Loren and I enjoyed our week away, traveling north from Berkeley, where we were at the end of last week. We started this week visiting in Santa Rosa for lunch and an all afternoon catch up with a friend of Loren’s from high school and his wife. This dear friend was involved in a dreadful car accident a couple of years ago, and had it not been for the side air bags in the door of their car we would not have been able to have this wonderful time. You would never know anything happened by looking at him now, but he still has a fair amount of difficulty with his vision. We wish him the best in his continued healing journey.

Following our afternoon visit we appreciated seeing some of the tribute statues around the historic part of town that commemorate some of the Charles Shultz’ Peanuts characters, as Santa Rosa is where Schulz lived the majority of his adult years. 

  

The next morning before leaving Santa Rosa we enjoyed taking a Bikram Yoga class. An image at the door reminded me of one of my earliest instructors from 2004. I was always impressed by his demonstration of this particular posture, but, the image fails to do him justice as he was way more slender in his stomach, while much more built in his chest.

From there Loren and I drove to Geyserville, where we indulged in two nights at a retreat center. The setting reminded us of Egypt, as it was centered around the Egyptian Goddess Isis. We stayed in their Hobbit Hut, which reminded us too of our visit to Hobbiton in New Zealand, which is the movie set for the trilogy of Hobbit movies. We were especially enamored with a gargantuan tree on the property…

 

Then we were off further north to visit in Lower Lake at Clear Lake. We stayed two nights with friends who Loren has known since his young adult years. They have a new puppy who is both adorable and teething. Loren and I each came away with similar looking to our friends’ bite marks and scratches on our hands, arms and legs. 

We thoroughly enjoyed visiting with them in their lovely lakefront home. One day they took us to a new winery called Boatique, unique in its featuring of a huge building that houses impressive boats in the vineyard. That evening we went out for pizza and invited other friends from Lower Lake to join us for a fun gathering.

  

The next morning we took a Bikram class at the Lake County studio, where I had spent two months teaching some 50 classes, about four years ago now.  

On the way to spend the next two nights with another friend in the area, we stopped to see “The Box” – a property where Loren had built the garage and deck for a house on Cache Creek that his parents had had built then sold at the start of “The Dome” –

which we then visited, which Loren had built with some of his father’s help. 

  

When we arrived at our other friend’s home, it brought up bittersweet feelings. It was great to see him, but it was hard to see his property. His home was once a two-story building, that was destroyed in the Valley fire. This is a copy of his photo of what was left.  We immediately recognized the walkway, but nothing else. 

Because of frustrations and hindrances from new building codes, he ultimately settled on a manufactured house to replace his home, after living in an RV on the property until it was done. It is nice, but definitely not that same as what our friend had once created from his own hands. His son, who was nearly finished paying off on buying his grandparents’ home on the same property, has yet to make progress on replacement plans. They were able to save his son’s backhoe, but both lost some other vehicles. So many of the trees were badly damaged too, and, some of the ones that were partially damaged are coming back with a different leaf structure. 

 

It is tragic to contemplate the fires. The ones we heard most about in the past week include the Valley, Rocky, Clayton, Sulphur, Tubbs, Ridge and River fires. We saw several handmade signs that said, Thank You Firefighters. We heard about surviving fireballs, firebombs and firewalls. Bears have been sighted in the neighborhoods as a result of their loss of habitat. And, we saw lots of replacement homes coming up amidst scorched trees and earth. It is heartbreaking to know of these friends’ and so many others’ experiences.

Yet, the lake is still beautiful – the smoke from this year’s fires had cleared just before we arrived. We ate the same brand of brats with our friend that we had enjoyed at a fair with another friend when Loren and I were in Wisconsin. Then, I was able to teach the Saturday morning Bikram Yoga class before we headed south again. We stopped in Novato to enjoy lunch with my cousin, then, after arriving home we had a lovely dinner with dear friends to top off our wonderful week away.