California Wedding and Wandering

At the end of October, the Michigan branch of the Hofmann family tree flew off to California to celebrate my cousin Tom's wedding. The weather in Carmel Valley was ideal for the occasion: sunny and warm by day, brisk and starry by night, altogether perfect for an outdoor wedding. The Holly Farm was a beautiful setting, full of greenery and flowers and distinct outdoor spaces that felt like separate rooms. Tom and Deanne crafted a lovely ceremony and kept all the guests busy with a full weekend of events, from Friday's taco truck dinner through Sunday brunch, with cornhole and bocce on the lawn and plenty of mingling with family and friends from all the eras of their lives. Paper cranes hung from the trees, Duke the dog carried their rings, and the couple zoomed in on a Vespa, to everyone's great delight.

I had lots of fun helping with the flower-arranging project, beginning with a trip to the Monterey farmer's market. Between Mom and Aunt Fran and me and several of Deanne's friends, we got all the gorgeous blooms cut and sorted into many glass jars.

We couldn't resist a few other colorful additions to the decor, also from the farmer's market.

Deanne brought tree rounds gleaned from her job as an arborist in Palo Alto, and the results were lovely!

Despite my lack of photos to document it, the wedding was wonderful all around.

Tom is one of those cousins I feel lucky to count as a friend. I'm grateful to family ties for bringing us together when we'd never have had reason to cross paths otherwise. We've spent at least a week or two together nearly every summer since we were babies (he's just a few months older than me). There are stacks of photos of us cousins through the years and, somewhere, a pile of letters we exchanged starting in elementary school, long before the advent of email. We've shared some excellent wilderness adventures in Michigan and Colorado and California, two memorable Thanksgivings (one during each of my two stints living on the west coast), and a crazy 24 hours on a team running the Hood to Coast relay in Oregon, among other notable experiences. But, as the best weddings always are, this was a great opportunity to fill in the rest of the picture as family and friends shared stories and impressions from his childhood in Denver to his college years at Stanford to his product-inventing, marathon-running, and world-traveling days of the past decade. It was also terrific to meet Deanne's family and friends, and to hear more about her past and how she and Tom found each other. Deanne, it's so great to have you as part of the family! Thanks to you both for including all of us in your celebration, and I look forward to many more gatherings and adventures and tales to tell in the years to come.

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After the wedding, Nick and I had several more days to explore around Carmel Valley with various arrangements of the family constellation and on our own. Here's the stunning view from 17-Mile Drive, which we explored with Sarah and Michael and then, after the fog rolled in, followed up with a hike at Point Lobos to see more of the spectacular Pacific coastline.

With my parents, we made a trip to the Monterey Bay aquarium. The jellies and sea stars and sardines and all manner of other sea life were mesmerizing, and the sea otter feeding was good entertainment.

I think I enjoyed seeing marine mammals in the wild, from a distance, perhaps even more than the aquarium's close-up views. At various times out in Monterey Bay, we spotted sea otters floating on their backs and carrying babies; sea lions sunbathing and swimming; and even some leaping dolphins at sunset. Most awe-inspiring of all, we made a stop at the wharf in Santa Cruz on our first day and were lucky enough to see whales passing by.

Later in the week, Nick and I borrowed the PT Cruiser and cruised on down to Big Sur.

We ran around on the beach, admired the crashing waves, played with giant kelp, and went for a hike up through the redwoods at Pfeiffer State Park.

The next day, we hiked up a significant hill not far from where we were staying in Carmel Valley. It was a trail that Mom and Uncle Steve and I attempted back in March, but we ran out of time and had to backtrack instead of completing the loop. With that bit of unfinished business as motivation, I lobbied for us to give it another try. This time Nick and I made it all the way to the top, admired the view, and headed back down the other side.

 

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The second leg of the trip was a visit to Nevada City to see my good friends Chris and Carlyle, Nell (almost 5 now), and Maggie (age 1 and a new addition to the family since my last visit).

The Yuba River is as lovely as ever, and though the sculpted granite and green water may not be quite as warm and inviting in November as in the peak of summer, Carlyle and I had to jump in anyway for old times' sake.

It was fun to show Nick another of the places I once called home.

Meanwhile, Maggie is a delight. Hooray for peek-a-boo at the coffee shop (and spotting Kate-knit hats in their natural habitat)!

Nell is a firecracker and such fun. Here she is in the squeeze machine.

We were only there for two days, but I think we won full approval!

Thanks to Carlyle and Chris for taking the last Yuba photo and the final two photos in this post. Full album from the California trip here.