At this point in our trip, both Dad and I could start to taste the Pacific Northwest. We were only a couple days out and looking forward to being home. But first we needed to stop in on one of dad's old high school and post-college buddies, Rocco Maccaroni and his wife Tina. Rocco and Tina work at a Seventh Day Adventist Health camp called Weimar. Rocco is one of the chefs and Tina works in their recruitment and alumni connections. 
As per our usual way of doing things, we blew in late, and briefly touched base with them. They have a cafeteria where everyone can eat, but it's at 7:30 in the morning. I don't think Dad and I got up once during the entire trip at 7:30. Oh well, if we wanted to eat, we gotta get up. Seventh Day Adventists and this group in particular eat a very strict diet, mostly vegan. The purpose of Weimar is basically to provide a dietary detox center for people who often have severe health issues and get them eating and living healthy. As a result everything is plant-based and nothing is processed or refined. And so for the two days we were there we ate a lot of oatmeal for breakfast, salad and rice with a vegetable sauce for lunch and dinner consisted of salad and soup. [And the food was amazingly delicious... thanks Rocco.]
Some of the people who have come to Weimar with deadly health complications (diabetes, artheritis, wieght probloems, clogged arteries, etc) go through the 18 day program and come out the other side with signficant improvements in their health. One guy had just had a quadruple heart bypass, type 2 diabetes and taking 7 medications just to stay alive. He went through the program, dropped 80 pounds, now only needs 1 of his meds and is enjoying an active live. Hearing some of the testimonies from folks there was quite impressive.
We had a great time hanging with Rocco and Tina as Dad and Rocco told stories, reminisced and caught up. It's always nice to hear somebody elses side of the story after years of dad's take on some of their shinanigans as kids :)[Dad rarely exaggerates, Colin. :) ]
One of our cousins attends UC Davis and is on the girls basketball team. The University is just outside of Sacramento so one eveing dad and I took Heidi Heintz out for dinner and toured her campus. Very cool. And the next evening as we left Weimar and Sacramento, we dropped in on another cousin, Molly Gowan who is going to school in Redding, CA. And then we were on our way to Roseburg, OR.
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