We landed in San Francisco on my birthday, March 30th. After a wonderful time in The City, we headed to the hills where we had rented a house for 3 months, with a month to month lease. The perfect situation for indecisive people. It’s a home in a beautiful gated community called Lake of the Pines. These deer were visiting the yard our first morning there.

We celebrated Easter with the grandsons and daughters. However, because of rain, we didn’t get to use the huge backyard.

The community is located in Auburn which has dozens of trails. (Maybe more.). So, since we are now located in the forest, we figured we’d get started on our experiences here. This is Hidden Falls. We’ll hit a new one every week or so when we can.

Being back in California also means we can use our membership pass to Monterey Bay Aquarium. In December, we took Nicole and Ramani. This time we took Melissa and Avery with Theon and Caleb. Tide pools the first day and the aquarium the next. It was a quick two day trip with a stop at Ghiradelli outlet in Lathrop on the way home.

While we’re in the area near our family, we had to make the decision about settling, or traveling still. We looked at homes, open houses, neighborhoods, and routes to the grandkids, for a month. I was so obsessed I would sometimes get up at night and look over the housing lists. Finally, we realized that every house we saw had something wrong with it, and the market was moving so fast, that we needed to look at houses with a strong intent to buy. Since we couldn’t do that, we figured we were still in the roaming mode. Our next plans are to stay in Quebec City and then Vancouver, for the fall.

In the meantime, we’ll enjoy being at Lake of the Pines, and the Sacramento area.