Trip To California

So the week before Christmas we flew to San Francisco, California. (We , as in  my husband, daughter and I. My son stayed home and took care of all the dogs. He works for Amazon and cant get time off during Christmas time). It rained almost the whole time we were there. We had one sunny day, that's when the above picture was taken.

I hate flying It scares me. I understand how the plane works and stays in the air but it is still crazy to me. Plus, I have no control of what happens. Its not even like riding in a car, where you can see what is happening.  I thought I could get through it without taking any medication. But the week we were planning on flying, the news reported two airplane problems. One , where the plane went off the runway. Everyone was ok but it freaked me out anyway. So I called the doctor and got some Xanax.

Flying over the mountains was very cool. Just amazing.

It took most of the day to get there. Our flight left at 7am and we didnt get there until 6pm west coast time (so 9pm our time).  I was beat, especially since I took 2 doses of Xanax, one for each flight.
We stayed a couple of days in San Francisco, at the Zephyr hotel.

I should have taken a picture before we spent a night here. It was  a very artsy hotel. (My husband picked if for Stephanie)

These two pictures are of the court yard of the hotel.  They had fire pits outside and that trailer is for food serving. (These pictures were taken early in the morning. It rained the rest of the time we were there, so we didnt get to enjoy the outdoor stuff).
Here was the carpet in the hallway of the hotel.

I dont know if you can see the wavy effect it gives. It made you feel like you couldnt walk right, even though it was a flat surface. Your eyes played tricks on you.
When we got there the first night, I was just to tired to do anything. I fell asleep,so  Lou and Stephanie went out to find dinner. When they came back and woke me up, I was very confused. I knew I was in a hotel but I told them I forgot to walk the dogs and theyve been in the hotel room a long time without going out. Stephanie was like, "Whats wrong with you?".  LOL.
The next morning we were up and ready to start the day before 7am.  We walked around and found a place, down the street, for breakfast. They didnt open until 7am but they let us come in a little early because it was cold. ( 50 degrees).
 We had a wonderful breakfast.

Dont worry, as I go through our trip, Im sure I will start leaving a lot of things out because I will get tired of writing. So you wont see everything we ate. LOL

We had a bike tour scheduled but not until 10:30am. So we walked to Pier 39.

We had dinner from here 3 nights of our trip. It was very good. Stephanie loved the bread bowl, clam chowder soup.

They make breads. These were in the window and you could watch them make the different breads.

Seals were all over the docks down at the water. I could have watched them all day. Lots o them just slept, but others played and played in and out of the water.

I have tons of seal pictures, but I wont post anymore.  After we left there, we walked over to where our bike tour started.

 This was on the way to our bike shop/tour place. We didnt have to walk up the hill, thank goodness.  They asked if we needed bikes with Motor assist.  I thought, no we are all in pretty good shape.  LOL, if you ever go and arent use to riding up very, very steep hills, get the motor assist.

It was chilly, starting to rain and really windy. Thats why we are dressed  so warm.

Here was the first hill of the ride.

Yea, I had to get  off my bike and push it up the hill. The tour guy said this was the steepest hill.  (yea, it wasnt). It was just the first hill. LOL  Sorry to say, everyone kept having to wait for me.

Same hill just Lou taking the picture from up top and down on me, coming up last.

 This was taken from the Golden Gate Bridge.

We road our bikes down that road, all the way down to under the bridge.

But when you go down, you have to then ride back up again.  The tour guy said, when we got up  this hill, "its all down hill from here".  It wasnt. We still had a lot of up hill to go. Hmmm, maybe he is just so use to the hills, he thinks up is down. LOL  NOT!!

At first we thought we would ride the bikes back across.   Yea, we changed our minds.  Maybe if it had been driving rain when we were done, we would have done it. SO we took the ferry back across.

We had a lot of riding to do , to get back to the bike shop.  We saw a guy being arrested.  It looked like he was coming off the cruise ship but Im not sure. We also saw lots of homeless people sleeping in the door ways of the shops early in the morning. Oh yea, and they break into cars there all the time too. We saw peoples cars with broken window as we went around on our bike tour.  So its good if you are in the city, to not use  a car to get around. That way you dont leave stuff  in it for people to want to steal.

That night we went to Ghirardelli's Square. We all split this ice cream and hot chocolate.

On Monday we drove up to Napa Valley to our next hotel.  We stopped at the Muir state park and hiked there. I figured it was a good thing to do on a rainy day.

This place was beautiful. And we  were there so early, that there werent many people there. Now when we left ,it was packed. And thats with pouring rain. LOL

 Can you see how little the people look next to the trees on the right side of the photo?

It was really beautiful and I just couldnt great pictures, so you could see it.

After that we drove up hwy 101 to Napa Valley. On the hwy everyone was slowing down. We were in the right hand lane. A huge truck in front of us and  kept going half way over onto the side of the road. I couldnt figure out why he was doing this. Then we all came to a stop and the car in the middle lane is turning left. . What the heck. Then I see it. A baby cow is on the highway.  Poor thing. How it didnt get hit, was amazing. (I think the truck  in front of us was weaving onto the side of the road to herd the cow with his truck).

I have not idea how this baby cow could get on the highway. The blonde lady was in the car next to me. She got out to help the lady in the Honda Element. At first the calf wasnt happy, kicking. But once she picked him up, he relaxed. Im not sure how he acted once in the honda Element. At least its the right car to put a calf in. No carpeting.

We checked into our hotel , a Hampton Inn in Windsor. It was a very nice Hampton Inn. The staff went over the top to help us. They gave us maps with winery's to see  and places to eat. They help us find the urgent care on Christmas eve day, when I was sick and had a tick in me, that we couldnt get out.  Warm cookies every night and brown bags of water and food, set out every morning for people to take as needed.  I liked this hotel better than the Zephyr .

That evening we went to a winery, Francis Ford Coppola. We didnt do a tour because it was already late.

Inside is a lot of movie stuff.

This is from the movie "Marie Antoinette" from 2006.

This is the car from the movie "Tucker" 1988.

This is Stephanie from 2015, LOL

We didnt taste any wine here.   Ok, Ill post more tomorrow. 

Huntington State Park beach

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We went RVing at Huntington State Park.  The weather was nice, but kind of cold in the morning.  We were suppose to go, back in October, but that's when we had all that flooding and the highways were closed the day we were suppose to leave. So I called them and they said they didnt give refunds but I could transfer my reservation to another date. So that is what I did. I found out later, from a friend, that she was given a refund for 3 days of her trip because she couldnt get their either. They were staying 2 weeks.  Im not sure how that happened. Weird.

We went on Friday mid-morning and then met Stephanie for lunch. She went back to work and we went on the the park.  We had a nice level spot that was right next to the path that leads to the beach.  I made sure of it this time. When we stayed at Hunting Island park, we had to walk passed all these campers in tents and open type trailers and I was worried we were waking people up.

Every morning there were clouds on the horizon so we didnt get great sun rise shots.

The dogs ran alot the first day.  I think they were exhausted after that. They didnt seem exhausted the first day but by the 3rd , they didnt run around much.

I dont know if you can see it or not, but this bird is eating a snake.

Lots of people were taking pictures of this bird. Not sure why.

That night we went to BrookGreen Gardens. They have on the weekends a thing called "A Night of a Thousand Candles".  Its was very cool. Tons of lights on all the trees. Also tons of people.

 This was the front gate. It was still light out when we got in the car line to go in.

 This is in a gardens with lots of trees all with tons of those hanging lights.

 There were statues everywhere.

This was beautiful but I just couldnt get the shot right.

We had walked 10 miles by the end of the first day. Killer.

 We keep trying to have fires. We finally broke down and bought a bundle of wood from the camp store.

We just wanted to roast marshmallows. LOL

From our campsite, out to the beach , and then 2 miles down, there was this sign.  No dogs pass the sign. We never walked down there without the dogs. Not sure what is pass the sign. It just looks like more beach.

 Stephanie helping us with the GoPro.

We came back  Monday. To bad we woke up to pouring down rain.  This place doesnt have the dump tanks at your site. So you have to pull up to them when you leave the RV area. Even though we knew it was going to rain, we couldnt dump the tanks early unless we wanted to take everything down and move the rv. Then set everything up again. So I was standing in the rain emptying the tanks on Monday morning.   We got back to Columbia and it was a beautiful, sunny day.

Oh so close!!

 So one last try to get enough points to get to go to AKC nationals.  Ive never had a dog that could double Q before. So when Java started double Qing this fall, I looked up what I needed to get to nationals.  I probably shouldnt have gone to UKI nationals if this was that important to me. I could have gone to a 4 day AKC trial and gotten the points I needed. But O' well.  So this weekend was my last shot. I had all the Q's and Double Q's. I just needed 80 more points. I knew it was a long shot for me but I would try. When I got there I went through my points again and only 71.  Ok.
The first day we Qed in standard and took 3rd place. Man there are a lot of really fast little border collies now in the 16 inch jump height. Ack!!

This course had some challenges.  Coming off the running a-frame, making the turn and getting the tire , instead of the weave poles.  Lots of dogs took the #6 jump and then went into the tunnel.  I was really hoping we would get the correct end of tunnel after the dogwalk.




Well we Qed and got 28 points or 29, I cant remember. We took 3rd place behind 2 border collies.

Jumpers we were having  a beautiful run and then she popped out of the weaves. Oh well.

Saturday, no Qs at all. Man we needed at least one Q , to take the pressure off.

Now its Sunday.  Standard was first.

OMG, we were so close.
I was so worried about the opening line. I knew I wasnt going to get much of a lead out and how would I tell her where to go when she gets to #5 and makes the turn?  (Miley had gone off course there).



The turn wasnt a problem at all. The teeter was. If she hadnt left early, I would have been in the correct position to cue the jumps. Ugh!!

I kept debating going home after this. It was Thanksgiving weekend and I hadnt spent much time with my family.  Poor Miley, stressed in the standard ring. As soon as I took her outside she had really bad diarrhea.   I had to take her to the RV and wash her up.  I walked her a few more times before Jumpers.  She stressed again in jumpers and I had to leave the ring. Again, I took her outside and she had bad diarrhea again and I had to go wash her again at the RV. Poor Miley. She continued with diarrhea until Monday after noon. She had a few more baths. She wasnt to happy about that.  I sure hope it was her upset stomach that made her act so crazy in the ring and we arent back to all that stuff again.

Next up was Java. I stopped watching people run because it was making me nervous.  We stepped to the line and Java was on fire.




I was falling so far behind I had to push in for the RC on the flat at #4, and basically use my arm to cue the turn. Then she was just flying and seemed to know where she was going that I put a front cross in after #11. (I hadnt planned on this. I was going to RC after #12.)  But it worked beautiful!!.  And we Qed.  She ran 6.3 YPS which was only good enough for 4th place.  A border collie ran this in 20 seconds. Holly crap that is fast!!  Java was 24.06.   So we missed nationals by like 23 points.

Oh well, at least we had a nice last run.  The drive home was really nice. I was expecting bumper to bumper traffic, due to Thanksgiving weekend. But I didnt hit any traffic at all.

Ive Got to FIX THE TEETER!!!