Rest day in Corte Madera, CA

For our rest day today, the closest rest day to home geographically, one of Ruth’s friends, Owen, came to visit, along with his mother, Katie, and little sister, Lydia.

We managed to burn through the morning between sleeping in, breakfast, and more Star Trek TNG (the end of Angel One and most of 11001001). The kids remain highly entertained by any exterior shot of the Enterprise. “Space!”

Then Anne’s good friend Katie arrived, along with her children, Ruth’s good friend Owen and Max’s-age-but-too-young-to-interact-enough-to-call-friend Lydia. It’s been a month since we’ve seen anybody we know, so it was quite nice of them to make the drive to say hello.

We headed off in search of adventure. First, we passed the Perfect Mailbox. When we crossed it’s path yesterday, Ruth was awestruck by its beauty. She declared it was more perfect then she had expected. As far as I can tell, it’s a standard mailbox, in decent shape, and with some fresh paint. Perhaps I’m just a jaded old man. In any case, Ruth got to share the bliss with Owen today, much to his delight.

After offering suitable veneration, we continued to Safeway. The plan was to get lunch, walk to a playground, and picnic and let the kids play. I suggested that we could take advantage of the rest day near many restaurants to do something other than picnic with sandwiches from a grocery store, since that’s what we’ve done nearly everyday for a month, but Anne informed me I was wrong. In a small act of defiance, I got hot chicken tenders from Safeway instead of a cold sandwich.

Then off to the Corte Madera Town Park. It’s quite large and well populated. There were several parties going on, which surprised me, given that it’s a weekday. We found a picnic table in the shade, ate, then played on the playground.

On the walk back to the hotel, a crossing guard helped us cross, on a walk signal. I would have guessed that between three adults we could handle it, but maybe that’s the jaded old man talking again.

The next activity was the pool in the outdoor courtyard of the hotel. The water was warm, but even being surrounded by a three story building, the wind was strong enough to make you cold. Little Lydia swam like a fish, while Ruth and Owen splashed about and Max tried to stay out, but had fun with a parent jumping and spinning around with him. The little kids got cold, so their mothers took them up to the room, leaving me with the older kids. Ruth wanted to play police and bad guys, where the police person tries to catch the bad guy, all while everybody stays in the shallow part. I, as police, caught my little escapees. Then things took a twist when Owen told me he had stolen my handcuffs and was locking me up. Things got confusing after that, but Katie came back downstairs and we got out.

It was getting to be time for our guests to head home, but not before a quick round of a dinosaur trivia game. Owen said he would remember where the pieces were, so he and Ruth can continue after we finish the trip.

After they left, it was time for rest day housekeeping. Since we had already gone swimming, we watched more TV in our rain gear while everything else got laundered. Then dinner, groceries, and bedtime.

Tomorrow we’ll be crossing Golden Gate, and start getting farther away from home. There’s rain in the forecast, which is unusual for this time of year. We’ve talked about shipping back our presumably unneeded rain gear, to save weight. This may put an end to such talk.