Our 2025 Continued: Chronological Travelogue

We started the year 2025 in San Diego and celebrated Bart's birthday with our usual crowd at a not so great Italian restaurant. We also tried our hands at an escape room and failed miserably!

Next we drove up to Pismo Bay from where Bart finally got to see the Hearst Castle. This was on our way to Monterey for an unsuccessful Bridge regional with Rockie. We did take a day off to drive down into Big Sur over the Bixby Bridge (often featured in car commercials). We went all the way down to where the road is completely closed from a major rock slide. It is expected to reopen at the end of March 2026. We had lunch at Nepenthe, great views, good food, and bought a 2025 Big Sur calendar.

After the tournament we visited the Woolseys in Kensington (next to Berkeley). We also got to meet Kitty's newest great nephew, Chase Munson's son Kieran. Rockie was very patient with him but soon hid from his attentions behind her parents.

In February, we spent a day at the Torrey Pines Golf Course watching a major tournament with many of our favorite players. We also volunteered for the local coastal cleanup group and picked up garbage in the marsh that we see from our condo. Finally we flew back to New England to see some snow. No, actually we went for the Grand National teams district finals where the winner gets to play in the summer national event. The bad news, we lost in the finals. The good news, the team that won added us!

Too soon it was time to head East for the Spring Nationals in Memphis, TN. We stopped in Phoenix to see Markland Jones and Barbara. Glad we saw him that last time. Somehow no photos were taken.

Our first road rage incident happened on the way out of Arizona, A woman who thought we had cut her off improperly drove up next to us and started throwing plastic water bottles at our car! I called 911 and Bart put on a lot of speed to get away from her.

In Dallas, we stayed with Steve, one of Bart's former neighbors who collects rocks and has a cute Australian shepard named Bowie. We visited Austin and stayed with Mark Feldman and Valerie. Saw Kathy, Kitty's grade school buddy, as well.

We enjoyed Memphis, although we were not that successful at the Bridge tables. Bart had a number of top 20 finishes, but Kitty only had one. We did both win at Bridge Jeopardy. Highlights were seeing the ducks at the Peabody Hotel and many dinners at Flights.

We got an email from a neighbor in Connecticut letting us know that a bear had emerged from hibernation into our back patio. He had spent the winter under our neighbor's deck which he accessed from our yard!

Once the Nationals were over, it was still too cold to go back to Connecticut so we visited friends (Jim Krekorian and Zoe) and family in Florida and then drove up the coast visiting Charleston for Kitty's big birthday (75). Also Virginia beach to see Alison, Merle and Fran Tom's daughter.

Next up, the Washington area for the Hands Off protest and Bart's cousin Laurie. Amazingly we ran into Kitty's Munson side second cousin Dick Larkin, the genealogist, on the mall! What were the odds of that among many thousands of people? We also had the pleasure of visiting with Bart's 105 year old Aunt Ruth (His mtoehr's sister and Laurie's mom) at her assisted living facility.

As we were driving the final leg back to Avon, we discovered that the women's college championship game with UConn was in the afternoon not the evening! So we called Bart's cousin Marthe in Cherry Hill and stopped off to watch them win the championship with her and Bob!