California 5/9/08

The Jelly Belly tour was fantastic (and free) in Fairfield, CA. We happened to get there right before the second graders from Neil Armstrong Elementary showed up but we got the tour right along with them. I was thrilled to see so many parents on the field trip and that the children were so well behaved. The teachers seemed as excited as the students and one of the teachers said they just got done with 3 days of standardized testing.

When we left there, we stopped and had lunch at the In-N-Out burger place. I like going there ever since I found out that they don’t use preservatives in their food. Then we headed towards the coast and the Point Reyes National Seashore. I didn’t know that this was the only national seashore on the Pacific Coast. Since we were there, we just had to go visit the lighthouse which is supposed to be the most windy and foggiest point in the west. There were over 300 steps down to the lighthouse but the view was well worth it. The only problem was when you had to go back up the steps in the strong winds. While we were there, there were two rangers cleaning the old light in the lighthouse and I found out there are 1032 prisms in that light.

After we left the lighthouse we went on the Earthquake trail that explains earthquakes and the San Andreas fault. The best part was when we came to an original fence that had been split and moved in the 1906 earthquake. For some reason, this really made it seem real and easy to understand for me. I have heard about this earthquake but it seems like some point in time way and not very real to me, until today. I began to imagine what it must have been like to live during that time. I wonder how that affected property surveys and land ownership.

We are tucked away in a motel in Petaluma, CA after eating a good Mexican dinner. Tomorrow we will head to the coast and go north along Hwy 1 some more. Maybe we will end up in Eureka…and then again, maybe not.