California Cruisin’ Part One

I truly enjoy days at home, gardening, sewing, cooking, and of course, writing. But there’s nothing quite like getting away for a vacation now and again. Recently, my husband and I joined friends on a California coastal cruise.

I abhor flying. Even though traffic was bad, we all piled in our van and made our way to Long Beach. Nothing quite like taking off and returning to our home port.

Look at these cool old buildings. There’s a bunch of history there.

Our first stop was San Francisco where we could see Alcatraz from our balcony window.

We’ve visited before but couldn’t resist signing up for a tour. There’s always something to learn. Our original architectural highlights tour got cancelled due to lack of participation, but we settled on a wonderful excursion outside city limits to places we’ve never been.

We headed over the Golden Gate Bridge to Muir Woods, a forest of never-logged coast redwood trees, the most mature being over 1,200 years old. It was picturesque and incredibly peaceful.

If you look at the bottom right of this picture you can see a fence. It gives you a perspective on how huge the redwoods are.

We even got to see a blue heron—quite an unusual sight.

This stream was so picture-perfect it didn’t look real!

From there, we visited Sausalito, a charming vintage town, perfect as a setting for some future book. Back in the day, all goods going to or from San Francisco passed through Sausalito, so there is a rich naval history.

Built in 1894 as a restaurant/saloon, this building has served as a bank, library, city hall and jail — restored to its original facade in 1992.

We had a wonderful hamburger—see the circled tiny restaurant on the picture. There was only room for ten diners. We did a bit of shopping, and I purchased a history book at the visitor center.

The next day, we were all set for a tour of Monterey, but windy weather made for a treacherous tender passage. Eight-foot swells kept us on-board.