Playing Hooky.

With a history of chicken ranches, cows and wineries on the hillsides , I have always thought of Petaluma as a town that I could live in... and to top it off... there's a river that runs through it. Well, kind of. It's really a tidal slough that feeds into San Pablo bay and then into San Francisco Bay. But it's called the Petaluma River. It just has to be dredged out once in a while.

This is part of the river that goes under highway 101 and the marina at the Sheraton Hotel where we were staying. This is looking west toward the town of Petaluma.

American Graffiti (1973), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986) and Phenomenon (1996) 
were filmed here. It still has the iconic theater and corner that was used in many movies .

The corner consists of the Mystic Theater and Music Hall.

And McNear's restaurant and bar.

Across the street is the old Post Office that is now something else. We saw someone walking out of the building with workout clothing and a gym bag. Maybe it's the local gym.

It's not a post office any more  but isn't this all a great place to shoot a movie? Just changing some signs, the cars, lighting and strip the trendiness of the 21st century down to the wonderful old buildings and voila... It could be the 1940's or 50's.

Sis and I didn't have a workshop on Friday so we had planned to spend the day in downtown Petaluma. Our workshop teacher, Clarissa, didn't have a class to teach either. She flew down from Washington state so she didn't have a car... but we did, so we all drove down to Petaluma together. 

We had a great day. We ate lunch at Mc Near's, bought some spooky things at Marisa's Fantasia. This is a great store that is filled with *Halloween*. There are lots of Christmas things too, but right now it's all about Halloween.

You cannot imagine the assortment of Halloween goodies that filled the inside of this place.

I bought some eye glasses for the Beans (my grandsons) that were kind of dark Harry Potter style. but when you looked at them they had eyes and skeletons on the lens. Kind of 3D and spooky. But from the wearers point of view you couldn't see the designs on the lens. They just seemed like sunglasses. I knew the boys would love these.

We also went into an Antique store. It's a good thing that we only had a small car and Clarissa was flying home. We could have gotten all carried away here.

This place has a few spooky additions sitting around too. Halloween was in the air. Do you think this could have been a real crow? It was too high to reach so we'll never know.

We antiqued, we bought shoes and chocolate... and we laughed a lot. Yes, it was a decadent day. Clarissa, Sis and I walked and shopped until MY feet gave out. We went back to the hotel and took a nap. Yes we did.

Later we drove back downtown and had dinner and bought little pies at the Petaluma Pie company.

It was an over the top day.