The last week of September, my doctor said that it would be OK to continue with our plans to go to Dennis, Abby and Gabe's place in California.  We spent the first few days at Uncle Jim's place in Oxnard.  I took the pigeon photos above in Oxnard at his place.  I thought it was pretty funny to see how many of them decided to sit on those wires...and how evenly spaced they were.

 We had a good time spending time with Gabe.  It is so nice to see that he remembers us from the last visits now and so fun to have him excited to have us around. 

We took a detour on the way back to Oregon, stopping off at Lake Tahoe for a night.  We had a beautiful view from our room, with nothing between us and the water except a few pine trees.  It sure was pretty at sunrise and sunset. 

Our waitress at dinner told us that the Kokanee Salmon were spawning just a few miles around the west side of the lake, so  we decided to see what was there.  The park system was closed with the government shutdown, but she told us there was plenty of room beside the road to park and that it would be easy for me with the crutches.  Sure enough, there was a paved bike path just a few feet off the highway that took us right over a footbridge over the stream where the salmon were. It was a beautiful sight...thousands and thousands of fish, about 14 inches long, were filling the stream in both directions.  They turn this color red when they begin spawning.  So sad to think that as soon as the spawning is over, the fish die.  We also were warned to look out for bears.  Signs were up everywhere, which under normal conditions would have been so exciting, but being that I was in a boot that would have made it impossible to run, I was a bit relieved that we really didn't encounter any this time around.

Since I could not hike around and I wanted some closer shots of the fish, I gave John the camera to get closer to the water.  He took this one of me waiting for my camera back.  It does not show the boot very well since I was behind that bit of grass.  It was really hard to be there and not be able to hike upstream...maybe we will make it back sometime...and maybe we really will see bears then.

The Aspens were changing color.  Just so beautiful to see the morning light coming through them...

From Tahoe, we met up with my parents in Reno.  I can't believe that the Peppermill gave us two FREE nights!  The rooms are really nice too!  Of course they think they will get the money back from what people gamble, but they don't get much back from us!  I like to play a little, but prefer to sit by the pool and do nothing.  

Crutches and casinos don't really go together either.

We took the back road home to avoid the boring I-5 and saw some different sights.  Nice to see the changing colors in Oregon too, as we crossed over Mt. Hood, the vine maples were in full color.  I took these shots from the moving truck instead of asking John to stop...after 9 hours of driving, I didn't want to add any more time to the drive than I had to.