Cross Country Trip Georgia to UC Santa Barbara - Day One, 9/12/2009

Day one. I took the red eye from San Francisco on Friday, September 11th, a great day to fly on an airplane across country. Called and wished Hailey a happy birthday, then had a miserable flight to Atlanta, just could not fall asleep. I took MARTA to North Point, creepy at 6:30 in the morning, but Annica was there right on time, picked me up at 8:30 am and we were on our way.



After an hour of driving, and after taking a nap, we stopped at a "QT", a gas station and food etc. market, loaded with all sorts of good stuff. They have red hot dogs, I mean, they are really red, supposed to be spicy, I may stop to try one before this trip ends. We got some coffee, vitamin water, some fruit and were on our way. Next stop was a Loves truck stop, outside the store was a very large parrot, I made friends and got a picture.

Along the road there were long stretches with these large sheer walls of rock on the side of the freeway. Also, lots of huge fireworks stands, at least near the border with Georgia, many come to Tenessee to buy fireworks, apparently legal here and not legal in Georgia.

First stop is Nashville, the Hotel was ok, Comfort Inn, right down the street from downtown Nashville, with the Grand Old Opre, lots of tourist spots, pretty nice cowboy boot and leather shops if you are into that kind of thing. Across the river is LT Stadium, home of the Tenessee Titans, nice.

After getting checked in, having lunch in downtown Nashville, I had a very long nap, and later we went over to the Vanderbilt University area, much nicer, and had a good dinner at a Japanese Restaurant, sat outside on a very nice evening, and across the street was an outdoor theater showing Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein, that was fun. Found a Ben and Jerry's for dessert.

Annica's High School Graduation 2009

Annica graduated from Milton High School on Friday, May 22, 2009. This was a great graduation, everyone flew out for the event, had a party afterwards at Kim and Bobby's house.

Pictures from the party.

Annica got me a t-shirt for Father's Day, with her UCSB Gouchos theme.

More pics from Simone's Graduation

Here are some pictures from Simone's UC Berkeley graduation, story below.

Simone's UC Berkeley Graduation

Simone's Graduation from UC Berkeley was May 21, 2009, at Zellarbach. Everyone attended and we had a graduation party back at our house after the graduation. Mike was here from London for a couple of weeks. The day after the graduation we flew to Atlanta for Annica's graduation from Milton High School which was on Friday, May 22nd.

For Father's Day, Simone had a cool coffee mug made with pictures from graduation.

Smokey Mountains trip with Annica

Annica was a bit put out by the whole "homecoming" scene, so I flew out to Georgia to be with her, hang at the homcoming game Friday night, then we decided to take a trip north to the Great Smokey Mountains. Well, it turns out this week was the "premier" week for the Smokey Mountains, as this was the prime fall colors week for the entire year. Nearly every place was sold out, I found a place in Maggie Valley, which was a very nice place, not as crowded or touristy as Cherokee. Homecoming parade was fun, Annica and her senior friends had "Japan" as their theme, they had a pickup truck with a large jaw and teeth to represent godzilla, and they dressed up in Japanese outfits, Annica a samari chef (we watched John Beluchi clips from Samari Chef for research), Emily was a box with Japanese writing on it (um not sure what that was), there was a sumo wrestler guy, and a few others. I think they came in last. The Freshmen won the parade float thing. Milton won, that was good, even though we left early.

We left early Saturday morning, like at 6am, stopped and had breakfast at "The Moose Cafe" in some small mountain town, the food was ok, kind of a cool laid back place. Then we made it to Bryson, North Carolina, at the foot of the Smokey Mountains. The hike on Saturday was beautiful, Deep Creek, we took the trail which was a 4 mile loop, but decided to keep going past where it started to loop back, we hiked a total of 6 miles. The trail followed a creek the entire way, there were falling leaves, there were beautiful waterfalls, just a great place.

We then drove through Cherokee, saw all the tacky tourist places, saw the 400 room Harrah's Casino, then as we left town going toward Maggie Valley, we saw it - - Santa's Land. Annica made me stop, she says Santa is her favorite guy (next to me of course). When we later got to Maggie Valley, we saw the most incredible fall colors, much more than at Deep Creek. Our hotel room was nice, with a creek right outside out back door. We drove into Ashville that afternoon, about 30 minutes away, a really cool town, kind of like Berkeley of the South, lots of nice stores and restaurants, plus street people. We noticed that many of the Street People played guitar, not sure of the connection. On Sunday we did a 8 mile hike to "Charlies Bunion" which was nice because it gave us some expansive views of the smokey mountains. The colors were not quite as nice, but that was because it was a higher elevation, their colors problably would hit a week or two later.

We returned Sunday night. Monday I dropped annica off at school, and then had her oil changed, and took her car for a complete detail . . . it needed it. Annica was so surprised and happy when I picked her up and she saw her shinny car. Tuesday, I got new tires for Annica's car, it needed them, especially as she may be driving to California next Fall to start College somewhere hopefully in California. Tuesday after school, we drove to Sandy Springs where I met the attorney and his wife/office manager where Annica will be doing part time work. They were really amazing people, turned out that the wife worked at The Meadows in Arizona, a place I know through a friend, and turns out the wife, Sonia, had gone to Camp Swig, in Saratoga as a teen/young adult, and I too had gone to Camp Swig in my youth. I also talked to her about law office technology, and scanning mail, which my office has developed, so I was able to provide her some useful ideas. We had fun discovering these things we had in common. That's it for now. Keith

Our 2nd Anniversary, in a town called Elk

Pam and I celebrated our 2 year wedding anniversary with a trip to Mendocino, we stayed at The Griffin House, located in the town of Elk, about 15 minutes south of Mendocino. Elk was very quiet, and right on the coast, our cottage had a back deck with two chairs right over the water, just a wonderful place. The weather was incredible, sunny with no fog at all. There was one nice gift shop in Elk, and a General Store, complete with a really funny sign post listing distances to various locations, like Bezerkeley, Spendicono, and Greystoke, Tanzania (9,553 miles away). The gift shop had a cool garden, photo is posted. Mendocino was really nice, a fun little town, and we had an incredible dinner at Cafe Beaujolais, recommended by our friend Larry. The couple next to our table at dinner was a French man, and an Italian woman, we would up talking to them for a while, they both live in San Francisco, he does a lot of cycling so we talked about different Bay Area rides we had done in common, and the woman was a chef instructor at the SF Culinary Institute. The music at the restaurant was really delightful acoustic French music, when we asked the waiter for the title, it turned out that the restaurant was selling copies of the CD, so we bought one. We did drive up to Ft. Bragg, and an ok lunch at the Wharf, but really, that's a pretty yucky town, I have heard since then that there are some good things to do there, we were just put off by its size and dirtyness. We made reservations at The Griffin Inn, in Elk for next year's anniversary, same room, The Matson.

Cal Rolls On - 66-3 over Washington State

Cal's first Pac 12 Game this year, and it was a huge win over Washington State, in Washington where they have had problems over the years. Quarterback Riley still looking good, though he is up and down. Running backs Jahvid Best (200 yards, 3 TDs) and Shane Vereen were great. And, while the Bears were running wild and scoring 66 points, the University was cutting down trees at Memorial Stadium back in Berkeley, only the single tree with the tree activists remains, likely coming down this week. Go Bears.