Post-Graduation Excursion

The day after Mary graduated, we all headed to the airport. Our instructions to Mary were something along the lines of, "we'll pick you up at your house at 9:00 a.m." Mind you, this is to move out of college - permanently. And there she was at 9:00, ready with her stuff, which consisted of a lot of suitcases and two boxes. All we had to do was load it in the car and be off. (Sort of. As you can see, there wasn't much room and she had to ride with that box on her lap.) I say this because whenever I moved out of college there was far more stuff and far more humans and vehicular space needed to move it. This was a piece of cake.

So after we dropped off our extra rental car at the airport (as well as Peter, John, and Troy) we went straight to FedEx. There, Mary did some rearranging and managed to convert her two boxes into one. We shipped that box and put the remaining suitcases in the car. And then we were off for our two-day "Mary's fond farewell to California" adventure!

Our first stop was Big Sur. Mary has hiked and camped here a couple of times with college friends and she loves it. She wanted to take us on a favorite hiking trail. We walked for about three miles. It was a stupendous day and we loved it.

The sky couldn't have been bluer. No fog at all and the temperature was perfect!

The next day we drove down to Paso Robles for a bit of beer (which consisted of very little beer and mostly just lunch at Firestone Walker) and some wine (which consisted of mostly just wine and very little food). We visited three wineries, though I think had we known we'd spend that night in the emergency room with Brad's shoulder, we would have tried to get to even more!

The next day we drove down to LAX for our afternoon flight home. It was a long but wonderful trip after four wonderful years at Stanford for Mary. In case you're wondering why we took the long way home - when we took Mary to college four years ago to start her freshman year, we flew into LAX and drove up to Stanford so she could see the part of California between the south and the north. We thought that for her exit we'd complete the circle and drive south to return home. We're all so glad we did. It was a great trip and a fun way to come home.