Back home to the Bay Area

The Bay Area is all about family! We lived here for about 10 years so our roots run deep. Our 3 weeks here gave us time to visit with family in San Jose, Martinez, and Chico. While never long enough, our time here was a great opportunity to catch up after a long time away, and also do some last minute prep for the Camino.

Raksha Bandhan in San Jose

We caught up with our San Jose family and landed just in time to celebrate Raksha Bandhan, a Hindu festival honoring the special bond between siblings. The celebration typically involves sisters tying the the Rakhi (a decorated, understated bracelet) on the wrist of brothers with wishes for happy, prosperous life, and brothers offering protection and gifts and sweets in return. This year included a bit of modern twist - sisters also exchanged Rakhis amongst each other and shared sweets. We've shared so many adventures, late night discussions, holidays and have so many great memories with our San Jose Shahs. The only sign of time passing is that all the "kids" are now in high school and/or college and we have a new generation following on their heels. But we look the same :)

CoCoCounty Crew

We headed to Martinez where we lived for almost 10 years to see our Contra Costa Family. We gathered at the downtown Marina to reminisce and reconnect. Even though so much time had passed since seeing each other, we picked right back up where we left off. We hope to see some of these folks on our travels.

The Beauty of Chico

There is no one else we'd want to survive 106F degree heat than with family in Chico! We learned early in the week that the trick to seeing the beauty of Chico was to wake up early and and get outside while the weather was still cool. We enjoyed some early morning hikes along creeks, some farm time feeding animals and gathering eggs, and plenty of swimming! Asha was fortunate to have a lots of time in a pottery studio learning all about different glazes, colors and the pottery wheel. She helped pick grapefruits, learn to drive the "Critter", play video games, and get her fill of loving on pets. We had great food, relaxed, played games and it went by all too fast!

Logging some miles for the Camino

We did our best to squeeze in as many hikes as we could while in the Bay Area to get ourselves ready for the Camino de Santiago that we will start on August 27th. We had signs from the universe that confirmed we were moving in the right direction...