California Trip- San Francisco Portion

The start of my trip...

Jana and Elisse @ Powell Street Cable Car Turnaround

My girlfriend Debbie lives in Oakland, Ca- which is another eclectic city in the Bay Area; just minutes to downtown San Francisco. While I was there our other friend Elisse (we are all college buddies) drove in from Folsom and we had some good shopping/hangout time in the city. It was gay pride week, so that was interesting- I was RAINBOWED out! Not OUT- out, you know? (gay joke). They would have loved my cake! Anyway, we had fun. The three of us went to dinner at some hipster hangout called Cha-Cha-Cha for some sort of Latin cuisine. I ate fried bananas, which is way outside the box for this girl. And I had my first encounter with sangria... Interesting.

Debbie and Elisse

Debs and I, along with her boyfriend Matthew and other friends went to see a play called, "Tis Pity She's A Whore", which sounds dirtier than it was. It was written 400 years ago, so I only understood around 20% of what was being said, but the music was interesting- a lone chellist using a distortion pedal. The music was the best part. Oh, and the comic relief character rode a 1950's scooter half the time, in full Elizabethan-era costume.

I then took the train from Jack London Square in Oakland to Sacramento and then on to Folsom to see the Tweets. Folsom was hard to see because all of the smoke, but what I did see was really cute and quaint. One of my favorite parts of that trip was... In 2001 I made a pillow for my ex-roommates' (Elisse, Debbie, and Sarah) house, with pin-up girl fabric. Here 7 years later I went into 2-year-old Jack's bedroom, and he was using it as his pillow. It was really cute.

Jack's Pillow

While flying home to Orange County, the plane crossed over Yosemite National Park, and I had a direct view of some of the fires burning there- and more interestingly of Bass Lake. Look at all the smoke- Gross! This pic is looking down at Yosemite- Which was clearer from the plane, but not translating well on film.

Just typical air quality in California... Almost

After a few short days in Orange County, the smoke had cleared so we drove up to the lake- Finally!