Installment #2, 2007

January 8, 2007

Thanks to everyone that has sent us emails and called. We appreciate hearing from everyone.
We begin this installment by letting everyone know we are trying to keep up a tradition of everyone we visit feeding us steak! A very nice steak dinner at the Los Altos Inn with Sharon’s cousin, Donna (a Physical Therapist at the local VA Hospital). We spent two days in the area with Donna. The morning we were going to continue south, we spent almost the whole morning trying to get the Wi-Fi to work so we could send the Installment #1. We finally had to call Verizon. The tech support person literally took over our wireless laptop to find out what the problem was – amazing what they can do!! – only to find out it was the ISP at the RV campsite. Once we moved on, everything was OK.

As we were driving that day, we made a stop at the Santa Cruz boardwalk – not a good choice, since the boardwalk was closed for repairs and the on-ramp to Highway 101 was also closed for repairs – a small five mile detour to get back on 101. We saw fields and fields of lettuce and artichokes – seemed we were in the area known as the "salad bowl of the U.S"; also went through Castroville which is the artichoke capitol of the world. We stopped off by the ocean and a huge marina. We spent the night in San Luis Obispo across from a high school. The next morning we took a mile long walk to Apple Farm

(a very classy lodging, restaurant, gift shop and mill house – where there was a 14 foot wheel to harness the water to provide power to press cider, grind wheat, and make old fashioned ice cream (http://www.applefarm.com/).

Next we headed for Solvang, CA (a Danish town). We saw an ostrich farm along the way.
In Solvang we saw windmills, clogs in shoe stores, very expensive glass vases from Czech Republic (http://www.zfolio.com/) and much, much more. Next stop was America’s largest orchid farm (Gallup and Stribling (http://www.americanorchids.com/) – we never knew there were so many different varieties of orchids. Stopped along the ocean for pictures of the oil rigs far out in the ocean, and ended up at a Wal-Mart in Oxnard for an overnight stay.

Next day our destination was the Crystal Cathedral south of Los Angeles in Garden Grove (Reverend Schuller’s church)(http://www.crystalcathedral.org/). What a sight to see with the organ playing music the whole time we were there, statutes everywhere, as well as water fountains and perfect landscaping.

Arriving at the Crystal Cathedral was quite an experience – there was a traffic jam on Interstate 5, signs up telling how many minutes to get how far (30 minutes for 12 miles was one – we don’t think it was accurate).

From the cathedral we drove back to see Rich & Luci and family in Alhambra, CA – they kept up the "steak" tradition and BBQed steaks on the grill with fresh home-made bread and real butter! We stayed there until later in the evening so only drove five miles down the road to a Sam’s Club parking lot. Left in the morning headed for Quartzsite, AZ with the idea that we will stay in an RV park there for long enough to rest up and regroup.
Interesting sights we saw along our last few days’ drive

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  Stretch Hummer Limo
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  Hummer pick-up
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  License plate "I love cakes" with "love" being a heart
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  Log cabin (huge) right along Interstate 5 with a roof that was made to look like it was covered with snow.
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  About 30 motocycles riding in a group on Interstate 10
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  Thousands of wind generators near Palm Springs – a huge "wind farm"
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  Full-sized billboard "Gerald ‘Our’ Ford" "1913-2006
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  Going up the pass there were 9 stops where you could fill your radiator with water
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  Started at 0 elevation and went straight up to 1500 feet, and then saw a sign that read "17 more miles to summit"
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  Sign at bottom of climb "turn off air conditioner next 10 miles"
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  Electric recharge for electric automobiles all over southern California

Temperature where we are now is about 73 degrees during the day and we hear it is snowing in Moscow, Idaho.