San Francisco Bay - May 2018

New Zealand is not the cheapest place to fly out of so when we found a very reasonable flight from Auckland to San Francisco we booked it!  At this stage we had no onward plans except we were ultimately headed for South America and this was a good stepping stone.  Sometimes (in fact, all times for us) you just need to be flexible.  Once the timing of our sit in Ecuador was confirmed we were able to book flights to Quito.

We booked a 10 day house-sit in the San Francisco Bay area which fitted perfectly into the time-frame of our stay here.   We arrived at the airport and easily found a Bart to the stop where our lovely homeowner, Lorraine, would pick us up.  She took us home to be greeted with much excitement by the three amigos ....

Roxy, Lassen and Charlie

It didn't take long for us to settle in as this photo will attest ... having just arrived an hour earlier!

Lorraine was kind enough to take us out to a Mexican restaurant on our first night here.  This served to remind us how good the food and service is in the U.S. The portion sizes are overwhelming too!  Too full to sleep that night. Sigh .....

There was a very convenient park at the end of our road with a couple of enclosed off-leash areas which we could throw the ball in to tire these guys out.  Our daily romps around the park were always an adventure.  The U.S. (and the U.K. for that matter) do dog parks really well!  We also enjoyed our doggy walks around the neighbourhood of an evening, again taken aback at the state of some of the vehicles on the road here.   There is no Warrant of Fitness or Safety Certification required to drive a vehicle in America. What's with that!?

  The balance of our days were spent hanging out at home with the furbies, taking advantage of the well furnished back yard.

Nowt like an audience!

These two took a real shine to each other :-)

Sleeping beauty

Hunny the rabbit was rescued by Lorraine off the road at a few weeks old and is the luckiest rabbit we know!   He has his own room with lots of toys and tunnels and towers.  He also gets to chow down every day on organic greens and high end rabbit food and treats.  What's not to like about this new lifestyle. He was really great company and Clare enjoyed sitting and knitting with him.

What to do in San Fran during the lovely sunny days of spring?  Fishing of course!  James booked a trip on a boat on the bay and came home with a good size halibut, his first halibut catch ever, which fed us for a few day.  We had never eaten this fish before.  Very nice it was too!

Alcatraz

Lorraine very kindly offered the use of her vehicle whilst she was away which meant we didn't have to hire one (as planned) to venture out to Nevada to visit with the family we sat for in 2016. It was great to see everyone and to visit with Mira and Louis again! We love every opportunity to visit our previous charges.

Before we accepted this sit, Lorraine checked that it was okay with us that her tenant would be at the house during our stay.  We were fine with it ... being such a short sit and she would be working long hours out of the home.  This was the first time we have had a 'sitting tenant' during a sit and all went well as we enjoy the company of a wide range of people from all walks of life and from all over the world.  Just one of the many reasons we live and love our nomadic lifestyle.