December 5-9, 2016 Palo Alto, California

We drove down to visit my sister Judy in Palo Alto.  John braved the traffic in the bay area just fine,  I concentrated on working on my basket. City traffic in the bus makes me nervous.

We are parked at the Trailer Villa RV park in Redwood City, only 18 miles from my sisters house. There are very few places to stay in this area. We are parked in this photo besides a very nice well over a million dollar Newell coach, which makes ours look really small.  We hiked on the Bay trail this am. Very good place to see birds. Avocet, coots and a colorful plant at my sisters house.

Shovelers and a view.

John and Judy hiking. View the the other way.

Roosting shovelers. The tide was going out, this is a tidal flat.

Laurie cooked us a sumptious dinner and Susan from Shoshone, Ca joined us for dinner. She is visiting relatives in the area and staying with Judy and Laurie.  Judy, Susan, Laurie and John. The next evening Susan treated us to a yummy Italian dinner at Spalti’s. Susan, Judy, Laurie, John and Suep.

I signed up for an ornament exchange on the pine needle coilers facebook page.  I recieved this beautiful ornament in the mail today from Kathleen. It is so pretty. She also sent this lovely card that she made.  A woman of many talents.

This is the ornament I made and sent to her. I did not post any photos of it because I wanted it to be a surprise for her. I have learned a lot about making pine needle ornaments from looking at photos the other artists  made. We went back to the Bay Trail again today and hiked around a lake. We saw tons of birds and things.  Surf Scooter,  2 golden eye’s, and a huge pink flower.

This is the lake. Unidentified tree, yellow flower, cool memorial on a bench-Love Duck of my life, flowers on the tree.

Laurie met us at Shoreline Lake Bistro for lunch. We ate outside with a view of the lake. Good lunch at a pleasant restuarant.  Yellow flower, purple flower, they are roasting chestnuts this weekend and 2 ducks.

Snowy egret, green teal, sweet fennel flower and bird sculptures. Canada and Ross gooses. We drove by Google-which is a HUGE campus. They pick up and drop off  their employees all over the bay area in these white double decker buses which have free wifi, coffee and  big comfortable seats.

We stopped at the Tesla dealership. Teslas are all electric cars. The bottom of the photo is the skeleton of one. The batteries are sealed in the bottom plate and there is a tiny engine in front.  There is a trunk in the front and back. The upper photo is the new model X, it has batwing doors. My latest masterpiece so far. It is made of 7 aspen leaves set in resin and is about 6 inches by 7 inches now. Not sure where it will go from here, but stay tuned.