Sac Town

Tower Bridge

Annie's house

It’s Monday. Tomorrow Annie will go back to work after taking a day off on either side of the weekend. That gave us 4 days together besides last weekend’s three days.

And so tomorrow we will more than likely leave, too, heading east, to begin our trek back to Michigan.  We’ll leave if we can.  It’s raining this morning in Sacramento – a good solid kind of rain – and the forecast calls for rain all day and evening.  That will mean snow in the Sierras, the mountains we have to cross on I-80 at Donner Pass, Lake Tahoe, if we want to then drive south on the eastern side of the mountain range. Which we do. Even though the miles and miles of almond, apricot and peach trees are blooming right now in the Central Valley, we have driven I-5 before and would like to take a different route. So our leaving tomorrow and going east will depend on the snow accumulation today and tonight. We shall see.

Above the American River

Annie at USGS

Our stay with Annie has been delightful.  We have visited her at the USGS office on the Sac State campus to see her work space and meet some of her colleagues, we’ve toured Old Town Sacramento, strolled through the Crocker Art Museum, and walked the dogs on the American River trail more than once. We visited two of my cousins (Mom’s sister’s family,) one of whom happens to live a few miles north of Annie in this sprawling city, and we’ve gazed with incredulous Michigan eyes on the bounty of winter vegetables and citrus at the Sunday Sacramento Farmer’s Market. We snagged a good deal on Cara Cara oranges. Of course, Michael helped Annie complete a few projects on her cute little house she’s owned for three months. Installing a garage door opener and blowing 12 inches of insulation into the attic were the two big ones on the To-Do list. Done!!