California Camping

   Our new life in California continues to bring changes into our life. For the past 18 or so years we have camped in Peninsula State Park in Door County every July. For those of you not familiar with Wisconsin.... Door County is the "thumb" that sticks out into Lake Michigan. It has always been a highlight of the year. Even before we started camping there we would stay in a motel almost every summer since we have been married (31 years). Many memories were made there with friends and relatives.  There were times we had 30+ people eating at our campsite. Our DIL Nikelle first met us in DC when she came to visit Shane for the first time. Nikelle learned to love camping in DC.  So many memories but life brings changes.  No Door County for us this year- we headed off to explore in Inyo National Forest- the Mammoth Mountain area. This lies about 350 miles north and a little west of us. The trip took about 7.5 hours going (pulling a camper uphill from sea level to 9,000 ft) and 6 hours back home downhill!  As Dave said multiple times, " There is a whole lot of nothing between home and where we are going. " Brown, dry, sage filled desolation.

Sunday Summary

 

I guess I will catch you up on our life recently since I am procrastinating....I am supposed to be packing for camping in the Sierra Nevada Mnts. That will be fun but I still am slacking here...
  This is what our front yard used to look like. Pretty right? Well, we decided to make a patio entertaining area since we love to sit in the front and it so private and quiet. We hired a landscape architect to do a design. Then after a brief moment of insanity when we though about doing the project ourselves.... we hired him to execute the project. After watching them work for the past 3 weeks we realize we would have never been able to do it ourselves!

So the project began with busting up lots of concrete and demolishing 2 half walls. Lots of jackhammer racket!

Beautiful new look!

Many trenches were dug...

The start of the firepit. So in a few weeks I will share the final project

One Friday night we explored the original part of Temecula which is the  next community north of us. A neat area that looks like an old western town. We ate here and were quite taken with the cool misters installed along the roof!

Root beer company

They make some root beer there and also carry every imaginable brand of root beer and other soda.

This yarn became this....

I started this afghan in mid April and finished it  recently. It grew to about 6ft x 9ft. I quite like it and it has found a home in our one living room. I titled it "Sunset over the ocean"

After our trip back to Wisconsin and sleeping in various beds I decided another new mattress was in order for our guests. Now both guest rooms have new mattresses. Bought this awesome platform bed from Crate and Barrel. The purple decor is in honor of my wonderful daughter in law Nikelle.

One of 3 hibiscus in our yard

The iceplant groundcover I planted is thriving

Our lime tree is loaded with little baby limes.

The lemon tree has less lemons but that is okay because our neighbor is showering us with all the lemons we need. She said one lemon tree supplies an entire neighbor hood!
Well that is all for now- I best get to work before the "boss" fires me. We need to go meet a new puppy tonight that our good friends just acquired. I am so glad most of our new friends have dogs for me to enjoy!

Recent activities

What we have been doing.... last weekend we had lots of company and our guests Friday night enjoyed fresh strawberry pie. The strawberry season which started in Feb still continues and the berries get sweeter and sweeter.  Our Sunday supper company included special friends from our hometown!

On Saturday Dave went to the world famous San Diego Zoo for the first time.  We had fun guests over the weekend- Dave's cousin Lindsay from Illinois was visiting her friend Anna who has an internship in San Bernadino. The zoo was their choice of activities for the day. The stinkin' cute panda was awake this time rather than the rear view I had last visit! By the way, when we put "San Diego Zoo" into our Garmin it gave us 2 options.... San Diego Zoo or the World Famous San Diego Zoo- we chose the latter of course!

Extremely homely critters called Barbesinis or something.

Anna and Lindsay 

Did you know zebras have individual "bar codes" in their rump stripes like fingerprints that they identify each other by? Go figure!

Lindsay in the arctic

Love these guys who walk just like someone in our family :)

Koalas doing their usual activity or inactivity.

Meerkat

Baby born 6/6/2012- only 5ft 9" at birth which is small!

Those of you into yoga need to try this.....

or this....

San Diego skyline 

Stuffing his face- pretty much what I like to do too.

We finished the day with a visit to La Jolla

We decided to spend our first CA 4th of July in San Diego and watch the fireworks over the bay.

Lots of different vessels in the bay

I cannot imagine trying to get all that paint or whatever off at night!

Sitting in Anthony's eating fish of course.

Love the old Santa Fe train station

Our first visit to the Gaslamp District. Neat restored Victorian buildings

Of course I found the chocolate source!

Bags and bags of deliciousness!

A fountain on the Martin Luther King Promenade

Seemed to be a lot of "camping" going on in this park. Lesson learned: if someone is lying on the sidewalk in San Diego in July and there is a puddle of liquid around them it is not water ( since it doesn't rain in the summer)! ick!!!

Good looking guy I found !

Waiting for the fireworks to start- new backdrop for us....palm trees!

Due to a computer malfunction all of the fireworks went of in about 20 seconds! The Big Bay Boom was a bust!!!