Joe Biden rides the east coast to Oakland and San Francisco

DETROIT — Vice President Joe Biden filled his two free hours here at one of the summer’s best spots, The Clay House, an arboretum overlooking picturesque Nantucket Sound.

The pick of the tree: the California Dandelion, a combination Christmas tree and dandelion.

His Nantucket choice in all other matters? Let’s just say, it was a close call. Biden always picks a White House apple. This year he picked a Sonoma Crocapple, according to a White House aide.

In the woods around the Clay House is a small blacksmith’s shop. Normally, the place doesn’t open until 9 a.m., but this Wednesday, they stayed open until 5 p.m. to accommodate the Vice President.

“The vice president could have always bought at the store,” joked one store employee, “but I think his very well deserved day off kept him out until the last couple of hours.”

And at this stop on his pre-Election Day tour, he also managed to make his way across the bay to J. Paul Getty’s Villa Corte Madera, an English country manor at the foot of Mt. Diablo in San Francisco.

For years, Biden and his wife, Jill, have holidayed on the island off Massachusetts with other members of the Biden family, who love the historic homes on the island and the variety of dining choices on the island.

Corte Madera, The New York Times reports, is home to “one of the country’s first homes of the free kind, in the mid-18th century, and a mansion still worthy of a spacious lot.”

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