Satisfying day on the delta...

emmett_the_sane and I began our day with a hearty brunch at Geraniaum, a lovely vegetarian cafe that I've been wanting to introduce him to ever since funcrunch introduced me to it the other week.

Properly tofu-scrambled, we headed across the Bay Bridge, and took the 580 to the 24 to the 680 to the 242 to the 4 to the 160 to a tiny little town called Walnut Grove (pop. 725), nestled in the incredibly breathtaking Sacramento River Delta.

The delta is a thousand-mile lattice of waterways that offers a paradise for boating enthusiasts. Emmett and I chose a small open kayak as our craft, and we spent a few cheerful hours paddling this way and that among the grassy-banked canals.

I continued our tradition of seafaring eye-wear mishaps by having a speck of something fly under my sunglasses and into my eye, necessitating the removal of one contact lens which promptly dried up in my grasp. We were a bit short on storage units on the tiny rollicking boat, and after thinking for a bit Emmett procured from his back pocket a viable method of containing it - think small, compact, inflatable, and foil-wrapped. Gross but effective.

We had dinner in the slightly larger town (pop. 850) of Isleton, at the local all-in-one Chinese-Mexican-Italian restaurant, casino, cocktail lounge and inn. The owner originally wanted to open a steak house, see, but then he realized that Isleton really needed a Mexican restaurant, so he opened that. Then he married a Chinese woman who wouldn't eat Mexican food, so Chinese food joined the menu, and then he wanted to change to a more contemporary Italian flair, but the townsfolk beseeched him not to deprive them of their only local Chinese fare.

We finished the day with a geocache find a bit further south along the delta, hidden in a lovely natural hollow chamber in the midst of a stand of tall bamboo stalks. I dropped off our newest travel bug, Ugly Spaghetti, and then we headed on home.

I like that there's this delta paradise right outside of our home area. We didn't hit much traffic, and it was only about 1.5 to 2 hours drive from our home in Pacifica. I definitely recommend it as a day trip.