Yesterday 9-2-08

Now, back to yesterday. We weren’t in any hurry because we knew we had a short travel day so we did our exercising and had breakfast etc. We pulled out around 10:30.

Some of the road (highway 101) is four lanes and some is windy slow two lanes. From Fortuna all the way down here to Ukiah the highway crisses and crosses the Eel River. The Eel River is quite awesome in the winter/spring time and has flooded the highway in spots, but during the summer it is shallow and meanders along. It is a favorite place for wading and cooling off during the hot days of summer, though looking at it from the highway many pools are slimy green with algae, any pool will do when your melting I guess.

Over the years the state has worked to improve this main north coast highway. Right now they are building two massive bridges over the river canyons to bypass a windy piece of road that has a lot of rock slides and wash outs. Everyone passing by is fascinated with the project because it is a massive undertaking and even though no work was being done yesterday the turnouts were full of people taking pictures and there was even a sign saying Keep Your Eyes on the Road! One span is finished and as you can tell the other span is a work in progress, these pictures can’t begin to really show the scope of the project and how far above the river bottom they are.

Highway 101 is just a beautiful, scenic highway.

We ended up in Ukiah two hours from our start time and traveled around 85 miles from the Garberville area that we started from. We got ourselves all settled in and then took off to find Andrea’s house…we haven’t been to this one yet, they moved in June. We can actually walk to it from the fairgrounds where we are staying.

As we were walking up to the house this man walked from the neighboring house with this creature hanging on his shirt. He was happy to show us Mrs. Beardsly and tell us all about her. She is a Bearded Dragon, is a little over a year old, is full grown and is a native of Australia. Very interesting creature and I was able to touch her all over…neat. We weren’t scaring her so we didn’t get to see her in full beard. How do I know she is a she? She had no ribbon on her pointy scales nor did she have long fluttery eyelashes, I just had to take her owners word for it. It wasn't like I could tell what to check for!

We spent the afternoon and evening with the kids. They barbequed a tri-tip and we had corn on the cob and I had baked a chocolate cake for Andrea’s birthday and we had that for dessert.

Ian had been camping with his Dad and family and came home minus a tooth. The first loss of a baby tooth and no one even noticed until he got home to his Mom’s. SHE noticed and Ian doesn’t even know where or when he lost it.

Ian is in school now and this evening we are going to go watch him at his soccer practice.

As I didn't have time yesterday, here are this years baby picture picks for Andrea's Birthday. I couldn't disappoint everyone now could I? She was about 9 months in these two pictures. The one where you can see her shiny two teeth she is up in the bed of the camper we had at the time and we were camped here at Lake Mendocino in Ukiah....a looonnnggg time ago!