Day Trip to the HideOut & Apple Hill

Sunday October 11th, Daniel and I set aside most of the day together to drive up to Placerville to go to Apple Hill check out the fall-ish stuff, and then drive up to the HideOut to meet the Hoover's and take some property photos for them.

Apple Hill turned out to be crowded, busy, chaotic and a major disappointment. The only thing that really pleased me about the trip was that Daniel was delighted I was willing to kiss me in public. Apparently this was a rare quality in other people he had dated. This just made me want to kiss him more.

After Apple Hill we back tracked a tad down to Old Town Placerville to a farm to fork restaurant that I think was called Farm to Table. It had terribly slow service, but was owned by a friend's sort of boyfriend's family so I wanted to check it out. The food was good- Daniel had a pate sandwich, and I had a pumpkin squash sandwich. Delicious!

Daniel was majorly excited by all the fancy meats in their fridge case and was dying to buy a bunch of it to bring back, but we were going to be gone all day so he couldn't. He was slightly tortured by the whole thing. It was kind of funny. After that we headed onwards to the long drive to the HideOut!

The HideOut is roughly an hour from Placeville on backroads that you speed on. You never see any other cars and it's just striking views the whole way. It's gorgeous. Once you get to the final turnoff, it's 2 miles on dirt roads before you finally see the gorgeous cabin.

The HideOut is a place where, if I was going to get married, where I would do it. But, having had a lot of time to reflect on this the last few years... I really don't want a wedding. I am good with a party to celebrate afterwards, but I don't want a wedding. I want to elope. Somewhere fantastic, granted, like another country, but I don't want a wedding. It's too formal and it's just not me. Daniel felt the same way, but he also knew I was taking him somewhere special that IS where I would want to get married, should I have a wedding. We talked about it the whole way there and off and on that day. It was really intimate.

Once we got there we couldn't find the owners so we just wandered around and took property photos instead.

 

 

And some fun ones too. I just loved taking these!

 

This last picture was the one I put on my instagram account. It was my way of "coming out," and saying I was dating someone, without really saying so. We had been going out for just two weeks! (Plus two weeks of writing letters before that.) But we were both really excited and this was clearly the beginning of something really special and I loved it. I loved that the photo was sneaky and clever and all subtext with no direct and obvious meaning.

Later on, now that I am writing this, it makes my heart ache, because it was the only photo we took together. I would have given anything for a photo of us together. I wish there was more. With all my heart I wish there was more.

Angie's Lake Tahoe Wedding

My good friend Angie, who I have known for at least 3-4 years now, and met at the dog park during my low point post-Matt got married Labor Day weekend in Tahoe! I didn't get to be here through much of her planning process, but I recommended some of her vendors to her and helped her find her venue so that was fun to be a part of it in that way! She was so kind to invite me with a plus 1, but I wasn't dating anyone or anything at the time, so I just went solo. Luckily Angie has talked about her friends plenty over the years and I knew a bit about all of the people my age who were there and made some friends! She met her husband on eHarmony right after I moved to Oregon, so I basically missed the entire dating process and I only met him once, right after they started dating, so that was a big bummer. I wish I knew him better! But she loves him and was super happy so I'm happy for them! This was the first wedding I had attended solely as a guest, and not working at all since... 2008 or so? I originally though it was much earlier but I recalled I attended my cousin's wedding in Connecticut in Hartford and Niantic a few years ago, and I think that was the last wedding I attended! It was definitely odd just being a guest, but I enjoyed it!


My wedding gift was a love lock I brought back from Prague, and then hand painted in her wedding colors!

 I dressed in bright colors because that's what Angie loves!

 The cheese table about killed me. I hit my lowest weight on this day and promptly gained like 5 pounds and didn't lose it for like 3 weeks.

 Love giant jenga! But just a note, if you paint the pieces, they get sticky!

 The ceremony was supposed to be by the water... Which is supposed to be where I am standing. This is how much the drought has effected California! All of this should be underwater. The lake was at least 100 yards shy of the ceremony site.

 We might have raided the honeymoon suite....

Apple Hill & Lake Tahoe in October with Charlie Brown

In October, I went to take Charlie Brown in to the kennel while I went out of town for a wedding and found out that his bordatella vaccine had inexplicably expired, despite the fact I had only owned my dog for 9 months. Apparently,the type of vaccine he had been given (nasal, rather than shot) was only good for six months. Our vet hadn't let us know it had expired. Our boarding facility required he be vaccinated at least 7 days prior to being boarding. I was calling to make the reservation (and finding this all out) like 4 days before I was to leave. Fantastic.

Anyway, the dog couldn't go in the kennel, so I had to find a pet friendly hotel with four days notice. (The whole wedding was planned in 4 weeks FYI).  We found a nice one, and Charlie had some issues with barking in the room and clawing at the back of the door. Oops. I guess he got lonely and anxious. I cleaned up all the teeny tiny pieces of paint chips off the floor, hide the evidence and checked out the day after the wedding! We made one last trip to the shores of Lake Tahoe so he could dip in his toes, and we also stopped at Apple Hill on the way home. That didn't go over so hot. lol It was really crowded and he was REALLY barky. He did like looking at the fish in the pond and he got to smell lots of cool stuff though, I'm sure! We stopped a couple times on the way home and went for short walks to smell the wildness of the woods! He liked that a lot!

Since this trip Charlie has started, and then graduated from kindergarten! I now know that he barks a lot in public because that's how he says "HI!" to people. He acts like a lunatic on a leash because he is sayinh, "HI HI HI HI LOOK AT ME! HI!" When he looks like he wants to kill you, really all he wants to do is be petted, which I never would have guessed. I really thought he was leash aggressive, but the trainer figured out he just has bad greeting manners and was trying to say "Hi" in a sort of rude way. lol As soon as you approach him when he is barking so nasty and mean, he calms right down and hushes right down. I had no idea. He just wants to be petted. That's all he wanted at Apple Hill too. He wanted to say Hi to all the people. I was afraid he was going to go around attacking everyone the way he was lunging and barking, but it's all... nothing. It's just him saying "Howdy Stranger!" Who would have thought that?  Now how to break him of that?! We start Doggie First Grade next week. Hopefully, we can keep working on it.

I was trying to find out Thanksgiving pictures to post, but no luck yet!