June 28 - Here it is the end of June and this is the first jounral entry this entire month. john and joyce went on vacation to Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Napa/Sonoma, and Sausalito/San Francisco for ten days this month. They traveled with joyce's sister Nancy and her husband Ken. john took 20 rolls of film during this time. john will try to put several of these on the site in the near future.

The weather was beautiful during the entire time. They hiked almost straight down from Crystal Point in Yosemite 4.4 miles and their legs were rubber and sore for 3 - 4 days afterwards. Their room was at the base of Yosemite Falls in the Yosemite Lodge and john kept thinking that it was raining during the two nights they stayed at the Lodge. It was just the sound of the waterfall just outside their window.

During their stay at Lake Tahoe, they drove around the entire lake (70 miles) and spent alot of time in Emerald Bay walking down to the castle by the lake. They ate twice at the Fresh Ketch restaurant because of the delicious salmon dinners. The chutney on top of the salmon was a walnut, sun-dried tomato, basil pesto mix. Just excellent!

They spent alot of time in Sonoma going to wineries: Ravenswood, Farrari-Carano, Kendall-Jackson, Korbel, and Benziger. They found that Ravenswood makes a low cost vintner label that one can find most often, but that they have some really excellent wines labeled sonoma. Both the Sonoma-labeled Cabs and Zins are excellent. They also had a dessert wine that you can only buy at the winery that is quite good. Farrari-Carano has an excellent Fume Blanc. Korbel Sec is quite good. john and joyce were also impressed by the family-run Benzinger winery and cave tour. Their vineyard is organic and sits on a hill once a volcano. All of their wines are excellent.

They stayed at the Alta-Mira hotel in Sausalito, where john and joyce stayed 21 years ago and loved it. It overlooks all of San Francisco Bay and San Francisco. Alta-Mira, of course, means "high view" and it lives up to it's name. There was a wedding there one late afternoon during their stay. They again ate salmon one night on the terrace at Alta-Mira and had salmon twice at Scoma's on the water's edge in Sausalito.

Coming home, airport security searched john and joyce's carry-on and had john remove his shoes. The security was more, but is just a part of life these days. No big deal.

Another reason no entries have been made earlier is that john and Eddie have been really busy improving zenpond. For the first time in 13 years john feels like the entire zenpond is nearing completion. They built some stone steps going up to one side of the big pond and did a major clean-up of the area. They put down 94 bags of Cypress Mulch. They trimmed trees. john was quite surprised that the trash pickup truck would actually take that much trash at one time!

Yesterday, a group of 24 teachers came to zenpond as part of Science Pioneers program on Habitat Sewards for school habitats. Science Pioneers is responsible for the Greater Kansas City Science Fair and many other worthwhile programs in the Greater Kansas City area. They asked john questions about building ponds and john told them he was only an expert in moving dirt from 5 feet down to ten feet in the air. (zenpond was dug by hand, is 5 feet deep and has a waterfall 10 feet high.)

Finally, john and joyce are starting a major remodeling project on their home. The best feature of the remodel is a new, large set of windows overlooking zenpond. The remodel is suppose to take 4 - 5 months to complete and john and joyce will have to move out for that period. The contract includes a paragraph saying that great care will be taken to prevent any harm to zenpond during the remodeling.