BOXES 214-215: California and Sheboygan.

The vineyard you're looking at is in the Anderson Valley, which stretches up northwesterly from Sonoma County's wine country toward Mendocino on the Pacific coast. You may be thinking the scene looks like many other parts of California, but it was special to Anne and me when we visited it during a 1999 summer vacation. The valley was more rugged and rural (at least then) than the more famous wine districts of Napa and Sonoma. I'll tell more about our trip shortly, but I should mention that only this first part of my post can be called a 'travel' blog, as I've subtitled it. The rest of my slides from that summer and the winter that followed are pics of our first grandson, born back in Sheboygan.

We started our trip in San Francisco, where I made various attempts to photograph Anne as we rode a cable car, managing to get the city in better focus than the rider:

A much better picture is this one of the two of us:

. . . but I don't know who could have taken it, since I don't remember anyone else being with us on this occasion. I assume Anne took the next photo, of me, and I remember taking the classic (or you could say overly familiar) shot of the "painted ladies" and SF skyline from Alamo Square Park:

We had read about the Anderson Valley in an article in Saveur magazine: its off-the-beaten-path location and reputedly excellent wineries appealed to us, so we rented a car to drive up there. We stayed at the Boonville Hotel, which had an fine restaurant that naturally served local wines:

This little store typified the laid-back feel of the valley:

Here are a couple of the wineries we visited (I'm sorry I can't identify them):

There were groves of redwoods in the valley that we also visited. None of my photos turned out well, but here they are for the record:

Back in San Francisco we spent time in the Chinese Gardens in Golden Gate Park:

And we stopped at the beach at the western end of the park:

We then drove to Sacramento to visit Anne's mother (whom you saw in my preceding post of our January '99 campus trip abroad) and brother Jim and his two sons (whom you've met as well if you've been following these posts). We returned to wine country with Judy, this time stopping in Sonoma County. I have just a few shots of that excursion, including this one of the historic Buena Vista Winery. (The ivy, I see from photos on their website, has now been removed.)

And here are Anne and Judy outside the Ravenswood tasting room:

We stopped as well in the town of Sonoma, where I took a couple of pictures of the historic Sebastiani movie theatre:

Back in Sacramento here are Jim, Eric and Adam; I have no idea why Eric was wearing a hula skirt or what the three of them were finding so funny or startling off to their left:

Back in Sheboygan my first photo is of a veggie salad plate Anne and I made one afternoon: I believe the potatoes, green beans, roasted yellow peppers and beets each had their own dressing:

But the big event that summer, and the subject of the rest of my slide roll, was the birth of Aron and Tiffany's first child, Sam. Here they are not long after delivery on July 24 :

And here he is at our house a few days later:

The box of 36 slides that follows, six months later, is unique among the 215 that I've scanned so far in that every single shot (except for one sequence of 5) is devoted to one individual--Sam, of course. Not surprising, I guess, considering he was Aron and Tiffany's first child and our first grandchild--plus they were living nearby so we saw them quite frequently. But apologies to all the other grandkids if it turns out that they don't get a slide box of their very own!

In other words, the rest of this post will be almost all baby pics. (I'll leave out a couple of near-duplicates.) We start with Aron's birthday on January 22, 2000. (Anne and I had celebrated Y2K on Public Square in Downtown Cleveland, but I took no photos of the fireworks or other festivities.)

That's our friend Jinny in the third photo. I don't know if the next shot, of Becky with Sam, was taken on the same day or another occasion:

Our friends Andrea and Gary helped out at Gary's father's restaurant in nearby Plymouth, where the next set of photos must have been taken. (They invited us every year for a Chinese New Year's seafood banquet, but since there's no sign of a larger crowd, these photos must have been taken on a different occasion.) Here are Gary and Andrea taking turns holding Sam:

And here are Aron, Tiffany and I doing the same:

The next pictures are of the new family beside the Christmas tree in their apartment:

One additional pic has a weak focus on Aron and Sam but a fuller view of their Christmas village, so I'll include it, along with one of Anne and Sam beside our own Christmas tree. These are from the end of January, so clearly we liked keeping our trees up a long time.

I like the geometry in this shot I took of Sam and his rattle-ball:

Meanwhile, we had a big snowfall one evening, and Michelle and her friend Amanda dressed in their warmest clothes to enjoy it. I don't know how I happened to take photos of them on this occasion, or why they were in the mood for posing, but here they are:

And now, back to Sam. These are my favorites of him by himself:

And here you see him in his special seat:

Anne took a number of pictures of me holding him:

And to close this post, here is one more shot of Sam with his parents:

In my next post I'll get back to travel. Our 2000 campus trip abroad was based in Bruges, Belgium, during spring break instead of early January. I have quite a few slides that will call for at least a couple of posts.