Honeymoon

Matt is posting complete daily synopses (I use this term loosely) of our honeymoon on Baillie Blog. If you have a lot of time to kill, check it out. We are having a great time out here in sunny California, where we have not seen a drop of rain and fog for only an hour or so one morning. We must have done something good.

Tomorrow morning we leave the Mendocino Coast to travel to Yosemite, where instead of cliffs, beaches, and ocean, we will spend time with rocks, snow, and waterfalls. And probably a lot more people. And probably just as expensive. Our dinner tonight, which was cheap by Mendocino standards, cost $35. This is worse (monetarily) than being in Switzerland! I suspect we may also be without internet connections, so this could be the last blog until we return.

This afternoon, as we were sitting on a bench at our hotel overlooking the sea, we were discussing what we would have done with our honeymoon had Karen and Bernie not generously offered to send us on one. I guess they must have offered a long time ago, because I don't even remember contemplating this question before. We decided that we probably would have been staying at a Marriott in Phoenix and watching a lot of spring training. And that certainly does not sound bad, but we would have missed out on a lot of great things. Some highlights:

• The trainee rental car shuttle driver in Oakland
• The 'maze' between Oakland and San Francisco
• AT&T Park and the Battlecry! (Evangelicals that prevented our tour)
• A complete walking tour of San Francisco that totaled probably close to 5 miles the first day and over 10 miles the second day. (It's really the best way to see things and the whole coast is beautiful!)
• Getting drunk with Jenny for old time's sake (I know you're not supposed to see people on your honeymoon, but we figured one day out of 10 wouldn't hurt.)
• A cute little B&B on Washington Square with a cocktail hour, breakfast-in-bed, and a bay window view of the cathedral and Coit Tower.
• Golden Gate Bridge
• The drive on Highway One to Mendocino
• An even cuter Inn with a fireplace, porch overlooking the sea, picnic tables overlooking the sea, benches right up on the sea clif, the nicest hostesses (I think this is a B&B term), and tasty breakfast.
• Thai burritos
• The entire Mendocino Coast: Mendocino Headlands State Park, Russian Gulch State Park, Point Cabrillo Light Station, MacKerricher State Park, Jughandle State Park, Spring Ranch State Park, Mendocino Coast Botanical Garden (we seriously hiked at all of these)
• Seals and Sea Lions and Whales

I have to mention whales again because I am so excited about them. We kept looking for them for three days and never saw them. Finally this morning, at a park I didn't even want to go to, we started seeing spouts. And then we got out the binoculars and started seeing bodies that go with the spouts. Granted, we never saw them fully, but it was so cool! And while all this was happening, we watched some sort of heron-like bird fishing and eating his catch. He had some problems involving the fish or eel (not sure) flipping itself around the bird's beak. Very amusing. It was so fantastic!

Anyway, tonight is our last night in this great Inn, and tomorrow we venture on. We are pretty excited! Thanks again (so much) to Karen and Bernie and we will talk to ya'll later!

I just have to add a post-script that we have not turned into B&B people. We don't fit in at all, and yet I love it.