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We left Sacramento in May to spend a couple of weeks in Palo Alto watching a house and a little cat. We had signed up for TrustedHousesitters in 2019 and did two sits in Oregon just before Covid-19 struck, but this was our first sit since then. TrustedHousitters matches nomads like us with people who need someone to watch their homes and pets while they are away. We were in one of the most beautiful sections of Palo Alto and we enjoyed walks through the neighborhood and on the nearby Stanford University campus. Click on the first photo in each block to view larger images in a slideshow.

We left Palo Alto to drive south down the coast. We stopped for lunch at the old pier in Santa Cruz, then toured the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum.

We spent a couple of nights in Monterey and took the opportunity to visit Pinnacles National Park, in the hills south of Salinas. The park preserves a scene of ancient volcanic uplifting along the San Andreas Fault. We had passed the Pinnacles turnoff on Highway 101 many times but we had never visited the park. It was an interesting and worthwhile outing.

We continued southward on Highway 1, which provided many scenic views of the rugged Pacific coast. We drove through Big Sur south to Cambria.

We then spent a couple of weeks near Paso Robles, house sitting and cat sitting for our friends Sue and Leo while they went on vacation. Their house is quite remote, about a 45 minute drive west of Paso Robles, so we enjoyed the peace and quiet. Leo is a winemaker with a beautiful vineyard just downhill from the house.

We kept on going southward to spend a few days with our friend Betsy in Ojai. We continued our cat odyssey with Betsy’s two friendly cats. We were also able to visit family in Camarillo while we were in the area.

We returned to Sacramento to spend a couple of months before heading to southern Oregon in August. We are at a house that we stayed in last summer near the Carmichael neighborhood. It is very spacious and has a backyard pool that is perfect on the hot Sacramento summer days. We are not far from Oakland so we have been able to visit Andy and Heather several times.

 

We haven’t posted to our blog since December so this post will update our (somewhat limited) activities over the winter and spring. An accompanying post describes some traveling that we were able to resume in May. Our last post was on December 16, Andy’s birthday! We weren’t able to celebrate in person due to Covid-19 but we had a Zoom visit. Click on the first photo in each block to view larger images in a slideshow.

We spent the Christmas holidays at a guesthouse on the outskirts of Davis, described in our post last December.

We decorated the guesthouse for Christmas and made it look quite festive. We spent Christmas day alone but were able to visit with family and friends via Zoom.

We enjoyed walks around Davis and around our old neighborhood in nearby Woodland. Christmas decorations brightened our walks.

Our guesthouse was a short drive from UC Davis and we enjoyed walks around the UC Davis Arboretum and around the nearly deserted campus.

In January we moved to a cottage in the Arden Park district of Sacramento to spend the winter hiding from Covid-19. We had stayed at this cottage several times in the past and it is one of our favorites. The neighborhood is perfect for long walks and it is near the American River Parkway, another great walking destination.

We celebrated Charlie’s 70th birthday in April. We didn’t feel comfortable going out to a restaurant so we splurged on a beautiful prime rib roast that we cooked at home. Charlie got a fancy new meat thermometer for his birthday so the roast came out perfectly.

We got our Covid-19 vaccinations at the UC Davis Health System. The process was quick and efficient, kind of like a big assembly line.

We enjoyed occasional drives over to Woodland to walk around our old neighborhood. The central part of Woodland has homes dating back to the latter years of the 19th century.

One day in mid-winter we drove out to the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge, about an hour north of the city. Migratory birds spend the winter at this preserved wetland and they are spectacular to see.

We haven’t added a new post in four months so it seemed time to provide an update. We haven’t been able to travel due to the Covid-19 pandemic so we have been staying in and around Sacramento, California, since late July. We don’t go out much where we would encounter other people indoors, just grocery shopping about once a week and trips to medical appointments. But outdoors we enjoy daily walks, a good opportunity to get out for a while and to keep up with our exercise. Otherwise our days are taken up by reading, cooking, watching TV, keeping up with the news, and (for Carrie) knitting. To deal with our wanderlust, we have discovered several YouTube channels that just walk around places where we have previously traveled, like Paris, Amsterdam, and Edinburgh. They are current videos and the deserted streets due to the pandemic are eerie.

We spent the late summer and early fall in a house near Carmichael, a semi-rural area in Sacramento’s eastern suburbs. The area was quiet and safe for our daily walks, and there were about two dozen wild turkeys that roamed the neighborhood. We would see them every day, sometimes pecking around in our front yard. It was also a short drive to the American River Parkway, a bikeway and pedestrian path that goes along the river for 32 miles to the east of Sacramento. The house that we rented had a backyard pool which was great on hot summer days. We were able to use the pool through mid-October. The photo gallery below shows a few sights we encountered around Sacramento. Click on the first photo in each block to view the slideshow.

We are spending the holiday season in a beautiful little guesthouse out in the country between Davis and Winters, California. There is farmland all around and it is very serene. We are a short drive from Woodland, where we lived for many years, and we have enjoyed walks around our old neighborhood. We had hoped to host Andy and his girlfriend for Thanksgiving and Christmas but instead we are heeding the recommendations of the health professionals and spending the holidays alone, taking full advantage of Zoom when we can. We visited Andy briefly outside his building on Thanksgiving morning but we came home and had our feast by ourselves. We cheated and had a Costco chicken instead of cooking a turkey, and it was delicious! Here’s wishing everyone a safe and happy holiday season.

We spent four and a half months in Santa Fe beginning with the start of the COVID isolation in March, and at the end of July we returned to California. We are going to stay around Sacramento for a few months to take care of some medical appointments and to see how the pandemic evolves. It’s not a good time to travel as we usually do. Our time in Santa Fe was mostly uneventful, as we avoided public places during the pandemic. We enjoyed long walks around beautiful Santa Fe on most days, and we saw the flowers and trees transform as spring became summer. Santa Fe is a desert city but many residents have beautiful gardens. Hollyhocks, especially, are prominent all over town. The photo galleries below show sights we encountered around Santa Fe. Click on the first photo in each block to view the slideshow.

Picturesque Doors and Gates of Santa Fe

Flowers, Flowers, Flowers!

Sights around Santa Fe

On the Road to California

We arrived in Santa Fe on March 14, at the beginning of the sheltering orders, and we have been here ever since.  We will stay here until it is reasonably safe to travel again, which we hope will be sometime this summer. Then we expect to return to California for a while and see what happens next. Our traveling lifestyle is on hold for now but we hope to resume when we can. In the meantime we both agree that if you have to be stranded somewhere, then Santa Fe is a pretty nice place to be.

Our main entertainment is taking long walks every day. Santa Fe is a beautiful and interesting city, and the weather has been great, so walking around town is a pleasure. The tourists are gone so the streets are largely deserted, which is a little bit eerie but also makes social distancing easy. You can see photos of some of our walks in the galleries below.

Our daily life has not been significantly affected by the pandemic. Charlie goes grocery shopping (with a mask, required in New Mexico) once a week and that’s about the extent of our interaction with the public. Charlie has always enjoyed cooking and we rarely went out to eat even before the pandemic, so the closure of sit-down restaurants hasn’t been an issue for us. We order take-out about once a week, mainly to support the local restaurants during these tough economic times.

We are staying in a friend’s condo about a half mile from the old central plaza. It is in a compound of about two dozen condos. The architecture is pueblo-style and the driveway is gravel, so it has the feel of old Santa Fe. The photo gallery below shows a few glimpses of our condo complex, including an April snowstorm! Click on the first photo in each block to view the slideshow.

We often enjoy walks in the downtown area and the adjacent Railyard District, a former industrial area now reconfigured with shops and galleries. The State Capitol and the state government complex are an easy walk from our condo and from the central plaza, so we often walk through the landscaped grounds.

Canyon Road is another favorite walking destination, about a mile from our condo. Canyon Road is home to many of Santa Fe’s prominent art galleries, many with outdoor gardens and sculptures. The galleries have been closed but it is fun to walk down the mostly deserted street and view the art and architecture.

Another favorite walk is along the Old Santa Fe Trail from Museum Hill back to our condo. This walk features sweeping views of the distant mountains as well as many beautiful homes along the way. Adjacent to Museum Hill is a set of outdoor sculptures commemorating the migrants who traveled along the Old Santa Fe Trail in conestoga wagons. The museums have been closed due to the pandemic, but we have visited them during previous trips to Santa Fe.

About twice a week we like to drive out to Eldorado for our afternoon walk, about 12 miles southeast of Santa Fe. Eldorado is a community of pueblo-style single family homes on large lots (around two acres) so it is not as congested as Santa Fe. We rented a house in Eldorado for two months in the winter of 2018 and we always enjoyed our walks there. The streets are wide and safe for walking and there is a system of walkways/bikeways. There are sweeping views of the distant mountains in almost any direction.

 

Aside from all the walking, Carrie had a special knitting project during the pandemic quarantine. She follows a couple of knitting designers in Norway named Arne and Carlos and they hosted a “Mystery Knitalong” to keep people entertained while shut in. They posted a video each day with instructions for knitting a square for what would eventually become a pillow. Arne and Carlos are funny and entertaining. Even Charlie enjoyed their videos, and he’s not a knitter.

First, for those who are wondering, we are safely settled in a friend’s condo in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We are both healthy and hope to stay that way. We avoid crowds and our main activity is taking long walks around Santa Fe, a unique and historical city. We are only about a half mile from the old plaza so there are many interesting places to walk just outside our door. There are few tourists left in town so social distancing is easy. We hope all of our friends and family are healthy, as well.

Carrie received a yarn Advent Calendar last year, consisting of 24 mini-skeins of yarn, one to be revealed each day before Christmas. In addition to knitting a large shawl, she is using bits of leftover yarn for a mystery knit-along hosted by two Norwegian designers who are quarantined for 14 days in their home in the Norwegian mountains after disembarking from a cruise last week. A pattern for a patch is released every weekday for 2 weeks, with the final project revealed at the end. Mixing unusual colors into unfamiliar patterns is providing new and interesting combinations that Carrie wouldn’t have considered before. The silver lining of self isolation?

Before we came to Santa Fe we spent two weeks in Albuquerque, house sitting and cat sitting for friends. We had sat for them before and Mai-Mai seemed glad to see us. Rocio, more reserved and more cat-like, seemed to wish we would go away most of the time. We enjoyed revisiting some of our favorite walking paths along the Rio Grande, including the Bachechi Open Space.

One day while in Albuquerque we drove about 100 miles south to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, along the Rio Grande just south of Socorro. Bosque del Apache is well-known in the Southwest for its abundance of migratory birds. Mid-winter is the peak bird season so we were a little late for the most spectacular sightings, but we did see many birds and we enjoyed the day. On the way we stopped for lunch at the Buckhorn Tavern in San Antonio, NM, well-known for their green chile cheeseburgers, a New Mexico specialty.

After the holidays we headed north to Oregon for a couple of house sitting stints. We recently signed up with TrustedHousesitters, a website that matches home owners and pet owners with nomads like us who need a place to stay. We arranged two sits near Corvallis, one with a dog and one with a cat. We decided to drive up the coast to avoid possible snow in the mountains and also to enjoy the beauty of the coast. A highlight of the drive was a stop at Redwood National Park, north of Eureka on the California coast. There we saw grazing elk as well as an impressive grove of coastal redwood trees. Click on the first photo in each block to view the slideshow.

We had about a week’s gap before our first dog sitting gig so we rented a house through VRBO on the outskirts of Springfield, Oregon, near Eugene. The house sits on a mini-farm that currently houses three alpacas and a slew of chickens. Alpacas are quiet, gentle creatures and it was fun watching them each day. Pam, the owner, also rescues Chihuahuas and she would drop by often to let us visit with the three that she has now. Carrie knitted a sweater for Olivia, the tiniest one of the bunch. While we were in the area we also attended a basketball game at the University of Oregon’s new arena, Matthew Knight Arena. We used to enjoy games at McArthur Court, one of the great old barns in college basketball, and we wanted to see the new place. The Ducks defeated Arizona in an overtime thriller.

Next we moved about 50 miles north for our dog sitting gig just outside Philomath, a small town near Corvallis, home of Oregon State University. Bailey is a sweet, adorable dog, and she loves to play fetch with her ball. She is well-trained and rarely barks so it was a pleasure to spend a couple of weeks with her. Bailey is a small dog, about the size of an average cat, so she enjoyed sitting in Carrie’s lap and relaxing. Bailey’s house is in a beautiful rural area, and we enjoyed the peace and quiet of the Oregon winter. We were able to take in another basketball game in Corvallis, this time with our own UCLA Bruins in town to play the OSU Beavers. The game was close throughout, lots of fun to watch, and the Bruins came away with a close victory.

One afternoon while we were in Philomath we ventured about 30 minutes south to the William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge. This refuge consists of open wetlands, forests, and a lake, all ideal for the migrating birds that inhabit the area during winter. Our favorite spot was an elevated wooden walkway that traverses the forest to the edge of the lake. We enjoyed seeing the scenery and all the birds.

When we finished dog sitting we drove up to Portland and caught a flight to LA so we could spend Super Bowl Sunday with long-time friends in our old home town of Camarillo. We flew back to Portland on Monday, ready for our cat sitting gig near Alpine, Oregon. Nigel is a huge cat, about 21 pounds, and he will follow you around outdoors like a dog. The house is unique, with beautiful woodwork and artwork throughout and with decks on all sides. It is isolated from other houses, making it very quiet and peaceful. We rarely left the property during our stay, instead enjoying the solitude of the surroundings and the companionship of a loving cat.

To return to California we took a leisurely trip down the Oregon Coast. We hit the coast at Newport and then drove down US 101. We spent a couple of nights at the Overleaf Lodge near Yachats, a long-time favorite of ours right on the water. While in Yachats we spent part of the day in the Cape Perpetua Scenic Area, one of the most beautiful spots on the Oregon Coast.

We spent a restful November and December in California, celebrating the holidays as well as Andy’s December birthday. Andy and Charlie also attended the USC/Cal football game in Berkeley, a family tradition of seeing the Trojans play when they visit the Bay Area. Andy played in the USC Band in his college days, so they enjoyed sitting near the band during the game.

We rented a small guesthouse in Lafayette, an upscale town in the hills just east of Oakland. It was a very pleasant spot and only a 15 minute drive from Andy’s apartment in Oakland, so we enjoyed frequent visits with him. We especially liked daily walks at the Lafayette Reservoir, a quick 5 minute drive from our apartment. The trail around the reservoir is 3 miles and it affords beautiful views of the reservoir and of the many birds that live there. Click on the first photo in each block to view the slideshow.

One day during our stay in Lafayette we took BART (the Bay Area subway) into San Francisco and visited the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). We had visited SFMOMA in the past but it had been completely remodeled in recent years and we wanted to see the new facility. We enjoyed seeing the museum and also seeing the Christmas decorations in the city.

During the first week of December we took a 3-day trip to Paso Robles to visit our Food Group friends. We are a group of about a dozen friends, all originally from Ventura County, who have been getting together for 36 years. Many of us have scattered across the country but we still manage to congregate several times a year. Always lots of laughs and lots of love.

About a week before Christmas we left Lafayette and moved into a guesthouse near Camarillo for a couple of weeks. We still have family and friends in and around Camarillo so we wanted to spend Christmas there. Andy came down for a few days and stayed with us for Christmas. He also had time to catch up with one of his close friends from high school.

After New Years Day we headed north and spent a long weekend in the Bay Area on our way to our next pet sitting gigs in Oregon in January and February. Sunday was a rare sparking clear day and we took BART over to SF to explore the new Salesforce Park. SF recently replaced its old bus station and transit center, and the new center has an urban park on its 4th-floor roof. It is adjacent to the Salesforce Tower, the tallest building in SF, and there is direct pedestrian access from the building to the park. The park features small botanical gardens, each dedicated to one of the world’s Mediterranean climate regions.

We headed north from Maryland to Rhinebeck, New York, about 100 miles north of NYC along the Hudson River and home of the New York State Sheep and Wool Festival, arguably the premier wool and knitting event in North America. We attended the festival last year and wanted to go back. The festival is great and the Hudson River Valley in the fall is stunningly beautiful. Carrie began the long weekend with a needle felting class, where everyone in the class made a Rhinebeck knitting gnome. Carrie is a financial sponsor of a sheep at Prado de Lana Sheep Farm in Massachusetts and at the festival Carrie got to meet Amanda, the shepherd who cares for her sheep. Amanda does a monthly videoblog from the farm, so Carrie felt like she already knew her. Carrie also got to connect with other online knitting friends from around the country.

While we were in the Hudson River Valley we visited the home of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Hyde Park, just a few miles south of Rhinebeck. FDR’s family had owned this estate for many years and it was one of his favorite places. While he was president he enjoyed spending time in Hyde Park and he had an office in the house where he could work. The house was interesting in that it was large and very nice but it was rather simple and not ostentatious. The grounds also house the FDR Presidential Library. Designed with input from FDR, it is the only presidential library in which a president worked while in office.

While in Hyde Park we also visited the Vanderbilt Mansion, owned by Frederick Vanderbilt, a grandson of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, who first created the Vanderbilt family wealth. The National Park Service maintains this estate not as a tribute to the Vanderbilts but as an historical snapshot into the lives of the wealthy during the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. Unlike the rather modest FDR home, the Vanderbilt mansion presented a flamboyant display of wealth intended to impress the other members of New York high society. It was the location for many high society parties and it reminded us of a smaller version of the Palace of Versailles in France. Although it seemed like a fabulous mansion to us, it was only a seasonal cottage for the Vanderbilts, used mostly in the spring and fall. They spent summers at their “real” mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, and winters at their lavish apartment in New York City, when the social circle was in full swing.

We left New York on October 21 and, realizing that the weather could soon turn cold, we took a southern route back to California. Sure enough, we avoided an early-season snowstorm in Colorado just a few days later. We made a stop at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, site of the longest cave system known in the world. We took a guided cave tour in the morning and then had a wonderful picnic among the fall colors. As we were finishing lunch a deer came right up to our table and ate scraps of apples and strawberries leftover from some prior picnickers. She wasn’t the least bit afraid of us and stayed around for at least ten minutes. We then headed south to Spicewood, Texas, near Austin, to visit our nephew and his family. We had a fun family visit and had some great barbecue at Opie’s.

We headed north from Virginia to attend the New York Sheep and Wool Festival in mid-October. But we had a couple of weeks to spare so we decided to spend the time in the Maryland/Washington area. Carrie was born in D.C. but neither of us had spent much time there since we were kids so we wanted to visit. We rented an apartment in Severn, Maryland, approximately equidistant from Washington, Baltimore, and Annapolis.

We began with a visit to Baltimore, stopping first at Fort McHenry, the site of a decisive battle in the War of 1812 and also the birthplace of the Star Spangled Banner. We got to witness the daily raising of the 15-star American flag that flies every day (there were 15 states at the time). They normally fly a replica of the huge 30 by 42 feet garrison flag that was flown after the battle (we saw the original flag later, displayed in the Smithsonian) but we were there on a windy day so they flew a smaller version. The morning view of the flag was the inspiration for Francis Scott Key in writing the Star Spangled Banner. The battle in Baltimore Harbor in 1814 was crucial to the American victory in the war. Washington, D.C, had been burned by the British just a few weeks prior and if Baltimore had also fallen it might have been the end of our country as we know it.

After lunch we took a 1-hour boat cruise of Baltimore Harbor. We saw Fort McHenry from the water and we also had good views of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, a previously blighted warehouse district that has been revitalized with skyscrapers and restaurants. On another day we took a van tour of location filming sites in Baltimore from The Wire TV series that ran about a decade ago. It was interesting to see the actual locations from the series but we didn’t get out and take any photos that day. Click on the first photo in each block to view the slideshow.

We spent a day exploring Annapolis, a colonial-era port that also serves as the capital city of Maryland and the home of the U.S. Naval Academy. Annapolis is a beautiful old city and it was fun to walk around the old streets. During the afternoon many midshipmen from the Academy were running through the streets in identical workout gear, getting their daily exercise.

We visited Washington, D.C., on several occasions. It was within easy driving distance and there was also a Metro (subway) station not far from our apartment in Maryland. As we have done in several large cities, we took a hop on/hop off bus tour to get oriented and to see some of the iconic sites. We passed by George Washington University Hospital, Carrie’s birthplace, which she had never seen as an adult. Our ticket included a 1-hour boat tour along the Potomac from Georgetown to a dock near the Jefferson Memorial. We like boats so it was fun, but much of Washington is set back from the river so there isn’t a lot to see (excellent views of Reagan Airport, though).

Our favorite stop in Washington (and currently one of the most popular in the city) was the National Museum of African American History and Culture. This new museum, part of the Smithsonian, opened just three years ago, and it has a unique and symbolic layout. You begin by taking an elevator to the basement, which houses displays depicting the early days of the slave trade. The museum down there is dark, evocative of the slave trader ship’s hull. You then wind your way up a series of spiral ramps with displays depicting the years of enslavement, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, and finally present-day America.

We made several other trips into Washington to visit other museums and attractions. The Renwick Gallery, near the White House, is an art museum featuring special arts and crafts exhibits. Part of the Smithsonian, it just recently reopened after major renovations. We especially enjoyed an exhibit of holograms, with moving flowers visible only by holding an iPad near the artwork. On another day we visited the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. A special feature there is a display of the inaugural gowns worn by First Ladies going back more than a century. Finally, although not strictly a museum, we visited the White House Visitor Center, which has displays of presidential history and daily life in the White House. We did not tour the White House itself but we walked around the perimeter. We were intrigued to see one of those huge airport fire department foam trucks enter the gates, and then about an hour later the Marine One helicopter arrived. It makes sense that such fire protection would be provided for the President, but it never occurred to us before. Since then we have seen the same truck in the background on TV when President Trump does his South Lawn press briefings before boarding the helicopter.

On one of our last days in the Washington area we intended to visit Mount Vernon, George Washington’s Virginia home south of the capital. As it turned out, however, it was Columbus Day and also Homeschool Day, so the place was mobbed. We couldn’t get a house tour ticket until late afternoon so we decided to regroup and spend the day in nearby Alexandria, Virginia, instead. As it turns out we had a great time exploring this old colonial city on the banks of the Potomac. There is interesting history everywhere you turn along the Atlantic Coast.