City By The Bay

Let's just blame it on the winter weather – but I'm suffering from a travel bug the past week or so. Even though there's nowhere in particular I want or need to go, I just have the itch to go somewhere!

I've seen a lot of the country over the years. I've been to places I never thought I'd see when I was growing up. My field of reference was pretty narrow when I graduated from high school. Up until then, my only experience with vacations were the times Mom and I spent one summer week with my grandparents in Jefferson City – which was only from the time I was 3 or 4 until I was 12.

We had fun on those vacations. My grandfather was a security guard at the Missouri Governor's Mansion, and being around that center of the state government was just a normal thing for me. On one day each summer we would ride to work with Grandad. We would enjoy the Governor's Mansions grounds, walk down the street to the State Capitol and explore the flower gardens there. We would go through the fantastic museum they had on the ground floor of the Capitol and then we would walk back to their house. It was special.

I still remember so many details from my senior class trip. We spent a day and a night in St. Louis, including being the second class to go to the top of the Gateway Arch. We toured Meramec Caverns and then spent two nights at Lake of the Ozarks. It was quite an adventure, and Mr. Newman took the bus across the Mississippi River at the Arch so we could all say we'd been out of the state when we graduated.

Over the next 20 years there was a lot of traveling (and moving!) around the country. Younger daughter and I were talking earlier this week. She's taking a trip to Chicago this weekend and was hoping to see Lake Michigan for the first time. Somewhere during the conversation, I had a light bulb go off in my mind and told her she had already seen Lake Michigan.......when she was eight, from Traverse City, Michigan. Being the youngest, she has the least memory of some of our adventures.

Hubby is the one who introduced me to my favorite spot away from home. He was born in San Francisco and raised in Palo Alto, California. I fell in love with the area the first time we visited. His folks were so sweet and took me on a tour of San Francisco on my first trip there. I don't think they missed anything, though my former CPA father-in-law didn't stop anywhere around Fisherman's Wharf, which he proclaimed was nothing but a tourist trap. Hubby made sure we had supper that night on the waterfront, and it was fantastic.

Over the visits there hubby and I enjoyed early morning walks from his folks' condo to downtown Palo Alto. We had numerous trips on the Stanford University campus. We visited Napa and saw some of the wine country between Sonoma and Napa, and rode the ferry across the bay to downtown San Francisco. And there's always the ocean.

Our last visit to the Bay area was three summers ago, for father-in-law's 90^th birthday celebration. My mother-in-law took us with her to the Museum of Modern Art, because the Stein collection was showing at the time and she wanted to see it. Hubby and I made it through about half the tour and then bailed to look around the rest of the museum. I found I enjoyed the sculpture much more.

Hubby's folks live in Medford, Oregon now, and his sister and brother-in-law have moved there from the Bay area. We all gatheredthere  five years ago for the folks' 60^th wedding anniversary. Never ones to just sit and visit, they took the entire extended family – everyone who wanted to go – on a jet boat ride on the Rogue River. It's not necessarily for the faint of heart.

We are probably headed to Medford again this summer for mother-in-law's 90^th birthday celebration. They have, though, said there will be no jet boat ride this time....but I'm sure they'll come up with something fun! I dearly love my in-laws.