It probably sounds a little strange to think of our time
back home as summer vacation. But that’s
how it seems to us. Cruising in Mexico
is fun, but it is constant work. It’s
nice to get home and not worry about your house dragging anchor, running out of
water, or fuel, or food, or bees, or high winds, or low winds.
This year our friends Kurt and Katie from SV Interlude were
home. They had just completed their
circumnavigation when we met them in La Cruz.
They have been our good friends for many years now, and Kurt and Rich
both grew up together in Alameda. During
the summer we were lucky to be able to spend a lot of time with them. We got together as often as possible to play
music, eat, drink, watch movies, watch Americas Cup, ride bikes, etc. It was great to be able to spend some time with them after both of us being gone
so often. It was also nice to have some
other friends around that are retired, so we could do things together on week
days!
Once we were home, we couldn't wait to go camping and see
some trees. Our first trip was to Silver
Lake on HWY 88 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
This is a great high altitude (7,500 feet) lake with good fishing and
beautiful scenery. We swam in the river
and caught some small trout fly fishing
We also took a trip one morning over the pass to the Carson River where
we had a picnic and did a little fishing also.
A few weeks later we also went camping with a group of
friends at Union Reservoir. The group was composed of our friends Kurt and
Katie from SV Interlude, Karen and Dave from Tahoe, Matt and Judy and Jackson
from San Francisco, and Tony and Crystal from Sacramento. We had a great time singing and playing
guitar around the campfire and swimming in the lake. Rich, Kurt and Tony went to high school
together, and try to meet up on a regular basis.
Karen, Cathy and Dave
As we live very close to wine country, and as we drink a lot
of wine, it seemed only natural that we take the short drive out to Livermore
Valley and visit our cruising friends Jim and Jeanne from SV Kanga. They are also home for the summer and live
smack dab in the middle of wine country.
We had a nice lunch at one of the wineries, and explored a couple that
we had not been to before. We look
forward to meeting up with them again in Mexico next season.
Eating better than the Donner Party
Zoom in on the full moon through the smoke!
Enough camping? Not yet.
This time we took a couple of days to go to Donner Lake, site of the
famous Donner Party encampment. We did
some fly-fishing in the nearby Truckee River and enjoyed a nearly empty
campground due to the previous storm.
However, there was a large fire burning in Yosemite to the south, and
the air in the Tahoe basin was thick with smoke. Visibility was a half mile at times. We decided to cut the trip short and head
down the mountain for cleaner air.
We
planned to visit some cruising friends that had recently sold their boat and
moved back onto dirt. Roger and Sue,
formerly of the cat Neos, had just rented a place in Rocklin just outside of
Sacramento. We had a nice visit with a
wonderful pulled pork dinner prepared by Sue.
So it seems that there is life after cruising! We wish them all the best in their new
adventure.
Kiwis and the Italians going at it.
To get back into the sailing theme, we attended a couple of
Luis Vuitton Cup races with Kurt and Katie, and Robert and Virginia from SV
Harmony, who we also know from Mexico.
The best way for us to get from Alameda to San Francisco for the race
was to take the ferry boat. It dropped
us off a couple of miles from the event site, and we walked to the races. The racing was spectacular. We can’t wait to see the Americas Cup Finals.
Kurt, Cathy, Teresa, Kai, and Wayne
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