Chuggin' along

Is it Wednesday already? Seriously? Sorry for the silence. I've been recovering from our whirlwind trip and editing like mad! Anyway, we enjoyed every minute of our train trip to....San Luis Obispo, CA. Twelve members of the Navarro/Carobini clan took over business class, eating and yakking and taking turns walking my 21-month old nephew up and down the aisles (a belated sorry to the other travelers stuck with us ;).

I have pictures--somewhere. Teen Daughter has them in her camera, but she won't release them until she's had a chance to photoshop a few. Lol... So anyway, the trip took about 3.5 hours each way (longer for my brothers and their fams who boarded in the LA area). Once there we relied on a hotel shuttle (PT Cruiser-haha), taxis, and our feet to get us around the college town. A shout out to Mary Hampton, a frequent blog visitor and writer friend, who once lived in the area: Thought of you, Mary!

After taking over the hotel two hours before check-in, we shopped SLO (if you read Sweet Waters, you might recall that Mel, Cami and Holly took off for SLO several times from Otter Bay), and pretty much ate our way through the town. We then had a private room at the Apple Farm Inn for dinner, hit the pool, then watched a movie before calling it a night (er, morning, as it was after midnight by then).

The ride home the next afternoon was SPECTACULAR. If you ever have the chance to take Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner or Coast Starlight north of LA, do it! The water views are to die-for and~we saw dolphins leaping! Nice staff, good snacks, an on-time train, and our fam all together~a super fun way to celebrate our mom's birthday! Ahhh....

Today I'm heading north again, this time to have lunch with author pal, Kathyrn (Katie) Cushman. Love her~and her work. Soon I'll be giving away a copy of her soon-to-be released novel, Leaving Yesteday, so check back for that in the next few days. In the meantime, have a beachy day, my friends~wherever you are!