Now in cool Carlsbad

We are now in Carlsbad.  On the way out we stopped for two nights in Santa Fe and for two nights in Sedona. Both were very fun places.  We had been briefly in Santa Fe but Val had never been to Sedona.  We (I) thought we might take care of everything that ails us by going to the Vortexes (Vortices?) and getting all the spiritual energy that is supposed to be there.  Didn't work. If fact Val had a fall by tripping over a rock on a driveway and hurt her knee.  


Anyway we had a good time until that happened.  We had planned to visit our friends the Woosley's in Tucson, but decided to just keep on trucking and make it to Carlsbad.  Fortunately the knee rapidly improved so that a few days later she was getting around normally.  

We have been puttering around here getting everything the way we like it.  Val has been busy "gardening" in our pots and  putting up the hummingbird feeder.  

Over the weekend of June 19-22, we went up to Carmel to meet some old friends, Pate and Judy Thomson.  Pate and I interned together in Seattle over 50 years ago and we have kept in touch.  They celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary during our visit.  Carmel hasn't changed much in 50 years when I started going for medical/research meetings.  One thing we did, though, that was new to us was to explore Elkhorn Slough.  This inlet of Monterey bay is home to a lot of wildlife.  Many people kayak there, but we went on a small boat powered by an electric motor. We loved the birds and animals, particularly the otters.

Now back and looking forward to the family reunion for the Nies brothers and their families that will be held in the Newport area hosted by Nancy and George Bravante (Boyd's older daughter. We haven't had such a reunion in a while and this year it looks like almost everyone can make it, including Lorrie and John and their family from Texas.

Toward the end of July we will be traveling with Ken and Mo to Europe on a trip organized by the University of Redlands.  We will start in Munich and then travel to Salzburg during the Mozart festival. We then will take the train to Budapest and board a Viking cruise to Nuremberg.  We get home in mid August.

We're looking forward to seeing our California friends this summer.

Just a word about the rains in Texas.  We were there for most of the worst of the rains and flooding.  Fortunately our area in Sugar Land didn't suffer too much but it was hard to get around because of the flooding. One night we had about 11 inches of rain in about 6 hours. The next morning we saw an alligator in the lake outside our condo.  Later in the morning it had climbed onto the bank behind our Whole Foods market about a block from us. They are probably all there as they are in a lot of the rivers in Texas, but we hadn't seen one so close previously. 
Val's brother has a weekend home in Wimberly, TX that was the site of the first large flash flooding.  Their house is on a bluff above a small creek. They were there over Memorial day when the flooding started. In the middle of the night they got a call from a neighbor to look out the window.  The water had risen to the deck of their house, which is probably about 40 feet above the river normally.  Neighbors whose houses were below theirs lost their houses.  Several people were killed and hundreds of houses were washed away. Normally the river is no more that calf deep at its deepest.
So it is good to be back out the flood zone into the earthquake zone.