July 2019 - Joint Anniversaries

On Monday, we were still thinking about the beautiful dinner and celebration the night before at The Lodge at Pebble Beach.  Had breakfast in Herrmann Hall at El Prado - they have a buffet type meal and it's a good start to the day.  Paul and Sandy came down and joined us and we planned out our day's activities.  Paul gave us a tour around the academic area of the Naval Post Graduate School, starting with Starbucks and then over to his office area (or where he hangs his hat while at NPS).  Met some of the people from the bar-b-que on Saturday and it was like old home week.  Strange how you meet some people and you feel like you have know them forever.  One of the highlights was a walk along a portico of one of the buildings which showed  a time line of NPS, the US Navy, Del Monte Hotel, distinguished graduates, history making events which occurred because of the school and its' graduates,etc.  Very interesting and there was a time line along the...

Paul and I played golf at Corral de Tierra, beautiful course in the foothills outside of Monterey.  Our host from the previous evening was a member and had invited us to join him for a round of golf.  Pictures I would have taken would not have done justice, but if you go to the web site, you can really appreciate the beauty of the course.  I'm not sure who designed the course, but they seemed to have an affinity for sand :-).  Fun day and while we were slaving at the golf course, Vi and Sandy enjoyed a leisurely day in Monterey. Yesterday I promised a picture or two of Herrmann Hall, so here's a view of the building as well as the lobby area.  I'm sure I have told you all before that when the Navy took over the Del Monte Hotel (a great resort in the early 1900's until just before WWII), the money they paid to the Del Monte family was used to purchase the land where Pebble Beach Golf Course is now situated.  Good use of the money! They continue the ...

Saturday morning, we left Merced heading for Monterey.  The Merced Best Western is used as a jumping off place for Yosemite, so there were a lot of families in the parking lot heading for the hills.  We instead drove south to La Grange where we stopped at our favorite pistachio farm - Buchanan Hollow, to pick up some pistachios.  It's not far from Merced and a short drive through lots of nut tree farms - almond, pistachio, and walnut - just wish I knew how to tell the difference. Continued our drive on back roads through the San Joaquin Valley and had breakfast at Eddie's Cafe in Los Banos. Great small town restaurant with excellent food.  Leaving Los Banos (I think I have explained the name origin in previous blogs, but essentially it comes from the fact that there used to be a hot spring there, hence the name The Bath).  In today's vernacular, los banos means the bathroom, so it's not a fun name for a place where you want to live :-). The closest we came t...

We covered a lot of territory today and many types of topography.  Started out early on Friday morning and headed south to Carson City for a gas-up at Costco.  Since the ACC (American Celebrity Championship) golf tournament was going on up at Lake Tahoe, we decided to avoid the crowds and not go through Lake Tahoe.  South on 395 to Minden for breakfast and then across the Sierra on 88, 89 and 4.  We hadn't been on 4 across Ebbets Pass for a long time and thought it might be a fun, scenic way to go.  What we hadn't remembered was how narrow and twisting Route 4 was. There were more twists and turns than we have been on since we were on old Route 66 south of Kingman, AZ.  At times I swear we could see our own taillights.  The road was so narrow that they didn't even put a center line on it, just fog lines on either side.  Had one close call when an SUV coming the other way decided it wanted to take the middle of the road on a curve.  Vi was q...