What is the occassion? Spring perhaps?
Originally uploaded by Americanuck.
A new decoration on our neighbour down the hall’s door. I’m tellin’ ya she’s keeping me guessing on this one. I’m voting it’s for spring. Granted it’s a bit late but I guess Easter had to take precedence.
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doorwatch 2007 | 
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Posted by americanuck
It was nice and sunny the morning we left Redding. We figured we would treat ourselves to a sit-down breakfast instead of a rushed McDonalds drive-n-eat special, and we had already scoped out the location of the town IHOP the night before so, yanno…we HAD to go.
One thing that pleased me to no end was the colour and flavour the eggs had. I have no idea when the eggs in Canada started becoming so…so… anemic! They are always a pale yellow and I find with very little taste, at least those I can find in the grocery store. I pay extra for ‘premium’ eggs just to get a bit more taste.
I mean seriously, look at these eggs!
Ooops that’s Tom again…
Ah, there we go…
See! They are so dark yellow they are almost orange and they actually tasted of ‘gasp’ eggs! Fancy that!
We saw a whole lot more of the ‘5′ for a few more hours. The further up north we got, the more it started to rain. Ah yes, the familiar!
We made it up to the outskirts of Portland by dinner which was our planned stop for the night. Instead of going right into Portland, Tom had found that if we stayed in a place called “Lake Oswego” it would save us a bundle. Turns out the rooms were about eighty bucks a night each, a LOT better than the close to $200 or more per room in Portland.
Turns out we ended up staying at another Hilton Garden Inn and it was just as nice,well kept and clean as the last one. I’m quite impressed so far by the chain. I recall the one we stayed in near LAX was nice too.
We learned from our previous attempts to zen navigate and find the chosen restaurant and actually looked up the location of a Red Lobster which was the last sit down restaurant to cross off the list of must visits.
It would seem most of the people in the immediate area had the same though. The place was packed. We didn’t have to wait too horribly long though so it was all good…
After a good night’s sleep we headed out on the last leg of the trip. The rest of the drive was uneventful and we made good time despite the rather overcast and drippy weather. We lucked out and the border line wasn’t too bad and as always I had my itemized lists by category all ready for the Customs Dude. Nobody catches me with my pants down (unless that is the plan). Of course, as usual they didn’t want anything more than the grand total. Our total booty didn’t bat an eyelash as it wasn’t exactly a fortune.
We were pretty glad to get home at a reasonable hour. The boys had work/school the following day to deal with. Tom and I both had the Monday and Tuesday off following our return (heh) but of course we had a mountain of laundry to deal with (including my new clothes yay!).
It’s weird as already it seems so long ago that we were there. It took me long enough to get this all down too. I wanted to before I get too much older and I start to lose my marbles 
Next week we are off to Georgia for my business trip for five days. I’m glad that Tom’s coming with me on this one, I always miss him when we’re apart. We did a lot of that in the beginning of our relationship.
I bought a new suitcase, not to REPLACE Bagzilla, rather supplement. Bagzilla isn’t exactly practical for a shorter trip (for a long one yeah bring it on!) but if you over-pack it, it will go over the allowable weight allocation per bag, trust us we know. It has a matching carry-on bag. At first I was ready to pick up an unmatching one. Tom pauses, looks at me and goes “You know that doesn’t match, is that not going to bother you?” Umm ok so he knows me well. I DO like matching stuff. Fortunately the matching carry-on bag was stored inside it at the shop so of course I picked it up too.
As you can see it’s quite a bit smaller than bagzilla..(the carry on is on top of the actual suitcase in this picture)
And as you can see Cinnamon cannot stand seeing something that opens…
Nutmeg had to see what was up…
They hate seeing suitcases, it means the V-E-T-S (jail) for them once again.
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Posted by americanuck
We had decided before starting out on this adventure that we would give ourselves more time coming home than going to California. Giving ourselves three days with the hope of seeing north of the border no later than dinner time seemed reasonable and a lot more appealing than two longer days in the car (with two teenaged boys in the back!)
We had packed the bulk of our possessions the night before so the morning wouldn’t be too chaotic. The check-out time was reasonable but we knew we had to get on the road at some point in the day and wanted to spend a little bit more time walking the beach and saying our goodbyes to each and every speck of sand not to mentioned that gorgeous bay.
After all my Ross stops (man I got some GREAT deals!) and the other odds and ends our already packed trunk barely had an inch to spare.
It took a bit of ‘english’ but after some creative maneuvering Tom managed to find room for everything…
exhausted by the effort of it all!
After the car was packed we all reluctantly piled in to drive back to the main building to check out. The cleaning staff were waiting for us to leave (they sure are efficient there)!
While Tom did the checking out I took the opportunity to snap a few pictures of the lobby and surrounding areas.
It was bitter-sweet to walk down that winding walkway to the beach. Each of us took our pictures and our movies and said our goodbyes in our own ways.
(Above photo by Tom)
I was all jealous of the people who were obviously there to stay, at least for THAT day if not for longer.
We posed for one last group shot on the beach
(above photo by Tom)
Here are a few more youtube videos from that last day.
and one walking back up the path…
We hit the road with me back in the navigators seat. Didn’t I mention how bad I am at that? Yep I’m sure I did. We did a bit of back tracking to have a change of scenery and to have ONE last burger at the In-n-out mmmm it was good. Well for all of us except for Sean. They mistakenly put cheese on his burger and he’s not a fan of cheese. Check out Sean’s I hate cheese face in the photo..
Then Tom set out on the highway. He asked me to find him the best way to the five. Um, well we got there eventually by way of the San Fran peninsula but hey we got to see where Berkley was and we got to cross the very long San Mateo bridge! In my defence the craptacular AAA map didn’t have which short burst of highway you needed to take to get to the road they DID have on the map. So for future reference, buy map of the San Francisco area! The San Mateo bridge was neato though!
After that ever so slight detour (ehem) we were back on the I5 and heading north instead of north-west-ish. We didn’t have any reservations for hotels on the way back and being we were following more of a zen navigation approach we decided we would stop wherever we got around a reasonable dinner time. We made it as far as Redding CA. We drove the ‘main drag’ checking out the hotels and the one that looked half decent was in fact all booked up. Turns out they had some kind of baseball tournament in town. The other ones, one we had considered after reading the book gave me bad vibes. I trust my vibes.
We were all hungry so we decided to have dinner at the Marie Callendar’s in town and take another look at the Triple ‘A’ guidebook. We saw there was a Hilton Garden Inn in town ( I had some good ju-ju feelings about it) and after dinner (and buying a to-go chocolate pie!) went to check it out. Well, that is after we FOUND IT. Once again the AAA led us down a garden path, or rather away from the “Garden Inn”. The exit they told us to take didn’t actually exist! Once we got past that hurdle lo and behold there it was.
The place was a treat compared to most of the hotels in town (for any of you out there that happen to be passing through Redding in need of a nice reasonaly priced place to stay, highly recommended!)
We brought our overnight essentials into our connecting rooms. Tom, Sean and I headed out to pick up some paper plate and cutlery to eat our dessert, and there was that one last Ross I just happened to see as we were heading into town…..
While I “Rossed” they bought the supplies to eat our chocolate spoils and Tom stopped for gas on the way back to the hotel. We went inside to pick up some coolers to drink for the evening and I saw they has some of those Hot Fries that I love so much (and can’t freaking get here!) This entire trip there was NONE to be had anywhere. I mean come ON, why just in norther California!? But yay! I had some. I would find room in that car trunk if it killed me!
The boys came back to our room we ate our dessert and the boys went back to their own room for the night. Tom and I sat watching the Miss America pageant (my pick won ha!) and sipping our frosty coolers. I was relieved we had a nice place to spend our last night in California even if it wasn’t at the beach 
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Posted by americanuck
Not that I would stand on a street corner with a sign saying free hugs (if you don’t know me I have a very distinct personal bubble) but I love this video and the message it’s trying to bring across. People don’t hug enough. Sometimes a hug can change your day.
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Posted by americanuck
Alas, we had reached our final ‘full day’ at Seascape. We didn’t have anything firm plans for this last day, so we decided to head a bit further down the coast and check out Monterey. I’d read about Cannery Row shops and wanted to check them out so I was jazzed about it.
We found parking in a local garage and headed on down to the waterfront first to have a look and take some more pictures. We took a LOT of pictures on this trip.
I found the shops there fairly touristy, not really a lot of unique places. I was kind of hoping for a store with some kind of interesting treasures (like I found in Laguna Beach for instance) but we still poked around and I did buy some salt water taffy for me and my Mom and yet another sweatshirt emblazoned with the name of the town (three in total counting San Fran and Santa Cruz).
We decided to take a walk and check out the area away from the realy touristy spots and ended up at a dock where the coast guard had their boats. At the end of the pier there was a stretch of rocks COVERED in birds. Birds sitting on their nests, birds walking, birds sleeping. Not sure what kind of birds they were either.
Along the way we saw a yellow submarine half buried and some pedal cars for rent, neat little photo ops.
We had promised Chris to try and find an Army surplus store (his idea of the ideal souvenir shop) and we managed to find one in the Monterey area just slightly off the beaten path. He was like a kid in the candy store. He had always said he wanted to buy a medal, like a purple heart.. I was all like, yeah you can’t buy medals in army surplus stores. Well, turns out I am wrong. You can, at least at this one. It was like a collector/surplus store.
Some of those clothes were used, some new. I guess I am used to the stores that sell uniforms and patches more than this kind of store. Chris ended up buying a purple heart which he now has displayed on his wall in his room. He was in awe of it and glowed the rest of the day with happiness, taking it out and staring at it a lot.
He is very respectful of it and wonders what happened to the soldier who earned this award. I wondered what made someone sell it. Maybe it was a family member who didn’t see the value in it? The guy from the store thought it could be from the Korean War or maybe WW2 (I’m thinking Korea or Nam personally, I mean it smells musty but I don’t think WW2 musty, but who knows). Well, wherever you are now soldier, your purple heart is cherished and someone in this house thinks of you a whole bunch.
Sean had been dying to have bbq so we picked up some hotdogs for Tom to grill. I didn’t feel like getting into making burgers (I was teasing Tom that I didn’t want to die of E-coli) so hotdogs it was. I’m not a huge fan of hotdogs, ok I kind of hate them, but there was left over pizza for me so it was all good.
The grill turned out to be electric(!) which I guess all in all is safer than propane but it surprised us to find the plug!
After dinner we sat outside for a while to enjoy the last of the sun and watch it slip into the ocean for that last time.
I finally got some colours in my sunset, but nowhere near that gorgeous purple the first night we arrived that I didn’t get a chance to capture darn those hazy clouds!
It was chilly so everyone else went inside. I stayed until the last of the sun went to bed and then went inside to watch Grey’s Anatomy with the rest of the family, well minus Chris who watched his own thing in his room. Oh wait that sounds bad (ha!) watched his own SHOW I should say…
Just before bed we all went outside again to listen to the waves in the dark and imprint the sensations to take back home with us.
3 Comments | Famdamily, Oot and aboot, Picture posts, travel | Permalink
Posted by americanuck
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