At the Happy Garden

At the Happy Garden Restaurant for Dinner
Robby Hunter, Drew, David Tomasin, Danny Hunter and Jack

2006 Almanor Day 3

I got up and went for a four mile run north from the Dorado Inn along Highway 147. After a quick breakfast, Drew, Jack and I went out on the lake with Jill Wallen in their boat with Carol Wallen and her friend Sara. Drew wakeboarded and Jack went on the kneeboard.

We spent a long time parked on the lake with Hunter's boat just drifting. Everyone went swimming and went back and forth between the boats. I have always enjoyed these types of times.

Back at the cabins, we had a quick lunch and headed up to play golf. We took four foursomes to Plumas Pines. I ended up in a group with John and Jill Wallen and Jack. I had a 57 on the front nine and then a 50 on the back nine. I actually had three pars.

Jack was essentially playing best ball. He would hit this ball and then most of the time we would pick it up and he would hit from my shoot. Jack got stronger as the day wore on. Several of his shots were better than mine!

By the time, we got back to the cabin it was almost 7:00 p.m. Although it took some time, Hunter and I successfully rallied everyone to go for chinese food in Chester. We took 22 people to dinner at the Happy Garden Restaurant. The one sour note is that it appears that the nearby Ranch House is closed. We have gone there for almost 20 years to play pool and shuffleboard. It was almost 10:00 p.m. by the time we got home from dinner.

Drew with the wakeboard

Jack on the kneeboard

2006 Almanor Day 2

Sunday was a lazy morning. I got up early and went for a four mile run north of the resort. No one was moving very fast. Several different groups spent the morning visiting, drinking coffee, kibitzing and making breakfast.

Finally in the late morning, several of the boats started out on the lake. Unfortunately, by then, the lake was getting choppy. Jack, Drew and I ended up going out on the lake with Hunter, Loren and her friend Loren.

We cruised up the lake to check out the area where the Hamburger Hut used to be. From there, we headed to Big Cove to scout out other places to buy gas on the lake. After a long stop to swim in the lake and cool off (We had trouble getting Hunter's boat restarted!), we headed south along the east side of the peninsula.

We headed around the point and to the west side of the lake to a cove where Hunter thought it would be calmer. Jack made several attempts to get up on two skis.

We headed back down the western shore past Plumas Pines looking for Carol's, a grill just off the lake in Prattville. We stopped there and walked up to the restaurant. The grill had shut down at 2:00 p.m., but they were still serving dell sandwiches.

After having lunch, we headed back to the Dorado Inn. In total, we spent more than four hours on the lake. It has been a number of years since I cruised that much around the lake.

The owners of the Dorado Inn have a social hour on Sunday nights. Afterwards, the Bob Wallen's made dinner for the group.

I ended the night playing blackjack with Jack and working to get him to bed before 10 p.m.

Drew and Jack

2006 Almanor Day 1

Coming off the two week trip to France and a week back at work, I agonized over what to do about the annual trip to Lake Almanor. This year will mark the 19th straight year that we have gone to the Dorado Inn at Lake Almanor.

I thought about going for only part of the week, but got some very negative feedback from Jack. Given that the Dorado Inn now has wireless internet access, I figured I would go for the week and do some conference calls and keep up on e-mail.

Morgan is Boston for the summer and Sharon had a work commitment on Monday and Tuesday; we expect to see her in the middle of the week.

Drew was finishing up working as staff at the Sugarloaf Fine Art Camp. He did not get done with the program until after 1:00 p.m. By the time, he got to Elk Grove, it was after 4:30 p.m. Drew, Jack and I finally rolled about 5:00 p.m. It was an uneventful trip to Chester. We made a quick stop in Chico for some food and were to the Dorado Inn by 8:00 p.m. We unpacked the truck and relaxed.

It felt odd to get to the lake that late. There have been years in the past where we were rolling before 7 a.m. and up to the lake by 10 a.m.

The rest of the group had gone for pizza in Westwood and did not get back until after 9:00 p.m.

I finished the evening sitting at the picnic tables playing chess and then cribbage with Jack. Catching up with Hunter and the Wallens, we listened to Drew playing the guitar. At that point, I wondered why I ever thought about not coming to the lake.

Table 260 Elk Grove

Sharon, Jack and I had dinner at Table 260 in Elk Grove. This new restaurant is located next to the Black Horse Pub & Grill. Sharon and Jack had gone there before for dinner while I was in New York.

Unlike some others, this is definitely a neighborhood restaurant worth repeating. It is a different menu which is described as a fusion of American and Soul.

2006 Sugarloaf Fine Arts Camp

For the fourth year in a row, Drew is spending two weeks at the Sugarloaf Fine Arts Camp as a counselor. Before he was a counselor, both he and Morgan went to the camp as campers.

1,600 miles!

Sharon and I tend to be very agressive about covering lots of ground when we travel. Two years ago, We covered 1,500 miles in fifteen days exploring Florida. On the France trip, I esimate that we covered more than 1,600 miles in 14 days. We traveled about 750 miles by train and almost 850 miles by car. Admittedly, this included two big travel days: Reims to Chamonix and then Chamonix to Sancerre.

In spite of the effort to get to Chamonix, we felt that it was definitely worth the trouble. From my perspective, the French Alps were unlike anything I have ever seen. Standing on the floor of the narrow valley and looking up at peaks on either side that rose more than 10,000 above you with a couple of big glaciers was amazing. It rivaled the experience of the Eiffel Tower, the Lourve and the other major tourist destinations.

On the other side of the coin, we spent too long in the Loire Valley. Two days would have been enough to accomplish what we wanted to do.

I also wish that we had spent more time in Paris. While we had a chance to explore the Rue Cler and Montmartre neighborhoods a little, I would have liked to have had a some more time for some of the walking tours in the guidebooks.

Struggling with French

The major tactical error that I made on the France trip was not being better prepared to deal with the language. Before the trip, Sharon had some French language lessons on CD that she and Jack started looking at. I got frustrated with lessons because the pronunciation rules seemed random and they were covering words that I did not think were important. My intention was to put together a sheet of words and phrases to carry in my pocket, but just ran out of the time.

I knew we were in trouble from the minute I started dealing with the cab driver at the airport on the way into Paris. While people spoke English at the hotels and most of the major tourist attractions, there were dozens of times on the trip that someone would rattle something at us in French and Sharon and I would look at each other and both shrug. My language skills did not improve over the two weeks.

One related story, from my upbringing on the farm and two years in high school, I have a small working Spanish vocabulary. Driving Sharon to distraction, I was constantly saying "si" instead of "oui" during the trip. On the last Friday, while I was trying to get the car parked in the parking garage, I said si instead of oui to the attendant. The attendant immediately asked me if I spoke Spanish. I said that I spoke a little Spanish and he and I were able to have some type of conversation. He immediately became our best friend and got us going on foot in the right direction towards Sacré Cœur. The exchange made me realize how different the experience is when you can communicate even a little. I am going to try to figure out a better strategy for future trips.

Rude Frenchmen?

I have heard people talk about how the French are rude. This was not my experience during the two weeks that we just spent in France. In spite of the fact that my language skills are nonexistent, I found French people to be very patient and helpful.

Only once during the whole trip did someone treat us rudely. While we were champagne testing outside Reims, we stopped at a cafe in Verzenay. When we finally got the waitress to come to the table, it was clear that she wanted nothing to do with us. She was not willing to spend any time helping us work through the process of ordering something to eat. Other than that one experience, people were hospitable and gracious both in the big cities like Paris and in very small out of the way places.

1000 places to see Paris

For Christmas in 2003, Sharon bought me the book 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, A Traveler's Life List.

Of the top ten sights listed in this book for Paris, we did seven of them on our trip, including Arc de Triumphe, Basilique du Sacre-Coeur, the Eiffel Tower, Hotel de Invalides and Napoleon's Tomb, the Lourve, the Musee D'Orsay and Norte Dame.

The three things listed in the top ten that we did not see were the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Musee de Cluny and the Musee Picasso. The Pompidou is a modern art museum, while the de Cluny is a medival art museum.

The book also had a number of other must-dos for Paris. One of things that we did on this list was a Bateau-Mouche Cruise on the Seine. We went on the cruise just after sunset and we all felt that this was one of the high points of our time in Paris.

France Paris Day 14

Up at 6:15 a.m., we caught a 7:15 a.m. cab to the Charles de Gaulle Airport. Everything went smoothly and by 10:30 a.m. we were in the air heading back to San Francisco.

Eleven hours later and a nine hour time change, we were back in San Francisco at 12:30 p.m. By the time we got through the passport check, our bags were waiting. We were home by 3:45 p.m.

At 9:15 p.m. Saturday night, my travel alarm went off. It was the alarm I had set to wake us up in Paris on Saturday morning. At that point, I realized I had been moving for 24 hours with only a short nap on the plane and I crashed.

At Charles De Gaulle Airport

France Paris Day 13

We made a decision that we wanted to try and create a full day back in Paris on Friday. We sat the alarm for 6:00 a.m. It took us until a little after 7:00 a.m. to get packed up and loaded in the car. We set the GPS in the rental car for Basilica of the Sacré Cœur in Paris. With a stop for breakfast, we were there by 9:30 a.m. This was one of those times where the GPS was invaluable; we drove through Paris and to a spot about two blocks from where we wanted to be. The GPS even highlighted a parking garage (which I missed the first time and had to go back around to). We had an interesting exchange with the parking garage attendant which I will include later in a separate post about our experiences with the language.

We toured Sacré Cœur. This church is located on the highest point in Paris and has some spectacular views of the city. Afterwards we wandered through the Montmartre neighborhood surrounding the church and had lunch.

We returned the rental car to the train station and took a cab to the hotel. We are staying at the Hotel de La Bourdonnais our last night in France.

We then headed back to the Museum d'Orsay. We felt like we ran out of time there last week and decided to make a quick stop there in the afternoon.

From the Museum d'Orsay, we walked to the Museum National de l'Orangerie. This has some impressive Monet's Water Lilies as well as a large collection of art gallery of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings.

We headed back to the hotel to clean-up. For dinner, we met Sharon's friend Angela at Mollard's. Angela, her husband and young son have just moved to Paris in the last month. Mollard's is a restaurant that Brun's mother and her husband frequent when they are in Paris.

Sacré Cœur

France Noizay Day 12

We had breakfast on the back terrace of the hotel. Afterwards, Sharon and Jack played tennis for an hour.

The plan for the day was to head for Chambord. This is the largest French Chateau; it has 440 rooms and 365 fireplaces. Chambord is surrounded by Europe's largest enclosed forest park. Given that the audio hours were more than one and a half hours long, we decided against it. We plotted our own path using the map. The scale of the place is impressive, but we did not enjoy this site as much as we did Chenonceau. Chenonceau seemed more consistent, while Chambord seems more like a thrown together museum and less like somewhere that people lived. We had a late light lunch in the village.

When we got back to Château de Noizay, we headed down to the pool. While we were sitting there, a couple comes down with two young kids. The husband seemed very familar; Sharon and I were trying to puzzle out how we knew him. Sharon finally realized that it was Joshua Malina who played the character Will Bailey on West Wing. While we were sitting there trying to decide if we should say something to him, he commented on the book that Sharon was reading. This gave us an opportunity to confirm who he was. We ended up to talking them for a little while. In a stranger twist, his wife is from Clarksburg and went to Delta High School. She knows a number of my relatives.

We had dinner in the restaurant at the Chateau. While this had the potential to be the second best meal that we had on the trip, the room was so hot and stuffy that all I remember about the evening was sitting there and sweating.

Over dinner, we agreed that we probably only needed one and a half days in the Loire Valley, rather than three. We felt like we wanted more time in Paris and less in this region. As a result, we decide to get up early on Friday and head back to Paris.

Chateau de Chambord

Chateau de Chambord

Château de Noizay