Family Time

 

At the end of January our daughter came to visit for three weeks. At the beginning, three weeks sounded like a wonderfully long time, but in the end, time, of course, flew by way too fast. We filled those three short weeks with a lot of fun activities and tried to make the most of the time. Unfortunately, the Geek couldn't take off all of the time, but we still got several weekdays that we could spend together.

Since she still has quite some clothes here and didn't need to bring any, she filled her suitcase with the delicious things that we miss here.

Since she misses it so much in Germany, we spent a lot of time at the ocean, walking along the beach during sunset...

whale watching (unsuccessfully) ...

hiking the headlands ...

spending an incredibly windy day in Point Reyes, looking for elephant seals and their pups ...

and watching more sunsets.

One day she came with me to German School and did a fabulous presentation about Germany for my students. They loved her and we ended up having a pretty lively conversation in German.

We walked around the lake where we discovered American White Pelicans for the first time.

We walked among ancient Redwoods and she tried to hug one...

She spoiled our friends' dogs and the resident cat in our garden; they in return adored her.

We played cards on those rainy afternoons (we didn't have many of those) while drinking feshly pressed blood orange juice (this, of course, is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday; it feels good to be back!).

And way too soon it was time for her to say goodbye to her parents and California.

There will be more about our time with Kaefer in upcoming posts.

Passing of Summer

Last Monday, after almost eight weeks of summer break, I went back to work. In all honesty I was not looking forward to it. The summer had been just too beautiful to say goodbye to these almost carefree weeks easily. But the new school year starts next Wednesday and there is a ton to do in the library before that.

At the beginning of the summer break I had made a list of things I would like to do during those weeks. I was afraid that I would just waste my time and by the end of the break would look back on missed opportunities with a lot of regret.

Instead, I look back on eight delightful and fulfilling weeks - without having touched each and every item on my list.

Hardly a week into my break the Geek and I went to San Jose to meet with Kaefer who was about to buy her very first car, a used VW Golf with a manual transmission. She is so happy about it since it gives her a bit more independence even though she is still riding her bike most of the time.

After this first week of mainly doing nothing I started to "work" on my list. I spent a day in Sonoma where I visited the mission and the old barracks;

I spent a morning in the beautiful lavender gardens of a winery:

Many mornings I took long walks around my beloved lake;

I re-discovered the laguna with its interesting plants, crooked trees and beautiful birds (can you see the California Quail?);

And I walked along the beach, something I do way too seldom even though the ocean always calms me and gives me inner peace.

Kaefer came home for the Fourth of July week since this was the only week she didn't have to work (she had started her summer job right after finals in June). We didn't do much - once we went champagne tasting (she turned 21 in April), but apart from that we just hang out, watching British mystery shows, playing games and drinking traditional German Erdbeerbowle.

I spent a lot of time reading and knitting (this is the start of a little dress for our newest family member in Turkey) and I even painted a bit!

Before the summer I got back into the habit of journaling. I had lost my ability to write my journal after the fires and I couldn't find a way back to it. It seemed like something was completely blocked in me. I hated it. Over winter break I had taken a free writing class which was like a little teaser; it motivated me to take a more in-depth writing class in the spring and it eventually helped me to get back into writing my journal. This is one of the things that makes me unbelievably happy.

I said one of the things... the other is photography. Somehow - even though I was still photographing a lot - I had lost my "flow" with photography. Sure, I still took a lot of pictures, mainly with my phone (I got a new phone this year with an excellent camera which is wonderful but also involves the risk of becoming lazy), but it wasn't the same passion. However, I have experienced these "waves" more than once during the more than four decades of photographing, so I wasn't too worried; but I did want to find my old passion again.

And I did. Since I spent so much time on my own this summer I could right dive back into my photography and I enjoyed it so much. I tried different takes of the same motif and it felt so darn good. I don't know WHY photography makes me so incredibly happy, I only know that it DOES.

The last weekend in July the Geek and I spent in Gualala, just two hours up north from where we live, at the coast. I had rented a cabin that was in the redwoods, but right across the water - we could hear the ocean on our little deck. We enjoyed sunsets over the ocean, walked on the cliffs, ate (too much) peanut butter cheesecake and just delighted in the beautiful scenery.

During my last week of break I wanted to have one more day at the ocean and went down to the Point Reyes National Seashore where I walked out on the spit and back along Limantour Beach. It was one of those typical Northern California summer days - sunny and warm, even hot, but the moment you come to the beach fog envelopes you and the temperature drops by 20 degrees. Ah, Northern California, how much I love it!

And then break was almost over - one last Sunday spent in San Francisco with our favorite girl. We spent several hours in the Exploratorium (I hadn't been there since they had moved to Pier 15 from their old location at the Palace of Arts), rode the historical streetcar of the F Line, ate fish and chips near Fisherman's Wharf and walked along Crissy Field Beach.

It was a beautiful summer.

An Image and Its Story - September 2018

The Point Reyes ship wreck has been on my "things to photograph"-list for a while, and a few weeks ago I finally got to check it off.

This ship wreck is in Tomales Bay, behind a general store in Inverness on Point Reyes. You can't see it from the road, you really have to know where it is. Thanks to Google I found the actual location on the satellite map (a feature I use very often).

We arrived there before noon when the ship wreck was in full sun. We thought the entire scene looked very dull and flat and didn't bother to take a single picture. It was disappointing - and so we moved on to our hikes and a wonderful enjoyable day at the beach.

We came back in the late afternoon when the sun was much closer to the horizon and Inverness had dipped into the shade. Nevertheless, we stopped at the general store again and walked over to the boat.

And wow! Only parts of the wreck were in the sun and the sky behind it was pretty dramatic. The water was quiet and reflected the old fisher boat. This was our moment.

You'll Never Find Your Gold on a Sandy Beach

... but you can find solitude.

And that's what we did when we went to Point Reyes two weeks ago. After our beautiful hike to Chimney Rock we felt a walk on the beach might be just the ticket. Drakes Beach is easily accessible and we thought it might be very crowded on this warm day, but to our surprise there weren't many people there. We were almost on our own here and pretty much had the beach all to ourselves.

It was so nice walking on the sand, listening to the waves and feeling the sun on our faces. I was looking for shells but mainly found empty crab shells as leftover from some seagull dinner, and even a jellyfish. We usually don't see too many jellies here.

We watched the sea playing with this - thing? I have no idea what it is, and if you know I would appreciate if you told me. There are quite a lot of these long marine plants (I assume) to be found on our beaches, they are lightweight and have some kind of seaweed attached to it.
Update: A friend told me on Facebook that it is Giant Sea Kelp. I actually should have known that...

Even here in this kind of protected bay a lot of driftwood has been washed ashore, and the ice plant is gently covering it.

Finally, we went to a beach further to the North, McClures Beach. Here you actually have to descend the cliffs through a canyon - it's about a 15 minutes walk and the reward is an almost empty beach. However, the weather has changed as it so often does on the coast in Northern California. Gone was the sun and the blue skies, somewhere above the marine layer that spread over the coast.

The walk along the beach was still beautiful, though.

Until we happened about this crab. The waves had washed it up, but strangely enough the seagulls that were close by weren't interested in it. We assumed that they don't like live crabs since they can't figure out how to avoid getting pinched by the claws. That poor crab was helplessly wiggling its legs and starting to blow bubbles. Another wave threw it further up on the sand. The "beast" was pretty big and I wondered how to grab it to save its life. Just when I had asked the Geek this question the crab got on its hind legs and stared at me.

Don't you think it's pleading with me to save it? So I grabbed it around its shell, running with it towards the waves and throwing it back into the ocean (and, of course, getting wet while doing that). It never turned up again, so I guess it made it - and I was happy about that.

After that heroic deed we had to climb back up the cliffs and into the fog.

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