Road trip

We recently needed to renew our driver's licenses. This meant we needed to get to South Dakota, but we weren't planning a trip that way so we decided to make a "quick" road trip to Rapid City. Gail needed to get there before the 22nd and for Bill, after the 3rd put him within 6 months of renewal.

Capitol Reef

Look Ma no shoulders!

So we rented a car from the Cedar City airport on a Friday, left the truck there, drove down to St. George to our son's to cat sit, then back to Escalante (this is a 2- 21/2 hr trip just to Cedar City). Then on Sat. after work we left, headed east for a couple of hours to get on the road. First stop Grand Junction, CO. The drive from Escalante to I-70 is pretty scenic, along a hog back road, over the mountains, through the Capitol Reef NP area and to some pretty desolate area but very unique landscapes. Out in the middle of nowhere is a bakery with homemade bread. We had to stop and stocked with 2 loaves of bread we had some road food.

Drive, sleep, drive to Colorado Springs, on I-70 over the Rockies and through the Eisenhower tunnel at 11,000+ feet. Still some snow, lots of ski resorts, skirt west of Denver and we're in the Springs for a night. We we're able to visit with our good friends,old neighbors the Durstons. Haven't seen them in about 2 years so it was a great visit.

Day 3, the last leg to Rapid City. Mostly freeway until north of Cheyenne then secondary roads. Pretty much an all day drive. Next morning, up and down to the DMV for appointments at 8:30. The appointments weren't necessary, took 10 minutes to fill out the application, have all our documents checked, eye test, photo and we were both done by 9:00! Good for another 5 years.

We picked up some breakfast and bagels, made a beer run for the folks back in UTAH and hit the road, this time returning by way of Wyoming and the interstate to Salt Lake and to St. George, UT. Nothing too exciting to report on about Wyoming and more specifically Rock Springs. Not a good place for an inexpensive, clean hotel but a good stop for Mexican food and a pitcher of margaritas!. Picked up a little more beer.


We ended up in St. George for the night, got to see the son again, stocked up on groceries, picked up the cat in the morning and returned the rental to Cedar City.

First thing driving into the parking lot next to the truck we notice that the generator, that sits on the back in GONE!!
Crap. Stolen sometime during the last 5 days. Reported it to the police but I doubt we will ever see it again. Just something else we need to get again before leaving for Alaska.

So to recap, 5 days driving, 930 miles round trip all for 10 minutes at the DMV. Not priceless.

Winter's done

Over the dune

Well, we survived the winter on the central California coast. Actually, it was probably one of the nicer winters we've had. The temperatures were consistently in the 60s, a little rain when we first got there, occasionally some fog and sunny days. Our friends in Arizona had snow and freezing temps! The scenery was nice and we heard the ocean every day and the park is surrounded by strawberry fields and some brussel sprouts. Over the mountain is Gilroy, the garlic capital of the country and there are fields of artichokes and berries in the area.

We enjoyed our new job as maintenance host. We were in the campground loop all by ourselves and enjoyed the quiet. Our work consisted of some clean up, but mostly repairs that the regular staff wasn't  able to keep up with. We repaired tables and food boxes, restained post of interpretive centers, benches, painted and laid flooring. We kept up our homeowner repair skills and learned to use some new tools and had a lot of fun. The Sunset beach park also has responsibility for 3 other parks, Manresa/Uplands a popular surfing and tent camping park, Nisene Marks, primarily hiking trails in the redwoods and a small dune beach park of Palm

Nisene Marks

On days off we explored the coast area. We visited Monterey again and drove the 17 mile drive around Pebble beach, beautiful. To the north we went as far as Half Moon Bay and the parks and small towns along the way. We found some breweries to try in Monterey, Santa Cruz and Santa Clara, good food too. And we've found more to check out when we go back in Dec for 4 months!

It's a little stressful picking up and going again after sitting in one place for 3 months. Will the slides come in ok, where does everything go, are the vents all closed? But we took off and headed towards Escalante, our "home" park in Utah. After a stop in Boron, CA, we stopped for 2 days in St. George to visit Kyle, our son. We arrived back in Escalante Tues 4/2 and the park is already full. It's interesting that exactly 1 year earlier, we had the same weather driving from St. George to Escalante this year, rain, snow over the mountains then good. No trailer problems this year though and we avoided stopping for any reason in Vegas. It always costs us a bundle in truck repairs if we do!

So now we are here for 2 months before we embark on our planned Alaska trip for the summer.

Return from OZ

As we have been back now for about a month, the regular trip blogs are done. However, there are many little things we could write about, differences, fun things we encountered. Rather than bore you with it, I put the link to my Flickr photos to let you see what a great place Australia is. Check out the different set or the photostream of pix


www.flickr.com/billandgail

Strawberry & Brussels

Over the dune

Gail working

Now that we are back to our regular lives, we are spending the winter on the California coast between Santa Cruz and Monterey. We are at Sunset beach state park and we are maintenance host. We repair, clean up campsites, do fix up projects for the next 3 months. So far it's been good, a bit rainy but we work around it.  The park is sandwiched in between fields of strawberries, brussel sprouts and heather. Then, there is a large dune separating us from the ocean, but we can hear it. And only 1 loop of 3 is open and we are all alone in our closed loop.

MAC

Our Christmas was quiet but we did get an early present, a new cat. We rescued him from the Watsonville animal shelter and he is a siamese, tabby mix, is very lovable and likes being indoors. He likes laps and Bill likes him in his lap.

Our work projects so far have been cleaning up a lot of branches and pine cones from some strong winds in Nov, prepping the campfire benches to stain, Bill cutting down trees, campsite cleaning. Weather is real iffy this time of year so we find things to do for rainy days. We like it so far, but come spring we may be ready for a change.

This is a new area for us so we will be checking out the towns of Santa Cruz and Monterey. Of course, the aquarium at Monterey and the seafood places. We're just over the hill from the garlic capital of the country, Gilroy, San Jose, Hollister and of course to the north San Francisco and the bay area. We already found an nice little "pub" with good food and beer in Marina. There is also some pretty good Mexican food in Watsonville as the town is 70% hispanic. The nice thing is pretty much the entire coast in the Monterey bay is a park of some sort or other, whether state or county.