We've set off on a family adventure. Mostly for my own recollection, but here's the details so far.

Friday afternoon we left for parts north. Although there was traffic, we headed north on the 101 to the 154 to Santa Ynez, we made decent time.

We spent the evening and night with long time family friends and I enjoyed it thoroughly. David and Linda were gracious hosts, of course. It was good to see them again.

Saturday morning we headed out for Santa Cruz. We made good time getting up there. We met up with Jen and Shelly and headed out to the Roaring Camp railroad. Once there we rode a steam train up into the redwoods. It was pretty, very very pretty. Jen and Shelly are friends with the conductor on the train so LB got some special treatment including getting to help operate the switch on one section of track. They were having a day out with Thomas the Tank Engine that day, but LB didn't seem terribly interested, it did make for more difficult parking and lots of people, but we survived.

After the train ride we headed to Shelly's place for just a little while and then down to the Santa Cruz boardwalk. It was PACKED with people, and I was almost immediately overwhelmed, especially with having to keep track of LB among all the people. LB was allowed to choose two rides to go on, but once we got into one, he decided that he wanted me to ride it with him instead of him going on the second ride. After the ride, we wandered down to the water's edge and he splashed around a bit. He enjoys the beach a lot, too bad I don't, especially not the hot sun's going to burn me immediately ones in So. Cal.

After the beach we went to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. It was getting pretty late so we headed to Jen's house to call it a night.

We got up the next day (Monday) and headed out, up the 1 to the 17 to the bay area. Sunday was the day of missed connections. It turns out that Phil's friend was not able to free up time to see us, so we headed towards Lassen National Park. It took us a bit out of our way, but it was beautiful. We tried to meed up with Amy and Jeff in Lassen, but it seemed that we missed them. As I said, the day of missed connections. We hung out near the lake for a while, went for a very short hike, and then headed back to Redding for the night. We hoteled overnight in Redding and then headed out in the morning for Medford, OR. It was a pretty short drive through some gorgeous scenery including Mt. Shasta. We made it to Medford, got checked into our hotel, and then made use of their pool and spa. After that we attempted to find food in Medford, failed, and then went to Jacksonville and almost failed to find food there too. But eat we did, and then we HAD to stop at Coldstone on the way back to the hotel too. Now, LB has FINALLY gone off to sleep.

Tomorrow we head for Portland by way of Crater Lake (America's deepest lake, and a closed ecosystem). I'm looking forward to hopefully cooler temps as we head to the lake and then to the coast.

And that was that.