A Trip to the Coast and Dinner with Family

August 23, 2013

Today we took a road trip over the coastal range to the ocean at Half Moon Bay. The road over the mountains is a beautiful drive, for the most part, two lanes, through small towns with small farming businesses and a little “Hippyism” thrown in. Right now the pumpkins are coming on and some of them are really huge! This is reported to be the pumpkin growing capital of the world!

By the time we got the coast at Half Moon Bay the temperature was down in the 60’s, the coolest temperatures we have had in weeks!! We drove up to the point of the bay, right next to the campground we stayed at back in the fall of 2005 with Phil’s twin Joyce and her husband. That trip was Joyce’s last; she died in Jan of 2006. Today, Phil put some of Joyce’s and Barbara’s (our daughter) ashes in the bay,

as he has done at many of the places we have been in the last 7-8 years. From the Rocks we drove down to Pescadaro where there is a little market/deli/bakery that we found when we were there with Joyce. Phil loves their seafood soup sauce and their bakery items are to die for!! So, we did a little shopping and a little indulging, then started the return trip home.

Rather than retrace our steps, Phil decided to take the road east out of town (which wasn’t on the map) and just see how far we could get. This was a very narrow windy, twisty road that jackknifed back on itself with some of the sharpest turns I have ever seen…over and over again. At one point we had three pink lines on the GPS.

It was a beautiful drive though and there were some really spectacular homes up there! This narrow little road eventually joined Highway 84 that took us through “Horse Country” with even more spectacular homes with acreage and horses to match!!!

Tonight we got to meet the Thompson half of Phil’s family, the reason for our stop here. Ken and his wife Corie are wonderful people who made us feel at home, welcoming us as family right away. Ken has had some really tough health problems with cancer, bone marrow transplants and bone reconstruction in his foot, but he is a fighter and so positive! He is also a Calculus teacher and has been really busy getting ready for the upcoming school year. Corie is “horse people”, she gives riding lessons in a special program for disabled kids and the Wounded Warrior program. She is the proud owner of a Clydesdale named ‘Bo’, I got to see a picture, but didn’t have time to meet him in person, so maybe next time.

Ken and Corie took us to dinner, we had a lovely evening and sat and talked for about 3 hours.