This weekend, my friend Mike and I wanted to get away from the city, so we went up to the Russian River. It’s an area kind of like Palm Springs, that’s resorty, and near a river. I was wearing my great sandals that I bought in Singapore and had finally broken in. We stopped at Target to get a float for the river, so I was really excited to swim! Once we got there, as I started to get out of the car, I was looking for my right sandal. It was NOWHERE to be found! How could that be? I got in with them at Target, and took them off on the drive up, but we went directly there.
—-HOW CAN ONE LOSE ONE’S SANDAL IF ONE DOESN’T LEAVE THE PLACE IN WHICH IT WAS WORN?—-
So, I had to put on my tennis shoes, and wear hot sneakers for the whole day instead of my nice sandals. More than disappointed about this loss, I was just dumbfounded.
We asked around for the best place to set up on the river for swimming and such, and ended up at Monte Rio. There were a lot of people kayaking and canoeing, but not so many swimming. It was pretty shallow too, and when we started edging out into the water, the amount of algae and debris in the water was quite unappealing, so we opted to head back to the resorts with pools.
Once back at the resorts, it was almost too crowded to swim, so we tried to squeeze in just to relax in the sun. By that point we had already spent most of the afternoon trying to find a place to set up camp.
We then found a good pizza place for dinner, lazily strolled the streets and chatted with people we had met at the pool earlier. That night, we went to a few bars to mingle and then to the main club in town that was putting on a foam party. As fun as it sounded, we went to look and, for $20, you could just in a small caged area with foam. I don’t know how this podunk town was able to charge $20 for entrance, but people sure were paying it. I don’t even pay that much in San Francisco!
After that, we went back to one of the ranch cabin style resorts that had a bonfire. We sat around the bonfire, and chatted and kept warm–the night got a little chilly! After the bonfire, we walked around a bit and then headed to our Bed & Breakfast for sleep.
The next morning, it was a family style breakfast where we sat at a table with all the other occupants. We met some really nice people–they were all from the Bay Area, and we talked about various things while eating bread pudding, coffee cake, fresh strawberries & raspberries, ham and orange juice. Quite the odd combination of breakfast foods, but it filled us up to be on our way back to the pool for another day in the sun.
We got back to the ranch style place for the pool, and met some more nice people and chatted, had lunch, and started to round up our stuff for heading back home. Even though I didn’t really get to swim, it was really nice to basque in the sun and feel like I was in summer weather! As Mark Twain once wrote, ‘the coldest summer I ever spent was the summer in San Francisco.’