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The Home Page. Date: Thur, 28 Nov 1996 Subject: The Saga of a Steel Magnolia in Silicon Valley
OR...The Saga of a Steel Magnolia in Silly Cone Valley. (thanks Joe!:-)
OR...Life in the fast lane 'cause it's the only one out here.
Hi All,
Thursday: Happy Thanksgiving to one and all. It's a sunny day in Sunnyvale. The sky is clear with fluffy clouds dotting the horizon, and best of all...it's warm outside. Katherine and I are in the midst of doing our cooking/baking stuff. Yes, there's chocolate involved. We just put the turkey in the oven and I thought I'd write up a quickie note to me friends.
We haven't been doing much since our arrival. Getting the apartment into a livable condition occupies most of our time. Another town...another camp site. When I'm not working, we're exploring the town. It still reminds me of south Florida here. Low buildings, palm trees, fruits, nuts..... :-)))
After the first of the year, if I can wait that long, I'm going to start getting back out on the road. There have to be fun places to camp in this area of the world. Count on the fact that I'll find them.
Friday: Cabin Fever Strikes! News at 6. It's a glorious day and we decided to take a short drive. We went south from Sunnyvale on Hwy 9 to Hwy 35, and then headed north up the peninsula towards San Francisco on the skyline drive. Every state in the union has a skyline drive, well maybe except Kansas, or possibly Iowa. Well, we went up along the ridge of the Santa Cruz Mountains and there we saw our first redwood trees. We knew they weren't regular trees because they were so big. They could have been only one tree that I know of...the mighty redwood. Wow. Hwy 9 was one long trench carved into the ridge of the mountains with an occasional breakout for a spectacular view of the Bay valley. It was like driving through a green haven with all of the trees surrounding us. It's still not like driving the skyline drive in north Georgia though. There's nothing like the Appalachian Mountains in my opinion. They are indeed the 'Grand Dame' of Americas' mountains. Elegant and peaceful, not at all like the raw power of the Rockies or the rolling Santa Cruz. It felt good to be surrounded by all the green. I love the desert, but this is wonderful. All too soon, we came down off the ridge and found ourselves back on the freeway. It is crowded out here. I miss the peace of the desert, and the emptiness too. Well now, we made it to San Francisco and would our way through the city streets. It was like driving through an expensive 'company town' with the streets lined with row houses. However, the row houses here are mucho expensive. At last we reached the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a sight to behold. We'll be back to visit it again and walk across the next time. Our drive took us north, then east across the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, south and then west back over the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge. You could say that we've been on a driving tour of the Bay Bridges. It's a neat sight. You can see most of the bridges from each other, their outlines are magnificent across the bay waters. We headed south again towards Sunnyvale and made our way through the hoards of holiday shoppers. The malls have been grid-locked here since 7AM. Driving was a good alternative to shopping I think, actually any thing is a good alternative to going to the malls as far as I concerned.
Saturday: Check out the following web site: http://www.geckoplex.com/eclectic The Eclectic Lapidary is on line and I have made a contribution to it.
Enjoy the holiday, the comforts of home, family and friends.
Take care and write when you can.
Jan Noble, steel_magnolia@mindspring.com
If you would like to trade stories, email me at steel_magnolia@mindspring.com
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