Life took us from Hawaii to California. It's not too big of a climate shock. It's colder, but there's still palm trees. We're a lot closer to home - about a 9 hour drive rather than a 6 hour flight. IT A-School awaits...
We were actually living in Santa Rosa, so Jeremy had a 25 minute drive each way 5 days a week. We had brought my car from Oregon and were still waiting on Jeremy's car to get here from Hawaii, so I had to take him to school for a couple weeks while we waited on his car.
The drive is gorgeous. About a third of the drive is on 101, but then it takes off deep into farming country. A hot day is not pleasant, however. The aroma of cow patties and dead skunks fill the air. But it's a pretty drive.
Though we were a lengthy drive from Petaluma, Santa Rosa was a perfect little town that reminded me so much of my hometown in Oregon. It's also the birthplace of Charles Schultz's Peanuts Comic Strip. There's an ice rink there dedicated to the Peanuts, plus numerous surrounding wineries, a quaint little downtown area, some great hiking and biking trails, and even a nice little lake park with trails and day use areas, and a fairground hosting dog shows, horse races, markets, and the fair. It's a medium sized town with some great little communities and neighborhoods; it has everything you need and is still very close to big city life. Frisco is only an hour away. Beautiful Countryside. The apartment we lived in was nice, also. Spacious and secluded, but still close to a 7-11 and a Safeway.
Here's our apartment complex:
Here's us at Spring Lake Park not 2 miles from our apartment. Can't beat that:
Here are some random pictures in and around Santa Rosa/Petaluma. The first one is in Rohnert Park, the second is the 101 Casino along 101 just south of Petaluma, and the third is Discovery Kingdom along 37 close to I-80 nearVallejo. I wanted to go so bad, but in the short amount of time we were there (7 months) we never had the chance to go.
We were able to explore different areas of Northern California during our stay, however. We made use of the weekends when the weather was nice. From now on, since our temporary residences are becoming longer, I'll start to shorten my posts and separate different areas. I'll close out this post here and continue where I left off with some different areas we toured. Looking back at our time, I'm starting to wish we explored a little more, like visiting the wineries just for the scenic view. Neither of us are fond of wine, so we never really thought about it while we were there. Anyway, stay tuned for more pictures coming soon! I'll get caught up one of these days. :)
