Bayside Inn Monterey

We packed up and went for a practice trip down to Pfeiffer State Park in Big Sur on Tuesday. The camp site was great; on the river with almost the whole park to ourselves. What a beautiful place to camp.
The tent went up without incident.
The food was great, thanks to Steve.....shrimp,asparagus and potatoes for dinner and breakfast burrito the next morning.

We have a ...

Finally left the noisy dorm room yay. Saw some massive waves along the coast towards Monterey. Stopped off in Santa Cruz, not much going on in Fall! Apparently it's wooden rollercoaster is a national monument! Got to Monterey and found a visitor centre for a map. Hotel man upgraded us to a deluxe king, had a microwave and a fridge! Watched lots of TV ...

... and I could crawl in a decent amount. "Shelves" made of roots were inside, that's where I'd keep my food. The roots almost made a chair as well...and thats a living room if I'd ever seen one.

Christa and I made some balancing rocks before our trek back down the mountain began. I had lots of trouble getting back down, switching between sliding out of my wet flips to going barefoot. Neither was great since sliding out was grip ...

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Into Santa Cruz we arrive, parking Lola somewhere up a hill...somewhere that I wasn't paying full attention to...yikes (you'll read soon). We locked her up and headed into town for food and drinks. Along the walk we found a colorful, post 60's era, Grateful Dead loving, gray bearded, slightly drunk fellow, who was friendly to the max. "Latest member of the group"-Matt. We stood there with him for a bit while he meandered along in conversation about Jerry Garcia (Jerry told me to do ...

... on the high street of fresh homemade half sandwiches and soup for a very reasonable price of $5 each. I saw a hummingbird in some foliage but it was gone before I could take a picture, doh! We drove down the road to the missionary church which was on the outskirts of the town which was very pretty but we didn't want to pay to go in, so we just ended up taking pictures of the outside and nice garden (which is only what we wanted to see anyway!). We ...

... the help of a couple of blokes helping me reverse.  The kids thought I was a hero and I hated every minute of it and was glad my hero returned to take over after his game of golf.

For those motoring around these parts with kids, highly recommended is the Dennis the Menace Park at Monterrey.  The kids had a ball and I had a rest.

Tonight was our last night with the RV and was spent an hour outside San Francisco at a lovely KOA campsite at Santa Cruz. 

... but when we started to make our way around the town (around lunch time) there were heaps of beggers (well half a dozen - which was probably more than we saw in SF for two days). They were young, and white, and saying things like "I need a drink", or "returned serviceman". Some people shouted at them to "get a job", most (like us) just ignored them. But we were surprised at their numbers, and couldn't wait to get back on the road. We had intended to stop there for lunch ...

... swamp lands; Volunteer reconstruction FloridaJune 22-25 Gaia Grove, Ecovillage, Gainsville, FL Old SouthJune 26-June 30 Charleston, NC (Earthaven Ecovillage- Black Mountain), and Savannah, GA,  Birmingham, SanctuaryJuly 1-July 8 Volunteer ...

... the sea otters which are a whale of a time! We also enjoyed a good long seafood lunch at the fisherman's wharf...very touristy but the fish is quite good in any case and the prices not that bad. Anyway, we will probably spend a few days in the woods from tomorrow onwards, so don't expect updates until next Friday or so. We will be hiking around Yosemite National Park. Cheerio

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We visited a Mission ( influence from the Mexicans) – lovely old church & Mexican architecture.