California dreaming.....

Wow! OMG! Awesome! Brilliant! Amazing! These are some of the words to describe the 10 day vacation I just returned from. I went to visit my friend, Jenny Papka, at the Native Bird Connections in Orinda. She has received five birds from me in the past seven years so I was able to see them too.

This is FIONN, a leucistic Red-tailed Hawk I received with a broken wing. She's now one of Jenny's most distinctive school birds.

We did a lot of driving, sat for awhile in traffic which is normal for that area (near San Francisco) but not for me. We visited the Oakland Zoo thanks to a friend of Jenny's. Kristin works at the zoo and got permission for us to go in the back and make a dream of mine come true. I got to meet an elephant. His name is OSH, he's a 14 year old African bull elephant and looking very large to me. John and Jessica, elephant handlers assured me he would grow another two feet.

(above) me touching OSH's foot. (below) feeding him banana pieces, he was very gentle.

OSH standing behind John, myself and Kristin. Note his size....

We also visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the California Academy of Science and had a lot of fun on an amazing zip line. I've included just a few of the photos from those trips and may post more in the future. Don't want to bore you with "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" photos.

l-r: Jenny, Matt, Susan and Sue. Sue Honeywell and her son Matt were just two of the group doing the zip line. Everyone was a lot of fun to be with. The other photos show how long one of the lines was and one of two suspension bridges we also had to walk across.

Standing in the Pacific Ocean, in Yosemite (before we were told to leave) with El Capitan and Half Dome behind us and in front of one of the Giant Sequoias. Talk about tall.