Mea Culpa

John recalls he had made something of a sarcastic comment regarding Debbie's desire to pack the printer with us. (#4)  

This is our rolling house after all and John soon realized the error of his ways. Mostly, although not entirely, it's due to the Thousand Trails organization, which is one of the deals for which Debbie signed us up. For an upfront fee, we get to camp “for free” at one of the many Thousand Trails locations. If the locations happen to line up with our itinerary, the Cost Per Night could work out to something exceedingly cheap. Tracking that is Debbie's spreadsheet which will tell us at the end of the road if this is a Real Deal or not.

We've stayed in a few of them and it appears the CPN has dropped nicely. Still not zero and never will be, of course, as Aristotle proved with his Rabbit-v-Turtle thought experiment.*** Also, the Thousand Trails locations do not exactly match where we want to go and we sometimes pay other parties or even camp for “free” on government land. But the good news is, in Debbie's words, “We're retired! Who cares?”

Many in the Thousand Trails family require that we “show our papers”: Vehicle Registration and Proof of Insurance for the RV. We're still trying to come up with a rationale for this in a country that is not spelled “Amerika”, even in California. Very likely the reasons would involve a lawyer –or possibly a half dozen or more.

One Thousand Trails front gate 'guard' was zealous enough to demand to see Debbie's Driver's License as well. And then came to the coach's door to demand John's. And then the “papers” for the Honda CR-V that is stuck to the RV's back bumper. We don't believe he was armed, but he was wearing a crisply starched uniform with Official Looking patches all over it and, if memory serves, a heavy duty, shiny, wide, black leather belt. So –what the heck; we have no evil intention to blow up a campsite; we can play their games just as long as that graph's curve being developed by the numbers on Debbie's spreadsheet continues to fall close to while never touching, the x-axis –or whichever orientation she's using.

OK, so––
We started this chapter by anticipating John's sort of apology for questioning the need for the printer.

“This song's about Alice.
Remember Alice?” –Arlo Guthrie

We found it was very convenient to put all those papers onto the scanner's glass plate and photocopy the front side of each one since even Zealous Guard didn't bother to look at the back of any of them. We now roll into each Thousand Trails office with a sheaf of paper even a former USSR border bureaucrat would be proud to see. We printed two copies of each, just in case. (Boy, was Debbie disappointed when TT/Groveland, CA didn't ask for anything!)

We also have printed a couple on-line receipts and a signed credit card authorization for some vehicle repair and...

Golly-whiz! It appears the house on wheels needs the home's all-in-one home-office printer, too.

***

If the Turtle were to get a head start of, say, “x” miles, then in the first hour the Rabbit, which runs twice as fast, closes the gap by x2 miles. Aristotle's thought experiment assumed the Rabbit and the Turtle both maintain constant speeds all the time, so each hour the lead becomes exactly half what it was.   The Rabbit never catches up! The value of x drops lower and even lower and exceedingly lower, but half of anything never ever equals zero. You and we all know that's not a real life win for the Turtle, so we'll see how this math performs for us in coming months.

SLO

We arrived in San Luis Obispo with a disagreement over its pronunciation and no real knowledge of what the area had to offer. What attracted us was its location, not far from the coast north of Santa Barbara, and the relative ease of being able to follow the Pacific Coast Highway [above] up to Big Sur or farther


But first, we're hungry and Debbie needs to shop.  We also thought it would be wise to find the area's Visitor's Center which is right downtown.  The kindly woman responded to Debbie's quesitons of what is there to do for a couple Michiganders in town for a short while, beginning with the SLO (as we learned everybody calls it) "Greek Festival".
.
This apparently was a relatively big weekend deal for hundreds of people in this town with live music, Greek dancing, and Grecian themed trinket sales surrounding the eating tables set up near the two serving lines. We even entered the free raffle (hoping to find it would have more effect than to get our emails on the spam list).  
Oh, and we spent about as much money on less food than if we'd gone to a good restaurant: Orzo (cold pasta salad), some kind of cheesy dinner pastry (the name of which we forget), a gyro for John, and moussaka for Debbie. John had wanted the souvlaki, but they were out, until about 42 seconds after he left the other line with his gyro in his hands. Oh well. It was different and fun, like GR's Arts Festival food booths, but fewer. And we sort of felt the money might go to some good use locally. We don't mind voluntary, targeted sharing of our limited resources. It's the overweening thievery by government at all levels that really pisses us off.
{pause for deep calming breath...}
On the way out the door, John prevailed and Debbie's weakness for baklava was leveraged into six pieces! Dessert for three nights in a row (because Debbie doesn't allow for second desserts in one night!).


While in town we stumbled across an historic Mission left over from early California days –think Zorro. Among the interesting factoids we picked up there was the reason for the ten foot tall shepherd's crooks planted along the California highways. On each crook is a bell. These are waymarkers that memorialize the foot and horse navigation of El Camino Real, the Royal Road that ran from Mission to Mission along the state. As we recall several footnotes through our visit, the Friars –who thought they were doing God's Work-- were used to spread the Spanish dominion over the area. The Bells were a project of a history-struck rich lady more than a hundred years ago, and still exist today. Thank you California taxpayers. ...which we guess includes us temporarily.

Our explorations led us to drive across a big agricultural valley somewhere between Bakersfield and SLO.. Field after field of produce and fruit. We won't admit to how we know, but fresh-off-tree oranges are not better than store-bought at one unspecified location, hypothetically speaking, at least according to one of us who may not be compelled to testify against the other in a court of law.

John noticed mile after mile of wide open irrigation and water distribution ditches crossing miles after mile of irrigated hot, dry desert farms. So he googled evaporation data out of idle curiosity (what else is there to do in the passenger seat?) and found four presumed students at UC-Davis

who'd hypothesized, then claimed to have confirmed a significant daily water loss in the tens of thousands of gallons from the State Water Project canals. Their suggested remediation options included plastic covers and even flooding the ditches with floating plastic balls. Then they went, in John's opinion, wayyy too far in their paper by suggesting every ditch be covered by electricity producing “solar panels”. John finds the “paper” was more of a political argument in favor of pursuing this final option while off-handedly dismissing conventional means of power generation..

They justified the huge government (tax dollar) Expense for this relatively little*** power (private dollar) Return by comparing the value of power produced to the cost of the water lost (and ignoring that power production is not a government enterprise). They tossed in the generalized, unsubstantiated claim that the cost of solar panels will continue to decrease. The summary page of their study struck John as wishful because of the uncritical apples-to-oranges comparisons:  “benefits inherent in preventing water loss” in the same sentence that generally claimed an expected increase in population. The next sentence begins, “Considering climate change..” and claims “significant” temperature increases along with future “variable” rainfall.

The paper is four years old now and, despite this group's pie-in-the-sky, California's water continues to disappear into thin air (and into the grapes, nectarines and oranges that you eat!).  Maybe the UC-D kids leveraged themselves a grant and are even now getting around to a Pilot Project after setting up their own offices, assigning each of themselves a government owned-and-subsidized Prius, and etc.

Maybe somebody will simply cover the canals.

Or not.

Or...{continuing with fantasy theories} it's possible these four are not kids at all, but University officials hired to technobabble a "green" justification for the State to steal more public money for a private (power generating) industry.  Kinda like Michigan's Consumer's Energy plan to shut down all the coal and nuke plants while planting field after field of solar panels and wind turbines that, quite literally, nobody wants in his or her back yard with the end result of raising your cost and decreasing what you have to spend on your quality of life.

––

***

You could google “power generation efficiencies” to discover that electric solar power is generally 15%, while coal/gas/nuclear plants are a bit less than three times more efficient. Somebody explain that to the politicians. Please! (and, back at home, to Consumers Energy)

Big Trees

Tulare is northeast of LA, far enough that we'd hoped to get rid of much of the big city traffic as we planned to head for the Sequoia National Park. The overall plan was to cover some California ground before Debbie's brother Ken could start his week-plus vacation and join us in the coach for that time.  We had visited him in Palm Springs for a few days in late May, but were going to take him away for a relaxing time, we hoped.

We planned to crisscross Southern-Middle California enjoying the attractions of this state. We never did understand the California mindset, but as Debbie pointed out, “at least they have awesome natural resources, in spite of the lack of common sense (politically).” Sequoia is one of them.

She arranged a “camp” --a word John still finds unacceptable for occupants of a 40 foot long house on wheels with a living room, kitchen (and pretty much all that entails), shower, toilet, big bedroom, onboard water and waste disposal and Internet, too (with a printer).

So, where were...?

Oh!   So she arranged a “glamp” (glamor camp) in Tulare, which is about an hour's drive from the Sequoia National Park. A bit far as a home base for this exploration, but we were able to avoid the sheer terror of driving the motor home up somewhat scary mountain roads into the wilds. Then we would head back to the coast again. For now, this park's main attraction is more than a mile higher than we started. Getting there is part of the Adventure. The road is winding, sometimes narrow, and the switchbacks are closely crowded enough that the driver can look ahead past two or three curves simultaneously, under the watchful bald head of Moro Rock, a mountain top that is only slowly eroding compared to its neighbors.

Scattered showers were forecast, but the sky was bright with blue as we drove into the forest. The forest rose along an extensive and broad ridge that jutted sharply above. As our car ascended the mountain roads, we noticed the traditional Michigan-type forest environment appeared rather suddenly just around 5,500 feet above sea level. Then the Sequoia trees began appearing as huge monsters dappled by the remaining sun. They look like regular trees until you get next to them and realize the trunks are wider than our car is long! Once again, the camera could do no justice to the grandeur in our eyes.

Debbie walked to the top of Morro Rock. Its naked, light-colored, igneous dome overlooked a deep valley and surrounding peaks. Its white head lords above the forest and the other mountain tops.

Debbie also posed with our SUV in the “Log Tunnel.”  The famous tree that had straddled a road on every postcard in our youth is long gone, but this fallen giant was carved out over the road.

Then, we continued north, headed for the contiguous Kings Canyon National Park. Above 6,000 feet the rain started. Then they became big drops. Then they became super cooled big drops. Then big frozen drops, and suddenly there were a lot of them. Literally in minutes, the road slushed over and Debbie, behind the wheel of the Honda began to worry about

traction on the tight switchback curves as we climbed ever higher. Before it was over there were a couple inches of slush on the curvy mountainous road which achieved 8,300 feet in elevation before the road came down to King's Canyon.. --with fog; we literally were in the clouds.

These two National Parks are too much to achieve in one day. We arrived at the King's Canyon visitor's center with just enough time to say Hi to the Ranger, before she informed us they were closing shop for the night. Maybe we'll return some day. At least, the snowy rain had stopped and we were able to see patches of blue up there/

Then the Bitch sent us on another sucky road adding 90 minutes to our homeward trip. She directed us down a windy pathway, and then to Hogback Road, which was even worse, and then back to the windy road...aaarrgh. While John slept through the ordeal, Debbie was left alone to plod on, through 20 mile an hour switchbacks without end until we got to our coach in Tulare. Later she looked at Google Maps and found that it would have set us on a major state highway to intersect another major state highway with a straight shot to camp. We keep reminding ourselves never to trust the Bitch without a confirming study. Obviously, we keep forgetting.....

California Trippin'

Older non-surfer-girl at Ventura Beach

Debbie's brother had to go back to work after the weekend, but we'll meet him not too far off for a 10-day coach trip with the three of us. After leaving Palm Springs, Debbie and John found camp at Acton, California, in Soledad Canyon. Those last few miles down the steep canyon road were interesting, but our 61' rig (including toad) made the tight,nearly 300^o turn at the bottom with no jigging required to encounter our first Thousand Trails experience.

Thousand Trails is a large corporate entity that lends its name many local operations around the country. This is one of the deals Debbie signed us into. For a fee of (on sale, of course) somewhere around $450 we get to camp “for free” at one of the many Thousand Trails locations in the Southwest (additional fees add additional regions). Thousand Trails HQ takes our reservations and tracks our compliance with Length Of Stay & Other Requirements.

RVs in this one were not too crowded-together, for which we thank Southern California desert hilly terrain.

We have been in others that somewhat resemble a parking lot (think of the unappealing-to-us Grand Haven State Park). We broke out the grill and Debbie picked up the tongs to prepare dinner. 

The site map shows us the hundreds of spaces, and describes the services at each: 30 amp power or 50 or none at all, sewer hookup or not, water hookup or dry, etc. But the reservation is just, "yes, you can stay here, but does not reserve a specific site. So we learned to “drop the toad” (unhook our towed car) going in.  That allows one of us to do a thorough reconnoiter then radio the coach, rather than trying to maneuver the big RV up and down all the aisles. In Soledad Canyon we found a shaded spot with 30 amps and both wet services. We called it “Home Base” for a few days.

From there we launched our Honda side trips, watching the few surfers at Ventura Beach on a coolish day (no sexy bikinis in sight) as we played Beach Boys music (and remembered with a certain fondness that that Little Honda only had two wheels, three gears, and a headlight “so we can ride my Honda tonight!”) We touched the sand there, which is a West Coast First for John, who remarked his disappointment that we drove all this way to find that the Pacific smells exactly the same as the Atlantic: rotting sea critters. Since it's an aroma he grew up with next to that other ocean 3,000 miles back over there, he was happy.

Driving up the coast to Santa Barbara, Debbie's internet search found Lilly's Taqueria on a less traveled street. It was in a part of Santa Barbara that Debbie found delightful. We had been directed to try this place for a “real Mexican meal”. The restaurant was simple and small, the menu board had barely a dozen entries, but the tacos were good. Marinated Pork for each of us. We each had seconds, and still walked away having spent less than $9. A seriously good lunch: 3.7 Bry Stars.

The next day, we sucked it up and drove into downtown LA. Don't think that “drive” is any kind of active verb in this town. For all its size, California's livable space seems to be relatively small. We found all those heavily Democratic votes start crowding their Priuses and barely hanging together junkers onto the many multi-laned freeways starting way far outside the city, along with a sprinkling of fat cat Republican Porsches, Jaguars, and other foreign speedsters zipping erratically among them. Mile and miles of an average speed a little above zero. Debbie has concluded the average California driver typifies the average Californian Priority Me attitude toward life: drive where I want at the speed I want until I park where I want after turning where I want irrespective of control lights and those cute little bicycle lanes that probably served as the model for the former Grand Rapids' Mayor who declared about five years ago that fully one percent of our city's population rides bikes to work year round –and that doesn't even count the fitness focused suburbanites headed for their downtown offices.

Perspective Hint:  1% of more than 180,000 people should put almost 2,000 bikes in your way to work in the drifting snow every winter weekday in GR - I don't think so!

It's nerve wracking to have to be constantly aware of who might unaccountably jump into your space for no reason but his/her own and with no warning.  No wonder everything is jammed up.   How does anybody in this gridlocked metropolis accomplish any productivity? In one neighborhood the LA city government had posted signs declaring a “Gridlock Free Zone.” We kid you not!  It's a government mandate; gridlock simply may not exist!   We've always suspected that California's government system was the epitome of American oligarchy, but--  obviously they're all smokin' something.  We had a long time to think about that, sitting there going nowhere in the illegal gridlock.

Eventually, hours later we arrived at the Getty Center Museum where John appreciated the architecture, and Debbie joined him in appreciating the floral gardens after she (alone) gazed at Van Gogh's Irises just to say she had.

 It was a neat place.

Then we “drove” to the Griffith Observatory which has been featured in many movies and was rumored to have great exhibits. We conclude that may be true for grade school kids, as one entire room was dedicated to the premise Did you know that Our Sun Actually Is A Star? Well– Yes, we did, actually, for more than six decades now. Most all exhibits were in the same vein, including the lightning that sparked from a Tesla Coil. Wowsers; 7^th grade stuff. We sat through the Spock actor's filmed exuberance of the “Leonard Nimoy Event Horizon Theater” and after 45 minutes we concluded that anyone over 19 years of age with a good education would have wasted his or her parking fee there. Live Long and Prosper.

But––

Stepping out the Observatory's front door late in the day, Debbie and John were viscerally thrilled to observe the magical HOLLYWOOD sign to our left, stretched across the hillside west in all its Technicolor ivory glory. You'd have a picture here if the sun had been on the morning side of the valley. Sorry.

But wait! There's more!

Half an hour later, our faithless GPS navigator guided us to downtown Burbank, an unknown and near mythical place with a reputation that has intrigued the two of us ever since Rowan & Martin dragged it through the punch lines weekly on Laugh In when we were teenagers. Johnny Carson had had a go at it, too, seeing as how NBC apparently saw fit to build those studios in what was a 1960s out of the way teensy town. And, now, being there--! It's the kind of thrill we imagine somebody from Utah feels when we explain there really is a Kalamazoo and that Michigan has a Hell, Paradise, and Christmas, as well. Burbank is not a laughable little burgh these days, though. It even has a WalMart. We know because we left some money there.

But Wait! Seriously...

On the way out of town, we drove past the LA River, which usually is a drought-dry concrete sluice-way, but in this year of bountiful mountain snow actually had some water in it. The LA River's concrete bed has minor fame among some online gamers from the days of Project Torque about a decade ago when Dad kept in touch with his sons by street racing our virtual cars through it. John's guessing real street racers may have done the same, though likely without the potentially fatal but spectacular wrecks that permeated our online gaming.    

From John's perspective, life is pretty much over now: Hollywood, Burbank and the LA River all in one afternoon. Whew.

And then, almost as a lesson not to give up on life, as Debbie drove us out of LA through Palmdale, headed for our next camp near Sequoia trees, John looked out of the coach window near a traffic light to see....

Ahh... That's how they do it!