Blogs from Sacramento, California, United States, North America

Packing This blogging platform doesn't come with much instruction, so here goes... Today marks the end of a two weeks of shopping to add to my camera equipment coming up to my May 8 departure. I now have my new lenses, carry-on bag, memory redundancy, and portable hard drive, and I still need to find my tripod. In addition to this, I've been working on scheduling all kinds of friends and colleagues to come by my place to care and socialize for my cat, "Lote". I'm devoting much of today to laundry, packing, and then eventually cleaning up my home. On Monday, I will depart Sacramento via the Amtrak Capital Corridor, transfer to BART in Richmond, bound for South San Francisco, where I will spend the night at my cousin Susan's house before my 7 a.m. ... read more

SACRAMENTO RIVER VALLEY, CALIFORNIA Down along the banks of the Sacramento River were some of the largest Birch Trees I have ever seen. We spent an exciting day exploring the vineyards, wineries and farm communities that stretch along the river as it winds it's way toward San Francisco. We did a wine tasting at an old coverted Sugar Mill that now houses eight family owned wineries. Not as well known as Napa and Sonoma, this area still has some excellent wines and there were no crowds and the pace was friendly and unhurried. A serendipitous bonus was that we were able to have lunch at an out-of-the-way pizza place with an old friend. I called my long-time friend and college fraternity brother Ken Davies and he just happened to be playing in a tennis tournament in ... read more

Hello friends. I'm heading off on a (life) long awaited trip to Italy this next week. On past trips I've regretted not keeping up with a journal, and so this time I'm giving this electronic platform a try. Please feel free to check it out over the course of the next month; Il Mio Mese in Italia! After dreaming of visiting my Grandfather (Frank Luporini)'s homeland all of my life, I'm finally bound to set my feet on Italian soil this spring. Thanks to family living in the area, a surplus of frequent flyer miles and paid leave at work, I'm spending a full month in Italy. I chose this duration as a balance between my wanting to feel like I'm "living" there, and not pissing off my boss at work! I'm heading to Frank's home ... read more

Left San Francisco in glorious sunshine and crossed GG for some great photo ops. Continued through gorgeous Marin County to go to the Christadelphian service in the community center. We swelled the numbers by 25%! We drove to Old Sacramento an old preserved cowboy/gold mining town by the Sacramento river. Strolled in the sun and had a few ice creams and frozen yoghurt. Drove down to Stockton, a typical sprawling California central valley town with huge agricultural surrounding area. Disappointed to find the outdoor pool was closed for winter! This despite sunshine, mid 60's temperature and that Spring Break has started. Oh Well. Tomorrow we hope to visit the most beautiful location on earth...Yosemite valley.... read more

Good travelling so far. Two days from Olympia, WA and we are resting for a long weekend at our daughter's place in Orangevale, CA. I've taken a few walks around here and have included a few pictures from along the American River. Yesterday we went down to the Nimbus Dam fish hatchery and saw many big salmon coming up the fish ladder.... read more

Well, Blogs are like pictures and will never be able to capture the true nature of things. Thus far I have failed at keeping this "blog", if I can even call it that, updated. This is mostly due to the fact that I have not touched a computer until now. I have seen, experienced, and had many thoughts over the last 2 weeks and know now that I will not be able to express them here, or anywhere, in words or photos. None the less, here's a bit to wet your palette:... read more

Horrid Weather, Wonderful Friends We are into the fifth day of our California road trip...and the weather is getting steadily worse! It is actually colder here than in LaConner. (42 when we were out earlier!) We drove down through Washington and Oregon in sun/rain for two days and hit snow in the mountains in Oregon/California, but it did not stick to the ground, thankfully! We got in front of the storm in California, and had sun til mid morning on Friday, when the downpours started. Last night we had wind gusts here around 50 mph...! The good part has been seeing family and friends along the way. We stopped to see Jason and Gabriel in Edmonds and Luke at work on the way through Seattle. We got to my cousin Pam's home by dinner on Thursday. ... read more