My plan was to try to do a couple more things while he was here since it was his vacation. We wound up going nonstop from Thursday when I picked him up until Tuesday when I dropped him back at the airport. It was a great week jammed full of food and activity.
On the way home from the airport we stopped at the San Joaquin River National Wildlife Refuge to do a run so that he could stretch out after the flight. As I said, we had two races and wanted to do at least a little running before race day.
On Friday I planned to take Joe to Pinnacles National Forest. I had visited the east side but wanted to do some hiking on the east side. I had an ulterior motive too. In November of 2012 Joe came out so that we could run a half marathon in Fresno. While he was here we went to Santa Cruz for a one day trip and on the way over we stopped for breakfast at Casa de Fruita for breakfast. For 2 1/2 years we've been talking about the amazing bacon that we had. I knew that we would be driving by there on the way to the park and that we could stop for breakfast. The bacon was as good as we remembered.
The park was even nicer than the last time I went because there were so many more things in bloom. I think Joe was most impressed by the fact that we were hiking along the San Andreas Fault.
When we got home Friday night Donna fixed a really nice pasta dinner for us before we left at 4:15 the next morning for our first race.
Our first race was the 1st Annual Rodeo Beach Rumble in Marin County. It was a beautiful location. I had mentioned to Joe the possibility of our doing it the day before our other race so that he could get two races in while he was here. Initially we talked ourselves out of it but then I received a copy of my AAA magazine and they featured Rodeo Beach in an article about the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. I sent copies of the picture from the magazine and others I found on line and we both signed up for the race. We knew it was going to be a challenging race even though it was only 8K but we felt that the location was too beautiful to pass on.
It was a tough race. The first half was all up hill including a couple of sections of stairs. At one point Joe met about 10 runners coming back towards him who had gone the wrong way. He was gracious enough to wait for me there so that I wouldn't go off course and we ran the second half of the race together. It was downhill and fun. I was fortunate enough to win my age group and that's why I got the water bottle and frisbee.
After the race we drove over to the park visitors center to get some more information on the area and then we hiked around the area for a while to loosen up after the race before heading into San Francisco to pick up our race packets for the next day. We spent a couple of hours playing tourist at Fisherman's Wharf and ate at Fishermen's Grotto. The food was good and we had a very personable and fun waiter that added to the experience. He started off asking if we had run the race or just bought the shirts and then entertained us with stories of other running customers he'd had over the years.
When we finished lunch, Joe had just been in California 48 hours and we had already done a lot.
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