Happy Birthday Rory Groves!!

Rory is 31 today and we are celebrating! Last year I asked him how he felt turning 30 and he commented, "I have been waiting to be 30 my whole life." So 31 is just one better than 30 in his mind.

And we got to celebrate with family! We are in Fremont, California for the week staying at Rory's Aunt Carolyn and Uncle John's. They graciously opened their home to us while they are in Southern California visiting family.

Their daughter, Laura, lives a few miles away. I first met Laura while working for Sara and Troy when we came out to California for a women's conference. Laura and Aunt Carolyn met us at the conference and after a few conversations Laura announced at the dinner table that she thought Rory and I would be good together. (This was before I had ever met Rory!) But she was right, and I love her for seeing it before we did!

So here is Rory's cake this year:

His new product, Weather Defender will come out in a few weeks. It is incredible ... each version I get to see is astounding. This shield is his new logo- so I thought this would be a fitting cake to celebrate his 31st year. I had to go from memory, so the shield isn't exactly the same, but it's close.

It took me two tries to make the cake! I added extra pineapple to the carrot cake recipe, buttered the sides of a cookie sheet and hoped that the cake would be 1 1/2 inches high when it came out of the oven. (I envisioned a very large shield.) But between the larger pan and the buttered sides and the pineapple addition something went terribly wrong. It came out 1/4 inch thick!

The San Francisco Treat

Our great friends John and Shannon told us a few months ago that they would be in San Francisco mid-October and thus, Rory and I began planning this road trip adventure to time with their trip. John and Shannon are Minneapolis friends, looking to move out to Marin County, in the San Francisco area. We had a fantastic weekend with them, driving all around and getting acquainted with the towns they would possibly live in. It was so good to be with them and it left me bummed that they are going to move.

We had dinner in China town at "Seafood and More" after we read this compelling sign. It was really good, and left Rory with a baby bump like Shannon's. (Shannon's is legit, Rory's is not.)

These pics were taken at a little local market where Shannon will get to shop. Lovely.

Lots of good memories in this rental..we just may have been the largest car on those San Francisco streets :)

Down Highway 101

We spent a few nights in Crescent City (this is their light house...beautiful) and hit the road to get a bit closer to San Francisco. We spent the night in Santa Rosa home of the E Myth Worldwide!

When Rory realized that Carlson Business school was geared more towards large business ladder climbing, he left the school to look for something that was aimed towards small business owners. He began a curriculum through E Myth Worldwide that largely shaped the way he set up, organized and runs his company. This is a picture of him with Bill, his main contact at E-myth.

(In a nutshell, E-myth stands for "Entrepreneurial Myth." The teaching is based around the premise that you may love fishing and tackle with your whole heart, but that doesn't mean you would be happy opening a fish and tackle store. You need to love business, marketing, risk, PR, and goal setting as much as you love fishing and tackle.)

We were then onto San Francisco!

Majesty!

I spent the entire day singing "Majesty!" or "Oh Lord, oh Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!" You can ask Rory. I've been hum singing all day. We left Bandon this morning, drove the coast, saw cranberry bogs that are soon to be harvested and arrived at our sweet KOA in Jedidiah Redwood National Park in Northern California. We have a cabin for the next two nights:

This is a great shot of Rory, working from our front porch. Strangely, we have both accomplished a lot on this trip work wise. And that feels good. The next picture is taken from our porch...it's the root system of a fallen redwood. Incredible. We drove into the state park for a hike this afternoon and I began singing Majesty again. Check out these pictures.

Sea Lions, Seals and Crab Fishermen

That's what our day was filled with today. The sea lions were dense on the rocks and SO LOUD. There was even an elephant seal sunning himself, a monstrous animal with his head tipped up to the sun to catch some rays. There easily were hundreds of these flubby, hippidy creatures jumping around on the rocks below. There were two stationary telescopes on the overlook so we could watch these sweet animals point their chins to the sun and hobble over one another to get to the water. It was a riot.

These pictures give some idea, but the noise really added to the commotion we were watching. We drove to Bandon, OR for the night and spent a lot of time walking on the docks, had fish and chips for lunch and learned how to fish for crabs. Honestly, this whole side of Oregon is exactly how I imagine the East Coast...and I'm excited to go there one day too. But if you ever have the chance to travel Hwy 101 in Oregon, you really should. We have a beautiful country.

We got a YURT!!!

On Sunday my sister-in-law Stephanie told us we really should try to see if we could find a YURT to stay in while heading down the coast. So yesterday the stars aligned and we arrived at Cape Lookout State Park to land the last yurt available for the night.

Yurt stands for Year-round U-something Recreational Tent. They have electricity and heat and feel much more like a cabin with canvas walls than anything else. It reminded us a lot of the banda we stayed in on our safari in Tanzania.

We had a blast. We slept well, we ate well and we were right on the ocean. I'd like to thank my girl scout leaders from 2nd-8th grade, Judy Pugh and Leanne Snyder, for the delicious dessert below that I had tucked into my memory of fantastic camping treats. I "roasted" caramel on a long stick over the fire until it was just about to fall off and sandwiched it between two saltines. It is crazy-good, similar to a salted nut roll.

Rory made spaghetti and suddenly we had four uninvited dinner guests. And these raccoons were very, very tame. Any attempt we made to send them on their way had very little impact. They simply tipped their heads and looked at us as if to say, "it is very obvious you are going to have leftovers."

We saw many beautiful sites today. I'll leave you with my favorites.

To the Oregon Coast

Thanks to lots of conversation while visiting with our cousins and family in Seattle, we decided to slow up our travels and enjoy the Oregon coast. I cannot believe how grateful we are for this kind advice...we would have missed so much!

We are in Seaside Oregon today, a spectacular town on the ocean. The town must be packed in the summer...it is set up as a tourist town. But this is the off season, and it feels like we're here with a bunch of the locals. There are 10 kites being flown on the beach at any given time with salty mist filling the air.