We took a ‘day off’ yesterday to get out of the house and away from our computers. (That’s the official story.) I had a plan to drive down through Scotts Valley, a part of the Bay Area, seen on TV weather maps, that we’ve never visited, or even driven through. It’s north and just a bit west of Santa Cruz, and includes neighborhoods like Ben Lomond and Bonny Doon that people we know, or have read, once lived in.
Along the way, I wanted to visit Kepler Books, one of the major bookstores in the Bay Area and one which I had never, in the 11 years we’ve lived in Oakland, visited. (It’s an hour’s drive south from us.) So we drove across the 84 bridge — which I’d never been across, another first — and into the rather lush neighborhoods of Atherton and Menlo Park, just north of Stanford.
(In the middle of this drive, my sister in Simi Valley called to tell me that she are her husband are moving to Philadelphia early next year. She has a son who settled there. And so many things she doesn’t like about California. I didn’t ask.)










