Quick trip to California

What am I doing in California you may ask. Well, some RV'ers Gate Watch, or do other forms of workcamping for extra dollars; I work for diesel for an amazing group, The California  Child Abduction Tast Force.  It was a bit of a logistic challenge, we had to plan to be near a hub airport for cost purposes and be able to travel The Natchez Trace.  We chose Atlanta to be our base and to go to nearby attractions for the two weeks we will be in the area.

Tuesday morning this week we got up at 3:30 a.m.  That is no typo!  We drove to the Atlanta Airport, North Terminal, 43 miles in the dark.  There were lots of cars and trucks on the freeway that time in the morning and the commute was uneventful.  Tom dropped me off, gave me a kiss, and sent me through "security".  I made it through with my 1 gallon ziplock baggie with no more than 3 oz. of liquid in several bottles, with my shoes off and with no wires in my clothes. I suppose I didn't look like a dangerous person.

I was scheduled to land in Sacramento at 9:59, but we were late as we had an unexpected stop over in Salt Lake City. The story was there was a medical emergency, a load of puppies in the cargo hatch and a loss of temperature control.  So we landed, offloaded the puppies, refueled, and were in the air again in about 40 minutes.  We landed in Sacramento at 11:15 a.m.

Cool Judy Rinehimer was waiting for me. Thank goodness for those handy Kindle apps on our Smart Phones and Judy took advantage of hers.  Judy gave me a quick tour of beautiful Auburn and we had a delicious lunch at Awful Annie's - strange name - fabulous food.   One of the interesting sites in Auburn are the enormous sculptures by dentist, Dr Fox.  Some of the sculptures are not appropriate for this blog.  You can see how large these are when you look at the cars in the parking lot.

She dropped me off at the Holiday Inn in Auburn and had to get back home to continue moving back into their Cool home.  They had arrived just the day before from being on the road.  We had planned on getting together on Thursday for a tour of Cool.

My room at the Holiday Inn was recently remodeled and the view was beautiful and soothing.

This was a jam-packed 3 days of workshop sessions.   It was great getting together with many of the presenters that I have worked with for several years.  We did have a nice dinner out on Wednesday night at an interesting restaurant, Latitudes, and talked about all sorts of things, the workshop, traveling, geocaching, etc.  Just a great time eating and catching up. We had walked from the Holiday Inn to Latitudes and back; almost a mile and felt great.

The three days went by so fast and it was time to head back to Tom, Pansy and the DA PAD, but not before my tour of the canyon drive from Auburn to Cool and the Rinehimer 'stick' house.  Both tours were such fun.  Cool Judy is a wonderful tour guide. I think I learned even more from Judy than I did about the area from watching California's Gold and Huel Howser.  We finished our tour at the local Pizza restaurant before driving back to the Sacramento Airport,  I had a 10: p.m. (no typo) 'red eye' flight back to Atlanta with a stopover in Charlotte, NC.  I got back this morning, Friday, at 10:30 a.m. with about 2 hours sleep.  Tom picked me up, took me back to the DA PAD and I had a nice nap.

After I got up, we drove to a Camping World in Byron, GA, where we bought a couple of chairs, the 2012 Corp of Engineers Camping book AND gas at $3.26 a gallon.

It is so good to be home, even if for only a week.  Next Friday I well fly out of Atlanta again for granddaughter, Julie's 21st Birthday Bash in Las Vegas.  The party will include my Mom, Sister, daughter Jennifer, granddaughter Jamie, and of course Julie and boyfriend, Claudio.  Remember what Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas. (very big grin)