My mom hadn't been to our house for a visit in awhile, so she hopped a train in Fresno (picture that) bound for Sacramento where I picked her up around lunch time on Monday. She stayed until late afternoon on Friday. In between, we......spent a day in San Francisco, hanging with Dylan and Rachel and seeing the sights. We picked Rachel up at her place around 12:30 (picture taken in Rachel's kitchen), after which we motored on over to Dylan's shop to collect him so that we could all get some lunch. Mom treated everyone to a lovely meal in the harborside patio of The Ramp. Happily, it happened to be sunny in this particular location at this particular time--not always a given in the summertime on the peninsula.
We drove back to Dylan's shop to show Mom around (3rd picture in front of some lumber storage) and then left him there to work on a concrete table top for a client. After dropping Rachel off back at her place, we just had time for a whirlwind tour of the Greatest Hits of SF--Golden Gate Park, Lincoln Park/Legion of Honor, The Bridge/Presidio (next picture--where you can see weather being a little more typical for this time of year), Fisherman's Wharf, Lombard Street, North Beach/Chinatown, Financial District, and then we're heading east on the Bay Bridge. By 8:45 we were back in Grass Valley. Whew!
...spent quite a few hours looking at old photos, she telling stories and I jotting down a few names dates and key words. They were mostly pictures of her early years in El Monte, but there were also some nice ones of her folks in Brooklyn (where they met after each of them emigrated Finland in the early 20s) and even a few of the Old Country,
...wandered around the Fairgrounds as I delivered a few entries to their respective judging sites (the Nevada County Fair is next week--more about this later, of course),
...made do-it-yourself frozen yogurt concoctions at Culture Shock,
...Googled our brains out looking for information about various subjects from the Finnish language and the Kalevala to Whatever happened to ____? (fill in the blank. One was "the Gabor sisters"),
...had a nice dinner out (thanks, Mom!) at Amigos in Nevada City where we munched Mexican food to the tune of Deer Creek splashing along just below us (last photo).
The Amtrak Station is just a few blocks from Old Sacramento, a well-preserved historical area on the banks of the Sacramento River, so after we got Mom comfortably seated on the train, Tom and I headed over there to wait out the rush hour on Friday afternoon. It's more than a bit tourist-y, but cute and we hung out there for awhile, walking and stopping for some Indonesian food (excellent!), and enjoying the effects of the "Delta Breeze" which was keeping Sacramento unseasonably cool (wow! mid-eighties).
It was a good week! She's home, now, but she'll be back. More photo-processing and Googling to do...
