CA vacation, part 4

I worked with a great lady for about 5 years before she retired 3 years ago.  Every time I'm out in CA visiting my bro, SIL and niece, Kristan asks for me to come visit her.  I've always bought my tickets though, so it doesn't work.  This time, she told me to ask before I got the tickets and we would set something up.

So, after a gorgeous 4 hour drive northeast from San Jose to Nevada City (the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains), I reunited with my friend Kristan and her husband Dick and the great big (sweet) black lab Beau.  They have a beautiful 6 acre property and it is just exactly what they always wanted.  It's peaceful there and I just soaked in all the beauty.

Views from Kristan and Dick's deck:

One evening she cooked an entire meal on that grill from pork chops and potatoes to pineapple for dessert.  Amazing!

This is what they call their "swimming hole".  It's the Yuba River.  Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible for someone like me to get down there - steps go only part of the way down; the rest of the trip down to the water is spent navigating the different pointed and jagged rocks!  But once you get down there, it's got to be amazing!  It was incredible just to look down on from the bridge like we did!

Kristan and I went into downtown Nevada City one day and it is everything you'd hope an old gold-mining town would be. This is a monument to the town's history: a mining implement that revolutionized the mining process.

If you know me, you know we HAD to go into this one.  It was charming.  Since we had just had lunch, I actually didn't buy anything.  It had old time candies that Kristan (25 years older than me) remembers from her youth and some that I remember from growing up that they don't carry in the store any more.

This place, ,the "Willo", was one on the corner of the roads we came and went into Kristan's neighborhood.  No, they didn't forget the "w" on the end.  The founders' names were "William" and "Lois", so "Wil" and "Lo".  The funny thing about this is that my Pastor and his wife in my church growing up are named Bill (short for William) and Lois!

Do you see the praying mantis on the top of the wicker love seat?  We were fascinated by him (or her, not sure how to tell!)  It stayed there a long time.  We spent our afternoons on the deck because there was a nice breeze out there.  We would enjoy some snacks and thumb through the beginning of what we refer to as holiday catalog season!  This bug came one afternoon and stayed for a couple hours.  From our memories, we thought it was supposed to camouflage itself.  Apparently it thought the wicker was green?