sucker. Because that is all the garlic items they had.

We spent two and a half hours driving to this festival that cost $12 to get into. We walked through dirt parking lots (yes, that is plural) getting smothered in dirt plumes to get to the entrance. We spent exactly ONE HOUR walking around in the most uncomfortable heat ever. In that hour we ate a garlic sausage and an order of garlic fries. We consumed one GIANT Pepsi and one small frozen lemonade. We walked around the entire festival. We spend 15 minutes waiting for a shuttle to take us back to the car and we headed west for the beach.

The festival of mine and Winemonkey’s dreams. Something we had been dreaming about since we had known about it. And we spent an hour there. But I guess it did give us one whole night of indigestion… wow wee…

But Gilroy is close to where I was first introduced to California back in 1996. And I somehow managed to find the beach that my friend and I went to almost every day. Winemonkey and I spent several hours there… Good old Sunset Beach. I have rode home with my pants hanging out the window many times that summer. But not this time. I let Winemonkey wade knee deep into the water.

Sandy feet…. nature’s pedicure!