Bloganuary Where am I?

Even though we have lived here for over two years, I still am learning about my new city. How we ended up in Novato was included in my Bloganuary #20th post. I only knew we were in Marin, which was the goal.

The only times that I had been to Novato was for the great Renaissance Faires that were held here from the 60’s to the 90’s. I was at the very first one as a child and as an adult, brought all my own children several times. The faire wasn’t in the actual city and so my first glances of Novato were when we drove around to look at houses. Our kids are adults so school districts were not a concern. The little downtown, where we stopped for lunch, had a few cute looking businesses and cafes. The whole of Marin County is beautiful and not as densely populated as San Mateo County which was where we were escaping from, where we and our children grew up. Both locations are 29 miles from the city of San Francisco but they have very different vibes.

The bloganuary prompt asks what is something recently learned. My answer is that I’ve been learning (slowly) about where I live. The weather is nice but it gets warmer and colder here. The people are just as nice as San Mateo but at a glance, not so flashy, more outdoorsy . If we were less impacted by Covid during the first year, we might’ve gotten out more but then there was crazy gas prices combined with my growing car anxieties which dampened any desire to explore. There’s a lot to explore here too! We are on the border of the wine country in Sonoma. There’s Point Reyes on the coast. It’s our out of town guests that get us to go look around.

While I try to stay away from cars, I do my own exploring via walking. It’s about 30 minutes to get to any kind of mini mall and 45 minutes to get to the “downtown”. There are also trails of short hikes right from my street and I am getting a sense of place from familiarizing myself by walking.

Thanks for coming by! Only a few more bloganuary entries left.