When starting our journey, Jesse had every intention of keeping his distance from large cities! But as we continued on, we realized that we have a lot of great relatives in the Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco areas. Today we visited my cousin Mike and his wife Val. Our mom’s are sisters, and if i’m not mistaken, Mike is my oldest cousin out of the 20 or so that I have. He and Val have lived at a great house in Alameda for 20 years. I know this because of a address book my mom gave me for our wedding 16 years ago. There’s is about the only address that hasn’t been crossed out and changed!
Mike and Val love to sail, so it’s no coincidence that they have a little channel behind their house. They live in the East Bay of San Francisco in Alameda and they both work very close to home. They took us to their beautiful sailboat, the Red Sky, and it very similar to our camper! They look forward to the day they can sail around Mexico like we’re driving through the states. Unfortunately the weather was not cooperating for us to sail in the bay – believe it or not I was WISHING for wind!
We ended up driving around the old Alameda Naval base. It has been closed for a bit, but they are renovating large buildings for things like breweries, trampoline spots and even a crossfit gym. It was right down the boys’ alley to check all of this stuff out. The Hornet, an old aircraft carrier, has been turned into a museum and we were able to check it all out. It was very interesting being in every part, from the sick bay to the pilot’s ready room to the top of the “island”! There were fantastic views of San Francisco from here as well.
A bit of embarrassment for the day for me is that I forgot to wear green as it was St. Patrick’s Day and I am 100% Irish. (well almost…) I was nervous we wouldn’t eat any corned beef too as Jesse and I have made so much over the past years hosting fun parties and celebrations with family and friends. Well- Mike certainly saved the day! He made the best corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and carrots I have ever had.
It was great day to celebrate with family!(MT)
Road Schooling with the Tischers 