So while at King City we enjoyed wonderful weather every day with temps in the upper 80's and low 90's. Now that's what I'm talking about! Sorry all our Anacortes friends are enduring 40's & 50's.

We made a couple of side trips while in King City. One to Monterey, about 60 miles north. Nice place and very touristy visit for us. We spent the day at the Fisherman's Wharf and on Cannery Row. It's famous for a now defunct fishing community and John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath, etc). Every town within 100 miles claims to be his homeplace. The present Cannery Row is little more than a scaled down Pike Place Market with a great view of the bay. And we had lunch at Bubba Gump's Shrimp House. It's a fun place, but not the greatest place for real seafood. The ambiance is a kick in the pants however. It was a nice visit, but once is enough.

Another highlight was visiting the Agriculture Museum in King City. Sounds absolutely fascinating doesn't it? Well, apparently the Salinas Valley is known as the salad bowl of America. Clearly there were veggie farms all along the freeway as we traveled there. According to the museum they have been shipping veggies since irrigation was put in in the 30's. The museum housed many old tractors and other farming equipment for viewing. Not exciting, but very interesting. Ya gotta remember, we're old farts who are easily entertained!

We spent Sun afternoon at a huge flea market at the King City fairgrounds. That was a hoot! It was 99.9% Mexican attended. I think we were the only non-Mexican's attending, but what a blast. Everything from fancy bra's to tamales were for sale or trade. I picked up a few items for sure! There were some real bargains and a lot of junk, but fun. The veggies were out of sight in freshness and low cost. Came home with an armload of same.

Then the day came that we had to move on to meet Ray & Val at Morro Bay. While looking forward to spending time with old friends, I was quite apprehensive about the drive from the central valley over the coastal range and to the oceanside. Ray had advised using Hiway 46 instead of 41 to avoid curves, etc. HOWEVER....I had a completely miserable day negotiating the rig over the mountains and such. The rig's fine...it's operator error or rather sheer panic that dominates. Don't know how this is going to resolve itself. We did make it, however, but not in record time.

We pulled into Morro Bay Dunes RV Park (photo of rock at Morro Bay entrance) and was blessed with oceanside camping and good weather. Hiking the beach and touring the shops in Morro Bay has been enjoyable, and of course meeting friends has been fun. Nancie had not met them before, so there was a lot of history to catch up on. Ray & Val are Canadian friends from boating experiences many years ago and lead a nomadic life to say the least. You can usually find them in their converted van (home) in Morro Bay, or in Victoria, BC (home city) or biking in France. Val plays the harp and sings mostly Irish style music and Ray cooks and is currently into pottery. Nice visit!

Tomorrow (Fri) we head 30 miles south to another beach community and the opportunity to do more nothing! The roads are supposed to be calm and I hope so! According to the calendar, I get to be a year older tomorrow. Care to guess? Hint...It ain't 39. We will spend a week or so there before moving south into LA and visiting Bryan and the grandkids for Thanksgiving.