Ellen and I decided at the blink-of-an-eye on last-minute trip to California to study travel writing at a place called Book Passages in Corte Madre, about 15 miles north of San Francisco. My idea was writing for magazines and newspapers, her focus, guidebooks. Ellen’s instructor was Tony Wheeler of Lonely Planet. Aside from meeting big old Jan Morris and Isabel Allende, it was a fairly large waste of time. I learned nothing while Ellen found that guidebook writing, as a rule, goes to the lowest bidder. And that’s just one of several reasons for the demise of the travel guide. 

When the course was over we took the ferry to San Francisco and visted the new ballpark. We arrived late to a sold out game and after telling the security officer we were from Canada, asked we if we could go in after the game was over just to look at the place. For several seconds he stared us, then opened the gate and told us to go in, but not to sit in anyones seats. Barry Bonds went deep with a roid-homer just as we arrived. 

The following day we rented a car for a drive into hills. We visited Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks. The bark on one of them old sequoias can be almost six inches thick. There were a number of forest fires and fire departments from all over the US were there to help put them out.     

After returning to San Fran we did a trip up to the Napa Valley for a mud bath.

The above was written in 2018 from an 18 year memory of our first trip to California..