Monday 25 May

Memorial Day Holiday

Pt Reyes Station is a wonderful little town at the head of a long bay called Tomales Bay. The bay is directly over the San Andreas fault and the seaward side is moving northward at a fairly reasonable geological rate. You wont notice it if you sit watching with a cup of coffee and a piece of apple pie but I have it on good advice that it is actually happening. The bay is lined with a series of small villages and farming communities and OYSTER BARS. Some of these places offer oysters straight out of the bay and they are not bad. Lunch, albeit being a bit late, was a dozen barbequed oysters (six each) a cup of excellent chowder and a dozen fresh oysters. If this isn’t heaven, please tell me what is.

We did ‘sing for our supper’ though. Deb and I did a great walk from the top of Drakes View Rd into the park through some beautiful forests and windswept scrubland. The pinnacle of the walk, Pt Reyes Hill, would have given us a superb view of Creamery Bay, Schooner Bay and Home Bay then on to the Ocean but there was a fairly thick and low sea fog that precluded this but the view was nevertheless excellent. We met a fellow hiker who went out of his way to show us some of the local landmarks and we had a good long chat with him about the park and walking in general. I have to say that people here are very friendly and extremely helpful.

This was the second of our walks and every bit as good and different as the previous one. 

Tuesday 26 May

Deb works from 10 till 6 todays so I have decided to go into Petaluma with her and spend the day looking around. Petaluma  is  a fairly big commercial area with a number of great eateries, some incredible antique shops and a good few clothing shops. I cant get used to the mix of shops here. In a large centre like this there are no newsagents, nor the normal assortment of Mobile Phone retailers, department stores, supermarkets etc. All of these are in the myriad of shopping plazas that spring up around the place in what seems to be random order. I have been to one large shopping Plaza so far and that is in Santa Rosa but apart from that they seem to be missing in action. Newsagents don’t exist, one buys ones papers from coin operated boxes that defy my ability to extract a newspaper from them even though I appear to put the correct amount of change in the little slot.

All the other paraphernalia that one buys at newsagents one gets from Drug Stores (these places even sell cigarettes), stationers, supermarkets (magazines) etc. I suppose I would get used to the changes but it is sometimes frustrating not to be able to get all you need in the one area, you have to do a fair bit of driving from one plaza to the next.

Lunch today was beside the Petaluma River and I had an excellent steak sandwich with some equally excellent coffee followed up by a biscotti. I also celebrated my visit to town by having a haircut (yes I do need to do this occasionally). The chairs in the barber shop were straight out of a 30’s movie and there was even a brass spittoon in the corner. I resisted testing my skill in the spittoon but it was difficult. Al, that was the name of the barber, gave me an excellent cut and I didn’t have to mortgage the ranch to pay for it so that was good as well.

Speaking of ranches and 30’s movies, toward the end of the day aI spotted a Saloon and Dance Hall that happened to be open and trading so I topped off an interesting day in Petaluma with a Sierra Neveda (beer) and half an hour with a newspaper that was left behind by someone who obviously has more skill with the box thingys that sell papers.

Wednesday 27 May

Today Deb and I did a bit of work on her business logo, cards and advertising material. We have come up with a pretty good logo and some business stationery that Deb likes. They need a bit of tweaking but I think generally she is happy with the result.

Deb is out for most of today so I get to spend some time reading and doing some computer work and really exciting stuff like washing.

Thursday 28 May

Another Yoga day today and we had three in the class this morning. Deb is a great Yogi and I find the classes very relaxing. The Yoga has done wonders for my crook back (from carting two suitcases around) and I can fully recommend Dru Yoga to anyone. You don’t need to be able to turn your self inside out or touch your toes with the tip of your nose. Just good gentle body work and relaxation.

Of course, after Yoga we had to have breakfast so today’s offering was a blueberry waffle and an excellent Latte (they don’t do flat white here). We had a bit of a walk around then headed back to the car for home.

We decided to go to the movies tonight to see Angels and Demons. Great movie and of course the pop corn etc were also excellent. What you do here is order your pop corn (popped in butter) then you go to a counter and add extra liquid butter and various flavours. There are no Choc Tops so that is a minus.