There are 5 of us kids, me being the oldest and Mike and Tom being the youngest. They are about 7 years younger than myself and they are identical twins. Although Mike lives in New York State, and Tom lives here in California - their mannerisms are very much the same - each with their own accents. What I found even more intriguing is just how much Mike looks like our other brother Kevin’s and how much we all laugh the same. It is really weird! Mike and his girlfriend Robin are from the Rochester, NY area and Tom and his wife Sharon and daughter Madeline are from Livermore, CA. This is the first time Mike has been out here since Tim and I were married 20 years ago. We have seen each other a hand full of times since then for various family celebrations and losses. This was the first visit! The weather was iffy at best - rained most of the time, with a few breaks and we took full advantage of those!
We started off with dinner at the Moss Beach Distillery the evening Mike and Robin arrived. The next day we headed up to San Francisco. We drove up Highway 1, past Ocean Beach, Lands End and ended at Fort Point. What a great place for both the history buff and to check out the Golden Gate Bridge from a whole different view point. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, up to the Marine Headlands and toward Point Bonita. We hiked around, checked out the different locations where old canon/guns were mounted to protect our coast from invasion, then drove down to Sausalito for lunch. Had a great burger at Napa Burger (highly recommend)! Then headed home! Missing most traffic and tourists! It was AWESOME!
We spent hours on Saturday and Sunday, checking out the beaches and hanging out at the tide pools at the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. We saw Harbor Seals, Sea Erchins, Starfish, Crab, Seagulls, and all the other things you see around tide pools. We stayed fairly dry, even though the sky was gray, gray, gray. What a great day!
Mike and Robin headed up to San Francisco with Tom on Monday to experience all of the Bay side San Francisco things. They went to Pier 39, checked out the seals who were fighting and barking and messing around being noisy. They headed over to Hyde Street to catch the cable cars. They came back after a long day, sounding like they had a great time and it didn’t rain on them at all. I don’t have any pictures from their outing...I stayed home - my back was really bugging me so I made an appointment to see my chiropractor and then spent the rest of my day fixing Tim’s computer (yay...fun).
Tuesday, Tom met us at my house and Tim only worked half a day. We went to jump in the trunk - but the battery was dead, so all five of us was jumped into Mike’s little Chevy rental car...and headed out! We headed down to Santa Cruz to experience The Mystery Spot. That was an experience too!
The Mystery Spot really was a bizarre place with an incredibly weird and unexplainable force. The tour was about 30 minutes long and well worth the $8 per person charge. From there we headed toward Henry Cowell Redwoods - which was closed for the season, so we headed toward Big Basin Redwood State Park. On the way we stopped in Boulder Creek for lunch at a taqueria. It wasn’t too bad. Finished up there and headed the rest of the way up to Big Basin Redwoods - Seeing the Redwood trees was one of the things that Mike wanted to do. We did the Redwood Trail Loop which had some of the largest redwood trees in the park. It was amazing! Wet but amazing!
I was up early the next morning, coffee ready! Mike and Robin had to head out at 7am to drop off their car and catch their flight home. It was so great meeting Robin and hanging out with the boys. The stories - oh my goodness! So glad I didn't live at home when they were getting into trouble) not horrible trouble just boy trouble! LOL!
What a fun week!
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