So we’ve reached the last state new to me on our 1997 cross-country road trip, a long way from western Massachusetts where we began. When we crossed the border from Nevada at the end of June, 1997, and were greeted with a sign reading “DUMP / DEAD ANIMAL PIT,” we didn’t have high hopes. We headed northwest past Mono Lake and onto the P.C.H., through San Francisco (no room at the hostel, nowhere to park) and on to Berkeley, where we spent our first night. Healdsburg, north of the Bay Area, home to a friend and her family’s vineyard, was much more hospitable, and we relaxed with wine, bread, and bocce. We enjoyed Confusion Hill north of Piercy, as well as the World’s Tallest One-Room House (a hollow redwood with a lightbulb in it) and the drive-through tree.

I can’t say I gave California much thought after that, for many years. It was a place that was home to a lot of people I knew in college, and was of course the home of the American film industry, which I studied in college and which I began to have more than a passing relationship with as I moved into the world of film archives. I never traveled there, though, and didn’t think much about it.

Finally, in 2004, Aimee and I were ready to see what San Francisco was all about (and I was ready to propose to her), so we flew out from Boston and spent a week in the city and in Napa in April of that year. We had a great time, especially after I got that weight off my chest, and we enjoyed Golden Gate Park, gingerbread pancakes at Zazie’s, indoor rainstorms in the Tonga Room, and afternoon picnics at the vineyards. California suddenly had a very important place in our lives, and two years later, when I graduated from school in Rochester and applied to jobs in Berkeley and Los Angeles, it became apparent that we would move out here. I could have chosen any number of photos to represent the great fun and fascinating adventures we’ve had out here, but I like the one our waiter at Café Jacqueline took of us the night we got engaged, as we prepare to dig into our chocolate soufflé and think about our future together.