Retirement and Surprises

Well, as of last Friday (the 24th) I'm officially retired.  My last day wasn't exactly what I expected, I thought it would be like going on vacation, but it wasn't.  I walked out the front door just after noon so everyone was at lunch and it was very quiet.  I turned around and looked at the front door and realized I wouldn't be coming back and it made me feel kind of sad.  It's hard to describe, but when I got home I felt kind of lost, but that would soon change.

Val went upstairs and I sat down to read the paper and soon there was a knock on the door.  When I opened the door there was an odd looking person standing there in a white jacked with a breathing mask, goggles and a hat trying to tell me they were going to be spraying in the area.  I thought the guy was some crazy person, but then the hat came off and it was my best friend (of 52 years) Jack.  Val and Jack had planned all this and it was a complete surprise to me.  Jack lives in Moreno Valley so it was a long drive for him and I never expected to see him.  My lost day had turned completely around into a wonderful day.

It also turns out that Val had planned a short road trip for the weekend.  We left Saturday morning for the San Joaquin Valley to follow the "blossom trail".  The Blossom Trail is an area of many fruit and nut trees that are in full blossom this time of year.  This may not seem to exciting to some of you, but we are all avid photographers and were hoping for some good photo sites.  The trees were in full bloom and it really exceeded our expectations, it was beautiful.  We took many picture, had lunch by the Kings River and had a great time together.  The pictures below were taken by both Val and I (Val took the bee picture).

 

 Val wasn't done yet, after we finished the Blossom Trail, we headed up to Coarsgold where she had booked us rooms at the Chukchansi Resort and Casino.  It turned out to be a very nice place with nice rooms, lots of different eating options and a pretty decent casino.  We opted for dinner at the buffet which turned out to be above average and then finished the night with a little gambling (Jack watching).  Sunday we headed home and spent the rest of the weekend visiting with Jack who left Monday morning.

I am so thankful for Val planning the weekend and for Jack helping and taking the trouble to drive all the way up.  There are no two people I would rather spend my first days of retirement with, thank you both.

As for me, that made the perfect segue way from working life to retirement life.  I think I'm really going to like retirement.
Dave 


Hi, Val here....

Yes indeed, we had a grand time taking photos of the fruit tree blossoms in the San Joaquin Valley.  What a great day.  As Dave said, it was made even better because our good friend Jack came along.   It's great having Dave join me in retirement.  However, I realized that we will be spending more time together than we ever have before in our almost 30 year marriage.  I suspect we'll do just fine.

Introduction

On February 24th I will be joining Val in retirement and starting a new phase of my life.  One of the things we are really looking forward to is being able to travel as much as we'd like.  After seeing a blog written (with pictures) by someone who is on a world cruise, I thought that looked like an interesting thing to do and decided I would try it.  I'm hoping Val will also contribute to this as well, as she is the writer in the family.

We already have several trips planned including a surprise trip in March put together by Val celebrating my retirement.  In May we will be driving the White Rim Road in Canyonlands National Park with a group of friends.  We will follow that with a 6 day whitewater rafting trip through the Grand Canyon in late August and in April of 2013 we have booked a 30 day cruise to Tahiti and French Polynesia.

So that's it for now.  I hope this blog will turn out to be not only for Val and I, but also enable our friends and family to follow us through our travels.