326 El Cerrito Avenue Today, Oakland Temple, and Golden Gate Bridge

This past weekend Steve, Elise,and I drove to the Bay Area where I was born and spent most of my growing up years. Here is a slide show (thanks to Melody) of the house in Piedmont where I lived from when I was 6 to 19 except when we lived on Guam for two of those years. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, the old street was beautiful, and the house so dolled up. A lady strolled by and chatted, offering a lot of interesting info about the house, owners, and neighbors. Then we rode our bikes to pretty shady Dracena Park down the street where I used to ride my bike as a kid, up to my elementary school, junior high, and high school, the tennis courts and pool, and around to see old friends' houses. It was a lovely day. I suppose when you have a happy childhood, its places are forever cast in a magical glow.




We also went to the Oakland Temple Pageant which I participated in as a youth. Lili's boyfriend Jeff was in it. I loved singing along with the wonderful songs, of which I remembered every word. The temple grounds were beautiful, especially this time of year. This is where I went to primary, church, dances, plays, etc. all the years I lived in Piedmont, because the chapel is on the grounds. Can you spot me on two of the far-away temple shots? There is a walkway up and around the outside of the temple structure itself with a fantastic view.



Perhaps the most spectacular thing we did was ride our bikes across the Golden Gate Bridge, which thing I had never done. It was a 15-mile round trip with plenty of hills, quite breezy, and lots of bikers and pedestrians to maneuver around on the 2-mile-long bridge itself. Afterwards we sat on the water's edge and ate fresh cracked crab, clam chowder, shrimp sandwich and the famous sourdough bread. San Francisco is still the very pretty city I remember. (Steve put captions on this mini slide show!)