HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN

2 August 2021

It is 9:30 p.m. as I write this and we have returned from our brief week end in Santa Barbara, which will describe with many photos over the next couple of days.

Suffice to say it was a perfect weekend.  The weather could not have been better (mid 70s), the company was great, the food delicious, the family camaraderie perfect, and best of all, I didn't touch a computer all week end.

Not only that, I managed to finish not one, not two, but three books (2 Harlan Coben and one Monk book don't know who writes those).

The only bad part of the day was the long drive home.  No matter how you cut it, you're talking 7-8 hours.  Walt and Ned shared the drive, broken up by one rest stop and one stop for dinner.

Except in two sections, the traffic was OK.  One was around King City, where they are narrowing all lanes down to one, to do highway maintenance, the other outside of Gilroy where traffice for us wasn't bad, but going in the other direction it was horrendous for what looked like at least 2 miles at least.  Thank God we were going in the other direction.

For the most part, I kept my nose in my book, but I did look up from time to time and it struck me more than once that I am so happy to live in California.  Even in a drought, where there is no greenery to be had for love or money, the scenery is still often breathtakingly beautiful.

For the first time I appreciated the "golden hills" cousin Nora (from Ireland) once raved about.

Polly has never acted the way she did when we got home this time.  She could not get enough of petting, fir from me, then from Walt, then turning in circles as if she didn't know who to go to next and then back to me and then to him again.  I think she really missed us!

Tomorrow I will start recounting our experiences over the past 3 days, but for now I'm going to enjoy my electric recliner and catch up on the Olympics and Jeopardy!