Back from vacation (part 2)

OK, here we are again. Rocket Boy has gone back to Missouri and the twins and I are taking a collective deep breath and looking ahead to what's left of the summer. I still really want to write all about our vacation, so I'll try to do it in this post. This blog has become my memory -- I refer to it for information about anything that's happened to us in the last 15 years.

Visiting relatives in Lake County (May 30-June 1)

So, Thursday, May 30th, driving north. I took the first turn, driving, because I didn't want to have to direct Teen A along 19th Avenue, across the Golden Gate Bridge, etc. The new car, a Toyota Prius v, is very easy to drive, so I did OK. 19th Avenue was ungodly awful, but we made it through. When we got to Santa Rosa, I found a Starbucks (I had looked it up online earlier) and we stopped there for lunch.

And after Santa Rosa, Teen A took over the driving, with me (and my phone) as the navigator. The car has a built-in navigation system, but we hadn't figured out how to use it yet. The thing is, the drive from Santa Rosa to my cousin's home on Cobb Mountain is NOT easy. Lots of winding roads with other drivers just zooming along. But he made it, no issues. I was impressed.

I found out later that my sister Barbara had suggested we spend a few days at Cobb so that we'd have a chance to come down with Covid (if we'd caught it on the plane) before coming to her house and giving it to everyone. It was a good plan, if not really fair to the cousins in Cobb. But we didn't come down with anything on the whole trip, so it was a moot point.

We arrived in Cobb around 3:30 in the afternoon on Thursday, were there all day Friday, and left around 9 am Saturday. I'd say the visit was mixed. I loved being on Cobb Mountain again -- hadn't been there since before my aunt and uncle died in 2008/09. Before 2005, I think, but when? Hm... I just don't know. Anyway, all the times I was there, I'm not sure I ever set foot in my cousin's house (on the same property). But this time we spent all our time there. 

I'm quite fond of my cousin, so I enjoyed my time with her. Her husband was in Santa Cruz helping their son, but he came home Friday night, so we got to see him (I'm very fond of him too). And I got to know their grandson, who lives with them, and I was highly amused by him (he's in his 30s). They have an absolutely adorable dog, a Morkie (Maltese x Yorkie), and we all loved him.

But the twins were less amused by everything other than the dog. They had to sleep in a trailer, which had plenty of space and two comfortable beds, but no bathroom, and it was hot during the day and cold at night because they didn't close the windows. (I got to sleep in the guest room indoors.) The main problem, though, was this: NO WI-FI! That's how they're going to remember the visit to Brenda forever after. I didn't mind it -- I used some of my data and otherwise didn't use my phone as much as usual. I did a little reading -- I greatly enjoyed looking at Brenda's book collection, and admit that I thought about lifting a few books (but I didn't). I also suddenly had an idea for a short story and started writing it in a notebook. That might not have happened if I'd had wi-fi.

Mostly Brenda and I just talked and talked and talked. Oh, and watched "Jeopardy!" and the news (Trump's guilty verdict was the big story).

Teen B is taking a PE class this summer -- "Aerobic Walking" -- so he was willing to go on Brenda's usual hike with her on Friday, because it counted for the class. That was fun: the tiny dog is a very good hiker. We also took a walk around their property and saw some late wildflowers. Oh, and the twins discovered Brenda's ice cream bar collection (in her freezer) and decimated it.

But mainly the twins were very happy when Saturday morning came and we could drive back to the Bay Area. I let Teen A drive the whole way and he did very well.

Visiting relatives in Santa Clara County, June 1-5

The next four days were an endless parade of relatives, and I mean that in a good way. Saturday was a chance to get reacquainted with Barbara and her family at their lovely home in Los Altos. We had a late lunch there and then hung around in the front yard talking until it was time to get Chinese takeout for dinner. We had also had Chinese takeout with Brenda, but this was completely different food -- both meals were delicious. Oh, and we also took the dogs for a walk to the dog park. I somehow didn't manage to take a picture of Barbara's dog, but she is very pretty and enjoys the dog park. Nancy's bulldog had to stay outside the dog park, because bulldogs don't do dog parks well (too aggressive).

Then we followed Nancy and her bulldog home to Santa Clara. We had excellent accommodations there: the twins got the room with two beds and I got the guest room with a comfortable fold-down bed. And the wi-fi was just fine. Every morning Nancy made me oatmeal, which I ate with blueberries and blackberries and prunes -- so yummy. I enjoyed sitting in her husband's recliner (he was on a trip to France) and interacting with the bulldog. Oh, and I also got to watch some baseball!

Sunday the kids and I went to a Starbucks nearby -- because, you know, the Church of Starbucks and all that. We hung around the house, ate lunch there, and then drove out to Los Altos again to hang out with my niece Risa and her daughter Sophie who were up in the Bay Area visiting from Los Angeles. Again we all sat out in the front yard and talked for hours, before going inside to have delicious barbecue and salads.

Monday was a repeat of Sunday, except I think that was the day we went to a Barnes & Noble so I could get the book for the book group, we took another dog walk, and the guests were my cousin Bob and his wife Lynda, and the meal was pizza. But again, lots of talk, lots of reminiscing, good times. And a family picture, but we won't talk about that.

Tuesday we stayed at Nancy's and took the bulldog for a walk around the neighborhood. I also took Teen B out in the new car for a little while, to familiarize him with it in a non-scary setting. After dinner, Barbara and family arrived for dessert, and soon my nephew Daniel showed up (he was in town on a business trip). Then it was time to pick up Rocket Boy at the airport, and he got back in time to see everyone and have some dessert.

Visiting relatives and friends down south, June 5

On Wednesday we packed up the little car in preparation for the rest of the trip. Rocket Boy had brought FOUR pieces of luggage (the twins and I each had just two, a small black suitcase and a backpack), but the new car actually has a lot of storage space and we got everything in, plus all the leftover drinks and chips that my sisters had bought for us that we hadn't consumed. We got on the road early, around 9:30 I think, which is fairly amazing for us.

Our first stop that day was San Luis Obispo, where we had lunch with my father's cousin Marina and her husband Gabor. They are getting ready to move into a retirement community, so their house was in an uproar, boxes and mostly-empty shelves everywhere. 

We picked up takeout lunch for all of us at a sandwich shop near them called Capriotti's -- my expectations for it were low, but the food was very good. Rocket Boy and I had jointly planned to eat only salads (in restaurants) on this trip, and this was my first chance to do that. I had their Balsamic Chicken Salad and it was SO delicious. Teen B frowned at the menu, never a good sign, but the guy behind the counter was waiting, and there was a line behind us, and finally I just said "How about the Chicken Chipotle Crunch," and fortunately he agreed. Later he said to me, "That was a really good sandwich." I would definitely go back to that restaurant, though the closest one to us is in south Denver.

I should note that we were very lucky with weather on this trip. It was a little warm in Lake County, but not too bad, and the weather was basically perfect in the Bay Area until our last full day there, when it warmed up a bit. The day we left, June 5, it got hot, but San Luis Obispo is cooler than the areas around it, so the weather was delightful for sitting in the garden, and it gave us one last chance to admire their beautiful flowers.

We were extremely pressed for time on this visit, so it was very short -- maybe an hour? Hour and a half? It seemed ridiculous not to have allowed more time -- they're so old! when will we see them again! -- but they didn't have much time to give us either, what with needing to pack. Before I'd even finished my salad, Teen A was whispering to me: "We need to GO, Mom." I ignored him as long as I could. Finally we took a very funny group picture -- we were under a low-hanging tree, so different people's faces are covered with branches -- and got on our way.

Teen A had driven most of the way to San Luis Obispo, but I asked Rocket Boy to take over for the drive to the San Fernando Valley, because LA traffic is so awful. We got into a horrid traffic jam in Santa Barbara and didn't get to his cousin June's house until close to 7 pm. We weren't sure if his relatives would want to eat out or what, but it turned out that June's daughter Kristi had made a lovely charcuterie tray which we feasted on, and then she'd gotten a box of miniature bundt cakes for dessert (the rest of which she sent with us). So that was wonderful -- no need to deal with any traffic for a little while.

These relatives had a dog too -- our fourth dog of the trip! An aging, overweight, recently-gone-deaf black lab named Daisy Mae -- such a sweet girl. I didn't think to take a picture, so you'll just have to imagine her.

Speaking of overweight, June's son-in-law, who has always been a big guy, had become even bigger since we'd last seen him (10 years ago?). And in the weird way these things work, the moment I saw him, I relaxed. I didn't have to be the fattest person in the room. I could let that anxiety go. He's tall, too, maybe 6'4"? so his BMI may be similar to mine, but because he's so tall I knew he weighed more than me. And that was all it took to make me feel at ease. The whole hour or so we were there I felt comfortable and accepted.

I know that's nuts. What can I say -- everything to do with weight is nuts.

Maybe my enormous weight made someone else on the trip feel better about themselves. That would be nice, if true.

In some ways, this trip was an excursion through the various types of mild cognitive impairment. Rocket Boy and I have this. I can't remember lots of facts -- when I try to come up with something I should know, my mind is a blank wall. I also have trouble with word retrieval when I'm talking, though not so much when I'm writing. Rocket Boy remembers all facts about everything, but he forgets interactions and relationships. My cousin Brenda has trouble with memory loss and retrieval -- she told me things over and over and asked me the same question multiple times -- but is otherwise totally on top of things, cooks and drives and keeps house, no problem with any of that. One of the San Luis Obispo relatives, in his 90s, had one tiny slip -- he forgot where we lived -- but was otherwise totally sharp. 

But RB's cousin June has real dementia. Her daughter had told us this, but I think neither of us had believed it. But sitting there in her old recliner, looking weirdly withered, she told us that she'd seen her parents recently (she's 89 -- they've been dead for decades), that she lived somewhere else (she's lived in that house for over 30 years), that she would be going back to her "real house" soon, that she'd recently visited San Francisco with friends (she hasn't gone anywhere except the doctor in years), and so on. She confused Rocket Boy with his father (her uncle), who's been dead for 22 years. And so on. She wasn't completely out of it -- for example, she knew which highways to take to Santa Clarita, where our hotel for that night was -- but she kept slipping into confusion. It was so sad. That will probably be the last time we see her.

By 8 pm we were on the road again, with Rocket Boy driving the horrible LA freeways to Santa Clarita. I'd gotten a call from our Best Western while we were stuck in Santa Barbara traffic, and the person was very hard to hear, but she said something about how our room was flooded and they were moving us to the hotel next door, a Springfield Suites by Marriott. So we found the hotel and they had our reservation. The only disappointment was that their pool closed at 9, and we'd arrived at about 9:05.

Rocket Boy has an old friend, Chris, who lives near cousin June, and he and his wife had volunteered to meet us at our hotel in Santa Clarita so that we'd have a chance to see them. So after we got the twins settled in the hotel room (with the wi-fi password), we went down to an outdoor courtyard next to the pool and spent an hour or so talking to these old friends. This was a nice ending to the day -- but we were highly annoyed to see that the pool did NOT close at 9 -- there were kids in there until after 10. I complained to the management later.

Revisiting Ridgecrest and Death Valley, June 6

Thursday was a trip down memory lane for Rocket Boy and me -- not so much for the twins, who were only five years old when we left Ridgecrest. As soon as we got onto Highway 14 heading north we started reminiscing about the four years we spent in the desert, and we just didn't quit. We'd forgotten a lot, but it gradually came back. My phone wanted us to go all the way to Highway 178 and take that east to Inyokern and then down to Ridgecrest, but I knew that wasn't right -- wasn't there another road? The GPS wasn't showing one. But here came something familiar: oh! Jawbone Canyon! where Mr. Bob the tortoise lives! (we didn't stop to see if he still does). And here's the road I was thinking of: the Redrock-Randsburg Road, which leads to the Garlock Road, which leads to 395, which leads to Ridgecrest. Oh, I remember, we said over and over again.

Ridgecrest had changed in some ways -- stores had opened, stores had closed -- but it looked very much the same. We visited our old houses, both of which had changed a lot, but were still recognizable. I was glad to see that they both appeared to be occupied. We ate lunch at Kristy's, a restaurant where the twins had misbehaved many many times (I had a salad). We drove past their old daycare/preschool. We forgot to go to any of the old parks we used to frequent, but since it was almost 110 degrees, that might have been for the best. (Southern California and the desert in general were under a heat dome that day -- which seemed appropriate to us, so we didn't mind it.)

We did go to the Maturango Museum, which was one of our favorite haunts from way back when. We spent an enormous amount of money at the gift shop -- the equivalent of a night's stay at a hotel. Both kids wanted t-shirts, I found a book we didn't have (we have a large collection of Ridgecrest books, but this one had been published recently), and best of all, they had a cat blanket (i.e., a throw) with a map of the area printed on it. I think that might have cost $80! It didn't matter. It's now covering our loveseat in our living room.

I knew that a tortoise habitat had been constructed on the museum grounds since we were last there, so we went looking for that, despite the heat. It was lovely, but of course no tortoises were in evidence. And then suddenly I saw a head at the entrance to a burrow. It was a tortoise! "Oh, hello!" I called to it, so happy to see it. It came out, looked around (obviously expecting to be fed), and then turned around and went down again. That made the trip perfect. I was so happy.

We got gas and beverages at a mini-mart and headed east. We'd told the twins about Trona, so they were interested to see it, but the pinnacles were too far away to make much of an impression. I'll have to get that Star Trek movie from the library, the one where they're climbing all over the pinnacles. I'd told the kids the story about when Barbara and Nancy came to visit us and we took them to the pinnacles and Barbara said something like, "This is the middle of nowhere," and I said, "But you can see Trona. It's not the middle of nowhere if you can see a town," and Barbara said, "Trona is not a town!" Actually Trona looked fairly townlike to RB and me, but the twins agreed with their aunt.

We continued on into the beautiful Panamint Valley, and it got hotter and hotter. I think we were in Death Valley proper when Teen B agreed to do some driving, and he ended up driving for an hour, at which point Teen A took over. Death Valley did not seem as beautiful to me as I remembered, because it was so hot and there wasn't the contrast between the rocks and the sky that you get when it's cooler. It was 122 degrees that day (see dashboard display, on the lower left), the hottest June 6th in Death Valley ever. But it was still beautiful.

We stopped in Stovepipe Wells to buy Teen A another shirt (I think he was a little jealous of Teen B, who has several National Park t-shirts in his wardrobe). It was quite amazing to be walking around in 122 degree heat. A little further on, Rocket Boy wanted to explore something he'd read about, an unmarked grave, so I stopped the car but left it on (with the air conditioning also on) while he explored. It doesn't look that hot, does it? Believe me, it was.

And then we got lost, as one often does in Death Valley, but we stopped and asked directions (and then got lost again) and finally got on the road to Pahrump, where we spent the night. We had more Chinese food at a buffet and then swam in the hotel pool, quite the nicest of the trip.

The rest of the trip, June 7-8

The last two days of the trip were a definite anticlimax, despite the dramatic scenery. On Friday we drove from Pahrump, Nevada, through the nightmare that is Las Vegas, across a little section of Arizona, and then ALL the way across Utah to I-70 and finally to Colorado. I did the first half of the driving and Rocket Boy drove after lunch, which we ate at the Black Bear Diner in St. George, Utah. Just over the border in Colorado we stopped at our hotel in Fruita, very relieved to be back in our own state.  We had dinner at a funny little place that served pizza and burgers and snacks. I had a small garden salad and a chocolate milkshake, Teen B had fried mushrooms and a peach milkshake, Rocket Boy had a veggie burger and water, and Teen A just had a butterscotch milkshake.

Saturday, we got up a little late, having lost an hour the day before (and I didn't sleep well that night), and got on the road around 10 or so. We drove to a little German-ish restaurant in Glenwood Springs called Rosi's and had lunch there. The kids thought it was too early for lunch, but the restaurant was so slow that by the time we got our food we'd been there about an hour, and everyone was hungry. The food was yummy (I had crepes, Teen B had jagerschnitzel) and they gave us a large pastry to take home as an apology for their slowness. I had two cups of delicious coffee (I normally don't drink coffee), hoping it would wake me up, but it didn't.

Rocket Boy drove the rest of the way home because I was too sleepy. We got home around 3:30, I think, and the cats were really puzzled by our arrival, as they always are after we go away. But they both tried to sleep on the bed with me that night, and when the cat-sitters arrived a couple days later to get their money, the cats appeared to have forgotten them. Cats are such odd creatures.

I'm disappointed with how few pictures I took on this trip -- normally I'm much better about documenting our travels. Maybe it was because I didn't want to get IN any pictures. I don't know. But I think I will remember the trip regardless (the blog will help). I'm so so so glad we did this, despite all my stupid anxieties. It was a great thing to have done. And I hope we will go back before another six years go by.