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My love for adventure and travel plus socializing have followed me since Sacajawea Elementary, Chief Joseph Jr. High and Columbia High School, University of Washington, and Dominican College, California. Two visits to sunny California attending the Rose Bowl led me to leave rainy Seattle after graduating in 1965. I have never looked back! I moved to Marin County, California, 15 minutes from San Francisco. There I taught 36 years for the San Rafael School district on the Elementary and Jr. High level as a classroom teacher and Jr. High counselor. At the same time I had a private business as a licensed Family and Marriage Therapist in Marin. After moving to Livermore, California in 2001, I taught part time at the Livermore Alternative School.
In San Rafael I married, divorced, and raised my son, Jason. He graduated from UCLA and now lives in Redwood City, the South Bay, and forty-five minutes away from me. He’s a CPA and works as the CFO for the American Conservatory Theatre working in downtown San Francisco. I also invested in Marin County real estate, which my son now manages for me.
In 1994 I met my husband Bob and we built a home in Livermore, Ca. in 2003. This town is very much like Richland with a similar climate. It’s a company town where families have spent their entire life, as did our parents in Richland, working at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and Sandia Lab. It’s an agricultural area with weather that is ideal for the 35 wineries located within five miles from us. It’s also ideal for flying at the Livermore Airport. Bob, a Cal Berkeley Mechanical Engineer, built a Q200 Rutan designed airplane that is immortalized in the Smithsonian air museum. We have flown for the last fifteen years to destinations in California, Oregon, Idaho, Wisconsin, Kansas, Utah, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, and three times to the Richland airport. We love to fly and the perspective from our plane at 7,500 ft. is fantastic! Bob continues to build airplanes but now they are the quarter size remote controlled type.
Use it or lose it! So I have been exercising my whole life. My love for skiing continues forty years from the beginning Blue Mt. bus trips in Jr. High School to the many years of skiing in the California Sierra Mts. and Colorado Rockies. Colorado skiing is my favorite and Bob and I love our time spent in Vail skiing. Swimming and or water aerobics plus Pilate’s reformer are on my weekly schedule. Both built strength, flexibility, and range of motion much needed as we age gracefully.
Our RV travel takes us on an annual trip with friends and family. My brother Gary lives in Santa Rosa, CA about a two-hour drive or twenty-five minutes in our airplane. He and his family join us at Collins Lake, CA. each summer. We park 50 ft. from the water’s edge. The group always has two motorboats available for fishing and water sports. Bob and I have inflatable kayaks we use there and take to other spots in California- Mt. Lassen, Trinity Lake, Carmel, Monterey, etc. The RV has been to Tahoe, Las Vegas, Bryce and Zion, and Sedona, My brother and his family spent all the holidays with my family and until two years ago with my folks. My Mom died in 2007 and my Dad in 2009, 91 and 92 years old.
I have maintained my life long passion for traveling. My first three months trip in 1964 was to England and Europe. I’ve never stopped exploring, and teaching vacations allowed summer travel for weeks at a time. In the last ten years I’ve continued traveling to the islands of Bali and Lombok, Indonesia, Argentina and Chile, Central America, Greek Islands, Rome, Paris, Tuscany, Italy, the Panama Canal, Alaska, England, Scotland, South Wales, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. My joy is researching and planning these trips with Bob and friends. My home is a gallery of pictures, statues, glass pieces I’ve collected on my years of travel. Our next trip in 2012 will be a cruise to Scandinavia and Russia with our family. A few months later we are going for a week in Paris and continuing on a riverboat trip down the Seine to the beaches of Normandy. Ten years ago after our reunion I met my son Jason at the end of his extensive European trip for a two-week stay in Paris. Next week we are off to Sun Valley for a music festival and then we go to Glacier Park. We plan to stop to see my brother’s home he is in the process of building on Flathead Lake, Montana.
Friends come to stay with us from around the world and I love to entertain in our home. Bob will give you a ride in our Q200 airplane. Looking forward to seeing everyone in September!