Summer break ended with a fun vacation to California. I needed to renew my passport, and as Denmark have gone to biometric passports as of January 1, 2012, my only options were to go to New York, Chicago (yep should have done that one before we moved back to the coast had I only known about these new requirements!!) or Palo Alto, California. Well Palo Alto was the closest option and we could incorporate a trip to San Francisco. I have been wanting to visit there for a long time so off we went on some family fun.
We left the coast on Tuesday and started off with getting new tires on my car in Portland. Then we collected Rio from work and headed south. We had a week filled with lots of fun! We saw the Redwood Forrest .. which is amazing!! We visited the Trees of Mystery in Klamath California where they have a 36 foot tall talking statue of Paul Bunyan and his bull. It was hilarious. The kids would shout out questions and the statute would "talk back and answer them." They also offered an amazing canapy ride through the Redwoods and all the kids loved that.
From the Redwoods we headed further south to Palo Alto and San Francisco. We got the City Pass for the San Fransisco attractions and our weekend was full! Friday night we did a boat ride on the bay, underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and around Alcatraz (I really wanted to get on the island but tickets were sold out). Saturday we went to the Exploratorium - the kids loved it - and the aquarium on Pier 39. Then we went on the famous trolley ride and to the Rain Forrest Cafe for dinner. Sunday we spent at the California Academy of Sciences which again was just an incredibly fun place for the kids to explore. There was so many things to see and do - I am making my list for next time ;-)
We just had a great time together and saw lots of fun stuff along the
way. Rio flew back to Portland on Sunday to return to work. Leaving me
to do the ride home alone with the kiddos.....it was just fine - but
long! But hey we are used to that!!!
On our trip we got to visit with Miss V and her family ... what a treat!!! The babes are getting so big and they vocabulary is just exploding. It was just so much fun to talk to and play with them. It was wonderful to chat with M&M as well, and I feel so very appreciative that we still have contact. To be given a window to look in on a sweet little miracle that I helped nurture is truly a blessing....and my heart just melts over little Miss V's cute little smiles. Thank you guys .... we had a nice visit. Sprinkler and all!!!
I also got to visit with another friend on the drive back home. Back in the fall of 1995, Rio and I purchased our first computer ... you know, the big box, that was incredibly expensive and totally a waste of money (at least if you asked my mom at the time!!) ... and we got hooked up to this incredible thing called the internet. Well the internet led me to AOL's chat rooms and there was a Danish Forum. In there I "met" Rikke ... she had come to the US as an exchange student and found her prince ;-) ... well here we are 18 years later and until this summer we have only shared an online friendship. On this trip, I had the opportunity to meet her and her lovely family face to face. It was just a lot of fun. With true Danish hospitality, they opened their home to us and we came there for dinner and spent the night before heading back North. Our visit was too short ... but I hope that we can remedy that sometime as I would love to spent more time with her....fun fun fun!
Back home again ... we were gone for 7 days ... 7 days of no computer time for me!!! What a great and wonderful ending to our summer.
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