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 also 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 relational 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 came out with his girlfriend Robin. 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 they were here, but we did have a few breaks and we took full advantage of them!
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 cannon/guns were mounted to protect our coast from invasion, then drove down to Sausalito for lunch. Had a great burger at Napa Burger.
We spent hours on Sunday 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 truck - but the battery was dead, so all five of us 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 Mysery Spot really was a bizarre place with incredibly weird and unexplainable force. The tour was about 30 minutes long and welll 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 Redwod Trail Loop which had some of the largest redwood trees in the park. It was amazing!
I was up early to say good bye and wish them safe travels. Just a few minutes ago, Mike sent me a text letting me know that they landed in Rochester and were getting ready to drive home.
It truly was a wonderful visit!
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