Preparing for the road trip & visiting an old cowboy city

by Edwin

Today I started preparing for the road trip that’ll start tomorrow. I packed my bags, did the laundry and planned the route for the first couple of days. I chatted with one of my travel friends and had to admit to her that I’m a bit nervous for this trip. She told me: “It’s just the unknown”. That’s exactly what it is. Not knowing exactly where you go, who you meet and where you’ll sleep, that’s quite exciting. I also talked with Dawn about it and she told me and old Irish saying about meeting new people: “A stranger is a friend you didn’t met yet”, I’ll just keep that in mind and look forward to meet some of my friends 🙂

In the evening I picked up Dawn from work and we had the nice plan to visit an old western city, Sacramento, something I was really looking forward to since yesterday. Back home Steve had other plans, so he just said: “Take my wife on a date and have fun!”, so that’s what we did. The old city of Sacramento really looks like a town of an old cowboy movie. Streets of sand, big wooden houses with wooden porches to walk on and horse-and-wagons riding through the streets. There even was a small railroad station with a steam locomotive / puffer (nl: stoomlocomotief). It was really nice walking through this old city and imagining about how live must have been here in the past.

We went to a nice seafood restaurant where all the waiters and waitresses where dressed like cowboys. Every fifteen minutes or so the music turned on louder and they gave a show of Line Dancing. Dawn really don’t gives anything about what people are thinking of her, so she enthusiasticly joined them almost every time. I more liked watching it than giving it a try, but later that night on the middle of the streets Dawn teached me how to dance Country Swing and we really had a lot of fun.

Suddenly I heard a trumpet softly somewhere further in the street and we decided to check it out. When we came closer we heard more instruments and discovered that it came from some cellar down the street. We went inside and found ourselves in a really nice jazz club. We were lucky, because it was their house band playing and the waitress told me that they only play once a month. I really love jazz music, especially when it’s live, and we both enjoyed the great music.

Quite late in the night we arrived back home where we talked more about the road trip and things like that. Although I am really looking forward to this great adventure, I’m sure I’ll miss Dawn and Steve when I leave this place again tomorrow. I am very happy that I met these two great persons who I really consider my new friends. It was a great time together and now my journey continues alone again. Not sure when I’ll be online again, but I think I’ll figure out something, so you probably read soon from me again! 😎