Petra and Don, first thank you both. I had an absolutely fabulous time from start to finish - with one exception- when I got home I wasn't ready to be done exploring, could have gone for days!

I SO appreciated Don pulling over to the side of the road on some of the steeper, winding, cliffside 'views' (if I could take a sneak peek out of the corner of my eye, I'm sure I would have seen a view LOL). Going up was slightly intense, but going back with the sea and the car on the same side was, well...I'll just say that I think the absence of my head in Don's rearview mirror gave him good cause to pull over :) [smart guy...phew] And he IS a good driver!

Fort Ross itself was intriguing. We looked in all the nooks and crannies of each building, inspecting this and that and imagining how it must have been to live in that time. It was fascinating to try to figure out what some of the buildings were used for (they are very short on signage) and to find out that originally there were so many more buildings than are there today.

They did have a drawing of the church/chapel just after the 1906 (right Petra, Don?) quake and that was quite cool. We could see the San Andreas fault from the Fort, but were unable to gain access to an area that would have shown us a 12' retracement of a fence I believe it was, from that same quake.

I learned a lot from both of them about rocks and formation and and and and..... the list goes on.

As we left, we stopped at the Ft Ross cemetery which I found most interesting. There seemed to be absolutely no pattern or reason for the way of burying. All the names had either been washed away from time or perhaps they were never there... it was hard to tell. It was a 'garden of wooden crosses' scattered about, some too close, seemingly, together and some far away and alone from the others. I'd love to learn more about that, on a personal note.

A fine day, and Petra is right about the weather,too. If we could have picked the right weather, that would have been it. Two very fine people are Petra and Don. We got along like nobody's business and laughed and learned together.

Thanks for a wonderful trip - I look forward to many many more (especially if we have Zingers and Jerky! lol)
Jan