August is Travel Time

It's Friday--Fave Fives with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story.  Here at Willow's Cottage, it has been busy, first finishing some chores and then jumping in the car for a quick road trip.  Traveling is always a fun adventure for me.  I am blessed to be able to travel.

1.  The Professor pointed out this article to me this week.  We have always known we live in a beautiful, wonderful place.  According to Washington Post, our county is THE BEST COUNTY, the most desirable place to live in the continental US.  Note: this does NOT take in to consideration housing prices which are desirable only when you are selling.

2.  I've been traveling this week from my beautiful Ventura County through other beautiful counties in California--Santa Barbara and north, all the way to Mendocino and Humboldt Counties along Hwy 1 hugging the Pacific Ocean. Our first stop was in San Miguel to visit the old mission there.  Mission San Miguel.

3.  Then after dropping Son #2 off at Stanford University for a quick visit, we drove on north through San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge.  That bridge never fails to thrill and awe me.  I was a wee girl the first time I crossed it and cannot count the number of times since then I've made that trip.

This photo was taken about five years ago.  This week's crossing was done later in the day and in cloudy weather--not the best for photos...

4.  I have always wanted to visit Fort Ross which is the site of a Russian settlement established on the northern California coast in the early 1800s.  We had read that it was closed during the week, but we discovered when we drove in to check that this month only it was open.

5.  Then, farther north, we stopped at Point Arena Lighthouse.  Yes, we are 'those people' who love history.

We climbed to the top and even walked out on the 'catwalk'.

Bonus:  This is a long quote.  I was deeply struck with the truth of this (partial) paragraph from Elizabeth Goudge's novel Green Dolphin Street.  Humbling and convicting.

"The violence of three days ago seemed like a bad dream, and it was difficult to think of it coming alive again in this peace and beauty.  It was still harder to imagine one's self being tortured.  Torture was the sort of thing that happened to other people, to early Christian martyrs and people of that sort, but not to one's self and one's relations.  Yet why shouldn't it happen to one's self and one's own?  Out of what congenital arrogance had sprung this sense of immunity?  This "to them, not to me and mine" way of thinking, that she had hitherto taken as quite natural, was a shocking and dreadful revelation of human callousness.  Pride and selfishness, they were the same, really."

How was your week?  I'd love to hear!