How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Summer vacation for me was five days and six nights on the California coast. July 6 was my sister’s 40th birthday and she wanted to go somewhere to celebrate. She usually gets shafted when it comes to celebrating her birthday because it’s so close to the 4th of July holiday.

Five of us rented a cottage high on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The photo with the “To Beach” sigh is from the backyard. It was a very remote location. We didn’t have television reception, no Internet connect and no cell phone service (the house did have a landline though). I didn’t really mind all that much that we didn’t have these things except I missed the Casey Anthony verdict and it would have been nice to call each other on our cell phones when our small group occasionally split up.

The weather was perfect. Mild (in the 60°s) and sunny (after the fog burned off in the morning). We sat on beaches, drove through a redwood forest and taste wine at various Anderson Valley wineries. We even surprised my sister with a small little birthday cake.

The only snafu in the trip was traffic. We all ran into it getting to the house when we arrived but thought that was just because it was a holiday weekend. We were WRONG! We left on Friday, July 8 and a 180 mile trip to the Sacramento airport that should have taken less than 4 hours took 7 hours. We ran into three traffic jams (two resulting from accidents and one from just stupid drivers). Then after dropping Mom off at the airport a mere 50 minutes before her flight, we got stuck in yet ANOTHER traffic jam from an accident (we moved two miles in 45 minutes), and we were ready to get the hell out of California.

But while we were there we had a great time, of course it was just too short! Need more time and more money!

So here’s a photo showing the Robinson “girls”. From left to right: Me (holding Mateo), Mom and Jenny (sitting, holding Dante).