California Road Trip: Los Angeles and a Baby Shower!

For the past several days my focus has been on helping my friend Karen, her daughter, and son-in-law prepare the nursery as well as get ready for the baby shower.
Many trips to IKEA for furniture and curtains, Babies R Us for  changing pad, sheets, and a few other supplies, and things were shaping up!

Karen sits on the nursery floor feeling her granddaughter kicking

Yesterday was spent printing fun "lemony" images onto tea towels, which were wrapped around Carley's homemade Meyer Lemon Marmalade for take-home gifts.

Today was the long-awaited baby shower, and it was so much fun!

Carley made wonderful cupcakes, pie pops, and cookies

Shower guests wrote a note to the baby, and signed die-cut flowers with fabric pens.

I am taking the flowers home and using them to embellish a quilt!

Alissa gets ready to open her gifts

This is one of my baby gifts:  an infant cap (found on Etsy) that resembles a boob.

I love this so much!

The first of two beautiful quilts!

Here is the redwork quilt that Carley made for Alissa.

(Carley poses with Alissa)

Her wonderful friends, many of whom are members of the Los Angeles Modern Quilt Guild, made the most wonderful things.  The baby received lovely handmade sweaters, hats, and adorable clothing.  

I had to throw Harvey Karp's wonderful dvd into the mix.  

Carley's mother generously offered her beautiful home as the setting for the shower.  In the process of preparing for the event, I made another friend.  

Jamie came up from Orange on the train, so after I reluctantly said farewell to Carley & Roz, Karen, Alissa, & Micah, I drove south to Jamie's house for phase three of the California adventure:  preparing for the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach.  In just a few days our newest exhibition, "Rituals", will debut at the show.  I can hardly wait to see these quilts "in person"!  Stay tuned!

  

California Road Trip: Los Angeles

Karen and I are enthusiastic converts of staying at the Los Angeles Athletic Club! We had such comfortable beds and a very nice complimentary breakfast.
We were picked up by a friend and co-host of the upcoming baby shower to run errands.

The club logo as seen on the elevators

TOday was spent running errands, which was lovely since I didn't have to drive at all!  I've done every bit of the driving on this road trip, which is my preference, but a day off was welcomed.

A trip to IKEA, ordering the food for the baby shower, etc., and then we ended the day at an incredible

French restaurant, Comme Ca.  

California Road Trip: Cambria to Los Angeles

Greetings!  This was mostly a day of driving and no sight-seeing.  We were on a mission:  get into LA and meet Karen's daughter for an appointment.  Another beautiful drive as we transitioned from Highway One to the 101 into LA.

Karen took this (are you relieved?)

Have I mentioned the car-singing?  We do a lot of singing on our road trips.  We delude ourselves into thinking we are pretty good (insert laugh track).  We have been searching for songs that relate to where we are, as well as anything else we can come up with.  This is a full service road trip.

In the waiting room.  We are excited to hear the baby's heartbeat and meet the doctor!

Karen's daughter is in the LA Mod Quilt Guild.

I'm looking forward to meeting some of her friends and fellow guild members at the baby shower on Sunday.

To IKEA to choose some things for the nursery...

And then, much later, Karen and I checked into our room at the LA Athletic Club.

This place is just great, and very near the fashion district in downtown LA.

2012 California Road Trip: Pacific Grove to Cambria on Highway One

Today we begin a portion of the road trip that we have taken together before, at least partially.  We entered the 17-mile drive, a "pay per view" drive in the Pebble Beach golf community.  This is a section of the most spectacular, wild coastline.  The trees are moulded and bent by the wind, the rocky shoreline creates a very rough and dangerous surf.

The plant life are mostly low-mounding succulent varieties.

I suppose this is all that can survive in the tough wind/surf conditions.

Two ravens perch on a rock formation.

This woman amused me:  she happily ate her corn-on-the-cob while the birds hovered nearby,

waiting for a mistake.

Sorry this was taken through the windshield (you'll be comforted to know I was driving)

I love this tree.  All the trees have this windswept appearance.

See all the seals?

The "Lone Cypress"

Ghost Tree

More remains of the ghost trees.  They look very skeletal, don't they?

Such beautiful shapes

Big Sur

We watched many of these Stellers Jays while having lunch at Nepenthe, a lovely 

place near Big Sur.

The beach at Cambria, where moonstones are found.

2012 California Road Trip: Mendocino to Pacific Grove on Hiway 1

Tuesday, July 17:
We stopped into Mendocino to have a look around and fuel the car before we hit the road.  The day was chilly and damp with a thick marine layer overhead.

the local bank

the thickest lavender blossoms I have ever seen, with several drunken bees 

wobbling around in the stems

I love groceries like this, with open, exposed loaves of bread stacked on the shelf

the road was damp, with a layer of fog rolling up the onto the shoreline

This is part of Highway One that we had not driven before.  It was even more "thrilling" than the area south of Pacific Grove, which we will see later.  The road was much narrower, carving into the steep edge of the mountain.  Few guard rails, with many hairpin curves.  I'm not afraid of heights, but at times the palms of my hands tingled like they did when I climbed a bit too high in a tree as a kid.  

We saw a landscape that went from an alpine-looking flora, with mostly low clumping plants.

to this:  pines, eucalyptus, and madrones. 

I don't think this photo does credit to the impressive landscape.

We stopped very near the San Andreas fault to grab these photos.

Note the road in the distance.

Here we are, squinting into the bright "sun"

Join Me On A Twenty Fifth Anniversary Repeat of a Road Trip!

Twenty Five years ago, in July, 1987, my dear friend Karen and I decided to tag a few days onto the end of a conference trip in Los Angeles and take a road trip up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco.
In 1987 I was a busy mother of 2 young daughters, working as an RN in Labor and Delivery, teaching childbirth education classes part-time, and the idea of stealing a few days and taking a road trip was both guilt-soaked and exciting.  Our joke was that, when it came to guilt trips we were both "frequent flyers".  Isn't this true for most working mothers?
Karen and I set off in our rental car heading north.  Soon, we were singing out loud, pulling off the road for photo ops, and finally relaxing for the first time in, well, awhile.

We repeated this trip 3 or 4 years ago, bringing our mutual friend Billie along.

This year, (and you KNOW we had to celebrate the 25th anniversary of that first adventure!) we decided to head north out of Oakland and explore the area around Mendocino, working our way south.
Our lives have changed so much since that first trip:  I added another child and moved far away from my hometown (the only place I had lived), Karen was widowed and subsequently remarried, parents died, children grew up.  Now, Karen is anticipating the birth of her first grandchild.  We head south to co-host (along with her daughter's best friend) a baby shower in Los Angeles.  I'm hanging a show at the Long Beach quilt festival on the far end of this adventure.  Please, come along with me.
We are celebrating our lives, our friendship, and the joy of living each moment with intent and finding those exquisite moments along the way.

Day One (Sunday):  Karen flew from Kansas City, and I from San Antonio.  We met in the airport, got our rental car and drove north.  We realized that this was the longest we have gone without seeing one another since I moved to Texas in 1997.  It has been a year!  Needless to say, the radio stayed off and we talked nonstop.  As we moved north we enjoyed the gorgeous drive.  I hadn't been much further north than San Francisco so I look forward to seeing everything along the way.

When we arrived in Mendocino and found our B&B, no one was there.  The proprietor left a key and an envelope for us. We were taken aback to discover that our "room" was located elsewhere on a different property.  What?  Let's just say we were underwhelmed when we found it.  We agreed that we would prefer sleeping in the car to being in that place.  After some intense internet activity we located a couple of possible alternatives and off we headed down the highway!
We settled on Stanford Inn by the Sea, and this place has been a honey.
Dropped our bags in the room and we drove back into town to the evening performance at the Mendocino Music Festival.
We were uncertain about the vegan restaurant, but trust me when I tell you that the food in this place is amazing.  Much of it is grown in their vast gardens, and the ornamental gardens are equally amazing.  Other than breakfast and sleeping we haven't spent much time on the property, but I like that they allow dogs in the restaurant (under the table).

Part of the view from our balcony.

along the bannister outside our door.

A fun start to our trip!

We went from hot to cool weather.  Feels great!

Viver Brasil performed last night.

Monday:

My breakfast:  portobello benedict. 

Absolutely delicious!

wild raspberries and an unidentified pink flower.

Anyone know what it is?

After breakfast we drove east of Mendocino on an increasingly narrow road.  We had just about convinced ourselves we were lost when we finally saw a sign for Montgomery Grove.  We parked and hiked up a (very) steep trail.

This image is to prove that we still have KROG

(KR, outdoor girl) in our midst!

These spider webs fascinated me:  they looked like little hammocks.

The shell of one of the giants

Can you see me? 

Evidence of a fire marked many of the trees.

There were several huge trees on the floor of the grove.

We were captivated by the sculptural roots,

now covered in moss.

This one reminded me of a giant coral

Tomorrow we head south to Pacific Grove.  It is a long drive and we hope to do most of it on Highway One.  We may skip around the SF-area to avoid the traffic.  Stay tuned!