Fourth of July, Mt Shasta, Reaching Oregon

From Carmel we heading inland to spend a few days with friends in Danville, a suburb of Oakland and San Francisco. The road took us through Castroville, which is the artichoke capital of the world. I have a lifelong love of artichokes and went to an artichoke restaurant. I had artichoke soup (like chicken soup with large pieces of artichoke hearts), french fried artichoke hearts, and an artichoke saute. French fried artichoke hearts may have been the first dish I ever learned to cook; I sometimes made them for myself when I came home from school.

Our hosts are friends we met last year on a cruise to South America, Alice and Richard and they kept us busy every minute- just the way I like it! Our first evening we had a picnic (note the jackets. This weather is why we do this coast trip in the first place).

After the picnic we went to the California Shakespeare Theater to see a very nice outdoor production of a Shakespeare comedy, A Comedy of Errors . The venue was a good sized amphitheater.  Our hostess, Alice, knew one of the cast members.

The next day Alice and I made a brief trip to an AJs type grocery store (in fact she said it used to be an AJ's)  then on to a terrific mall with all kind of good stores- Saks, Bloomingdales,- you name it, it was there. It was just a quick trip to return something but  long enough to see it was a shopping mecca. 

Then we drove north to Sausalito for a walk around town and dinner.
And on to Mill Valley for a stop at a waterside cafe with great views of San Francisco across the bay.  

 We ate dinner in a very unusual location, a former WWII army base at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  I forget the name of the restaurant (Cavallo Point?) but the location was very different and lovely.

The next day was the Fourth of July as Alice and Richard had friends over for a BBQ.

There were ribs, chicken, 9 kinds of appetizers, good wine, good conversation. There is talk of another get together on our return visit in September. 

The next morning we headed out to complete our California drive. We love the coast north of San Francisco (and have lots of suggestions if you decide to do a drive yourself) but we had a deadline of a dance festival in Seattle so we left the coast and zipped up US 5 toward Oregon. 

We had time, though, for a picnic with some friends en route. We had wonderful leftovers from the holiday feast and met up with a couple we've known for 45 years from our East Coast days. It was hot but always great to catchup with them. 

Our next stop was Mt Shasta which is 14,000 feet talk and had snow on top, even in July. It was very attractive but we didn't like the area much. It reminds me of Flagstaff and Mt. Humphries, but not as interesting as Flagstaff. 

We also went to the town of Mount Shasta. There was  a street fair and it was a flash from the past with dozens of hippies walking around (mostly old hippies).

We stayed in the next town, called Weed

The Mount Shasta area must be in Indian guidebooks because most of the tourists in the area seem to be from India. It seemed that every single person in Weed was from India. We even ate an Indian restaurant. Which is a little surprising for a town with about 2 or 3 restaurants. 

The next day we started to drive up Mt. Shasta and the views were stunning. 

Our Mt. Shasta visit concludes the California portion of our trip. I said this was going to be a California blog but I am going to send out one more piece on two great destinations in southern Oregon, Ashland and Crater Lake. 

I hope you enjoyed reading about our California trip. I enjoyed sharing it with you.