We visited there for a couple of hours, where I got to know Janise and Laura--two of Bucks' daughters. They have 4 siblings who live in different places, and they are all half Samoan. Their mom, who died a year ago from Cancer, was Samoan. She and Buck divorced many many years ago, and all but one of the kids stayed with him in Southern California.
He died about 5 minutes after we left that day.
Now, Steve is related to Uncle Buck in two different ways: Buck is Steve's dad's brother. He was also married to Steve's mom for about 10 years, after she'd divorced Steve's dad. Kind of convenient in some aspects because she didn't have to change her name and she didn't have to get to know a whole new family!!
It's not like there was some torrid affair or anything like that; she'd been divorced from Steve's dad for many years and while she was attending university classes not far from Buck's place she would periodically go there to visit.
They soon realized they had a lot in common and they had fallen in love.
So they married and traveled the world together. Buck had jobs in exotic places like some tiny island off Thailand, and also Hawaii if I remember correctly.
Steve said once that he was glad his mom got to see all the places she did, all because of her marriage to Buck. They were together until she died of cancer.
We like to tease poor Steve, about his uncle being his stepdad. But I have to admit, when I met Buck last year at a family gathering I understood immediately how a woman would fall victim to his charms. He was such a smoothe talking ladies man, and very funny. People were drawn to him because he was so entertaining. I was certainly one of them!
After we'd finished visiting with the family, we went to the coast to check into our room. Steve had researched the best possible deal on a room with an ocean view, and he did a great job. His daughters were with us, and they were ecstatic when they walked into our room and saw the Pacific, big and blue, right out our balcony:
It was a glorious 70 degrees outside, which was amazing since we had just driven from home where it was 116 degrees. Big difference. It almost felt cold to be on the beach.
While staring out our balcony we noticed a wine bar on the pool deck below. Steve asked them how long they were serving and they said, "Till 5 o'clock."
Then the phone rang. It was one of the wine servers asking if we were the ones just talking to her out of our balcony, and if so, if we wanted her to bring up some wine. Whaaaaa??? We were actually shocked. Free wine, delivered to our door.
Never turn down free booze.
We sat on the balcony and enjoyed some white wine:
We watched the waves come in and out of the beach for a while, then changed into some warm clothes and drove down to the harbor to get dinner.
We found a cute little place on the water, and promptly ordered up lots of seafood appetizers and fancy drinks. I had some sort of gin and tonic for the first time, and I discovered that gin and I could be very good friends. That reminds me, I need to go to the liquor store.
The sun went down and the full moon came out, reflecting on the ocean. I took some pics of the San Diego skyline, across the harbor from us:
Then Steve's daughter took a pic of us together.
We went to bed with full tummies and the sound of the ocean coming in our balcony door, which was open all night.
The next day we headed back East toward home, stopping at a Mexican border town for lunch. Aaah, carne asada.
