Lodi, The Fourth, wind farms and other stuff

After our trip to Chicago we were feeling all Oprah'ed out so we went and visited our friends, Stan and Jan, in Lodi California. That is about 2 hours east of San Francisco. We rented what could best be described as a boat from Hertz, it was a very large and comfortable car.

We stayed at Steve and Jan's for three days and visited the local wineries, the local Mexican restaurants and a lovely place called Guisti's (I probably have that wrong and cannot find it via Google). The food was good, the front bar was very rustic but the water they served there had a smell of swamp gas to it ...hmmmm swamp gas ! That is why Steve and I drank nothing but beer, if fact here are pictures of me after we had that beer:

They have two dogs, Buster and Otis who were lots of fun. They take turn guarding me while I snooze !

They also have Amy staying with them, their niece.

We spent the 4th of July at Lodi Lake where much to our chagrin they did not allow any cans or bottles (and then only had one drink vendor and one food vendor at the lake - to sell to the whole town). That didn't seem to matter as Steve and Jan turned me into their drug mule by hiding some white rum in a water bottle in the cooler bag I took through the police check point - still I am glad they did as it tasted nice :-)

We all got suitably dressed up in the appropriate colours to help these yanks celebrate Insurrection Day.

Jan

Steve

The company was fantastic and fireworks were great. The lake was patrolled by life guards and they closed it at 6pm every day, apparently to stop geese from getting into there near the shore as they had been causing problems - I just think they had authority complexes. It was funny watching the life guards nail up the barrier to the beach, you could tell they were students on summer break and really didn't care.

Before and after the official fireworks there were hand guns being fired in the streets around us (not many and I thought they were firecrackers but Steve said that people on the 4th usually shot guns into the ground or if they are really 'smart' into the air in celebration - way to have a tea party ! It was good that all of the cops were at the park stopping us from bringing in cans and bottles while people were shooting off guns in the surrounding streets.

On the Monday we drove back to San Francisco to catch the plane to France, on the way we went to Mountain View so I could show Emily Google and the suburb in general.

On the way we saw heaps of wind turbines, it would be great if more places around the world had this form of power.