Days Two and Three and a Flying Trip Back to Berkeley

This is what we woke up to this morning: fog and temperatures in the low 60's.

By 1 pm, we said to hell with it and headed back to Berkeley with a list of 21 forgotten items.  At the top of Jerry's list was a microscope.  At the top of mine was an apron (really, a bib.  As a crone, I'm a total slob when I eat) and a bunch of other stuff I didn't really need, but we were going, so whatever.

We spent 20 minutes in our house, each of us running around with shopping bags.  We were back in Inverness by 4:15.  Still foggy and a few sprinkles on the windshield.

Yesterday we had wonderful weather, and we thought we'd take a warm-up hike to limber up the bods.  Something gentle,  not too steep and not too long.

We set off on a hike from the top of Drake's View along the ridge to the top of Mt. Vision.   A mountain. Why did we think this was going to be a flat trail?

Because it started like this:

 Pleasant, flat, sun-dappled 

I love the sense of well-being I get when I hike, but that feeling dissipated fairly soon as we began to trudge uphill.

The trail climbed and climbed, and I didn't take any more pictures because, reader, I didn't have the strength.  We kept going.  Through the trees, the views of Tomales Bay were tremendous.  Several times I suggested we abort, turn around, and return to sanity.  But, no.  Jerry has a thing right now that we have to take on some tougher hikes to prove we're not that old.  We kept going.

Finally, we got to the top (where there's an FAA facility,  a parking lot, and views down both sides of Inverness Ridge), turned around and hiked back to the car.  The National Park Service signs alleged that it was a 2.6 hike round trip, but no way.  We average three miles an hour when we hike, and it took us over an hour just to get to Mt. Vision, according to the NPS, a mere 1.3 miles.

Oh, well.  We congratulated each other when we got back to the car  (how buff! how un-old!) and went straight to the Inverness Store for ice cream bars.

Good news:  We found the box of white wine by the side of Elisabeth's driveway.  It sat outside in the sun all afternoon on Thursday, but I'd had to foresight to drop my visor on top of the bottles somewhere along the line, so maybe it's drinkable.  Whatever, we're going to drink it.

An excellent book that I'm reading obsessively:

A well-researched and balanced report on the saga of the Drakes Bay Oyster Company, which for years fought with the National Park Service to extend its lease in the National Seashore.  This issue tore apart the local community, and we had friends on both sides.  You don't know which side the author's on until the very end.

And a good watch:

An informative and entertaining movie based on the true story of an Austrian woman's fight to reclaim five Klimt paintings stolen from her family by the Nazis.

Now, off to raid that box of wine...