archived published posts

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diff --git a/published/2017-10-26_shadow-lassen.txt b/published/2017-10-26_shadow-lassen.txt
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+We headed out early but somehow still ended up spending most of the day running errands in Carson City, again. Something about this town seems to suck us in. At least there's really good tacos at a Mexican market on the north east side of the city, we stopped there again for lunch. By the time we were done eating tacos and stocking up on essentials no one had the will to go past Washoe Lake. We pulled in and relaxed for the remainder of the day.
+
+The next day we managed to get on the road reasonably early, heading north on 395, bundled up against the increasingly severe cold in these parts. By noon we had made it to Susanville where we left 395 and headed up into the forests surrounding Mount Lassen. 
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-23_182950_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-923" class="picwide caption" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_114848-2_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-921" class="picwide caption" />
+
+There's tons of boondocking spots in this area, all you really need to do is turn on a dirt road and you'll end up somewhere with some rocks piled in fire rings in the woods. We were actually on our way to a legitimate campground by a lake, but the road was rough enough that we ended up just pulling off at the first flat area we saw. 
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-23_174352_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-928" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-23_165008_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-931" class="picwide" />
+
+It was a nice spot n the woods, next to a meadow of sorts with plenty of forest for the kids to explore. It was nice enough that we ended up staying two nights. Why not? It's not like we have anywhere to be. 
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-23_173407_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-929" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-23_171259_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-930" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-23_181322_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-924" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_114818_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-922" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-23_181227_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-925" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-23_175029_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-926" class="picwide" />
+
+At some point during our stay here a fuse holder that sits between our charge controller and our battery bank broke. At the time I was blissfully unaware anything was wrong. It wasn't until the second morning when we got up to leave and the inverter started beeping (which it does when the batteries are too low) that I realized something was wrong. I lifted up the couch and discovered our charge controller was dead. That pissed me off since I bought the expensive charger. But then we were about to drive anyway and could charge off the inverter so at least we'd get our batteries back up. Doesn't that sound simple? Ha.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_122148-1_shasta-forest.jpg" id="image-920" class="picwide" />
+
+We drive down out of the forests and into the hot hellhole of Redding, which the rest of my family didn't find nearly as terrible as I did. I've never liked Redding. This time through we got stuck in traffic, then we had to climb a good size hill just out of town and ended up overheating. We stopped for bit, let the engine cool and went on without an issue, but it was just one more strike against Redding in my book.
+
+It was getting late in the day and we spied a sign for a campground off the highway, though it didn't say how far of the highway. We went for it because we were all sick of being on the road. We ended up driving what seemed like ten miles on a road that kept getting narrower and narrower, weaving through tiny communities until we just about gave up hope of finding anything and then there it was, a really lovely little campground tucked in the woods of the Trinity Alps, right beside the first river we've seen that made me really wish I had a fly rod.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_190431_trinity-alps.jpg" id="image-932" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_190827_trinity-alps.jpg" id="image-933" class="picwide" />
+
+Long days of driving, sitting at the side of the road, trying to fix electrical problems, all these things take their toll. The best morale booster is good food. One thing I will say for Redding, it had a damn good Thai/Lao restaurant with portions big enough that the kids could have Pad Thai in the middle of the forest, as forest fairies do.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-25_193123_trinity-alps.jpg" id="image-934" class="picwide" />
diff --git a/published/2017-10-28_pacific-sense.txt b/published/2017-10-28_pacific-sense.txt
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+I smelled the Pacific way before it was actually possible to have smelled the Pacific. We were climbing one of the five hundred ridges[^1] we had to climb to get through the Trinity Alps when I swear the air changed, suddenly it was wetter, salty and with a slight hint of fish. Or it was my imagination looking for something other than the endless loop then running through my head: are the house batteries really going to get us there (the alternator was was still dead).
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-26_193302_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-936" class="picwide" />
+
+Whatever the case, eventually we made it over the last ridge and then we really could smell the ocean and the Pacific in this region has a very different smell than say, the Atlantic we left eight months ago.  
+
+I didn't really have any goals or lists of things to do on this trip, but, that said, making it all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific does have a certain feeling of accomplishment to it.
+
+Here's some meaningless stats: 
+
+* Miles driven: 5866 (give or take 50 miles[^2])
+* Day on the road: 209
+* Gallons of gas: I have no idea[^3]
+
+The anticlimatic part was that we made it all the way to the Pacific, but when we arrived we couldn't see it. As is typical up this way, the ocean was wrapped in a blanket of thick fog. After setting up camp we hiked down into the gloom of fog and spent the evening on the beach. The one place that will always feel like home to me. 
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-26_194219_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-937" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-26_194321_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-938" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-26_194454_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-939" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-26_194923_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-940" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-26_195156_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-941" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-27_142117_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-942" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-27_144234_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-943" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-27_150628_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-944" class="picwide caption" />
+
+
+[^1]: It's possible there were not that many.  
+[^2]: our odometer is currently broken so this is an estimate based on Google Maps, hence the possible variation.
+[^3]: I had this in a spreadsheet for a while  so I could calculate our MPG, but I haven't kept up with it.
diff --git a/published/2017-10-29_through.txt b/published/2017-10-29_through.txt
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+Patrick's Point is a beautiful place. When you can see it. One evening the setting sun conspired with the fog to let a few rays of light through.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-29_195634_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-946" class="picwide" />
+
+Most of the time though, it's enveloped in cloud.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-26_194221_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-945" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-30_172743_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-952" class="picwide" />
+
+Having driven in on a broken alternator (draining our starting battery to dead and our house batteries way down) we really needed sun. Instead we got not just overcast skies but swirling mists of fog that create an artificial night around the entire point. It was like living in a cloud. Every morning I got up, and, while stowing our bedding under the couch, stared at the ever-dropping voltage readings on our batteries. 
+
+After three days it became apparent that I either had to do something today or we were going to be stuck. The nearest auto parts store with a new alternator in stock was about 35 miles away in Eureka. The nearest bus stop was six miles away but assuming it was even remotely on time I'd be gone about 16 hours round trip. Maybe. U.S. bus systems tables are completely inscrutable[^1] so it was also possible there was no bus running at all. I could risk driving, but if the battery died the whole family would be stuck. 
+
+I ended up with a compromise. I rented a car from the airport which was only a six mile walk and ten mile bus ride and would, theoretically get me back to the bus by dinner time. I threw on some warm clothes, packed water and, at my daughters' insistence, some snacks in my backpack, and set off for Trinidad. 
+
+I really did not want to walk to Trinidad. It just wasn't on my list of things to do when I woke up that morning. A bus or even a really expensive cab ride was much more appealling. At the same time, perverse though this sounds, I like these little breakdowns. I like putting myself in situations where I'm well outside my comfort zone and have the scramble a bit to solve problems. How else do you know what you're capable of?
+
+I don't generally try to teach my kids "life lessons" or any of that crap. Words are cheap. As a professional writer, I can tell you with some authority just how cheap they are. Children learn by watching . They absorb. The world around them gets organized into a patterns right before their eyes. One of them, that I have tried to cultivate to some degree, is that you should meet life head on. Good or bad you have to go through, not around. This is easy when life is good. When there are problems it gets more difficult. But still. The only way out is through.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-30_171101_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-950" class="picwide" />
+
+You cannot avoid. You can not ignore. You cannot put your head in the ground. The minute you pull it up and look around, there's everything you were avoiding, waiting for you. Similarly, there are no shortcuts, there are no easy escapes. No one is coming to save you. You have to save yourself. You save yourself by going through. Whether life gives you fear and sadness, or joy and wonder, there's no escaping it, there's no way around it, you go through it. You can choose to accept what comes and deal with it accordingly moving through it or you can lay down and die. It's really that simple. 
+
+And usually what we think is going to be so awful isn't that bad[^2]. We're pretty terrible at telling what is good from what is bad in the midst of things. I am anyway. Many of my favorite moments in this life aren't ones I'm in a hurry to re-live, but doesn't make them any less wonderful to me. Whatever it is though, these experiences are here for you now. You put them on, you sit with them, so to speak, you live them. And then something else comes along. Some of it will be hard, unpleasant, involuntarily thrust upon you, not really what you wanted to do when you woke up that morning, but you get up and you do it anyway because it is life, whether you want to call it good or bad is up to you, but all of it is life and without it, there's no reason to be here. The only way out is through.
+
+That's what I was thinking about walking through the damp cold dreary world of Patrick's Point, at least when I wasn't concentrating on the sound of cars to avoid being run over by insane California drivers. I also thought about the millions of people all over the world (most of them women) who were also at that very moment walking further than me to get water. And they have to do it again tomorrow. I don't have to walk for water, I don't have to beg for food. I don't really have any problems at all, just a burned out coil of wire that needed to be replaced. No big deal. 
+
+I also thought about how if I were in the south someone would have stopped to give me a ride before I made it a mile. Everywhere we've been recently has served to reinforce something I already knew: the only place still alive in America is the south.
+
+I made it to the bus station about half an hour ahead of the bus, time enough to grab some pastor tacos from the gas station, which was way better than you're thinking. I have my beefs with California -- lots of beefs in fact -- but damn if you can't get a decent taco at a gas station. Eventually the bus showed up only ten minutes late, which is almost Germanicly on-time by the LA public transport standards I grew up with. I made it to the airport, picked up the car, drove to Eureka, bought an alternator and drove back in time for dinner. 
+
+The next day I installed the alternator and took the bus for a drive to charge the batteries. It wasn't enough to stop us from needing to conserve energy, but it kept us afloat a little longer, it got us out of our energy jam. It got us through. And that's all we really need. Eventually the sun even came out for day.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-30_172400_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-951" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-30_172924_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-953" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-30_173651_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-954" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-30_154657_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-947" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-30_163418_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-949" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-30_161506_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-948" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-31_160655_patricks-point.jpg" id="image-955" class="picwide" />
+
+[^1]: I have ridden the bus in 16 countries, reading over bus schedules through the fog of half a dozen different language barriers and I've never had so difficult at time as I have at every bus stop in the U.S -- MTA New York being the notable exception to that rule.
+[^2]: By the same token, things that seems so great at first often turn out to be downright nasty.
diff --git a/published/2017-11-03_halloween-and-big-trees.txt b/published/2017-11-03_halloween-and-big-trees.txt
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+Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. It's got all the good elements of ritual to it, costumes, masks, sounds, night, and obliquely somewhere in there, veneration of the dead. For one moment, one evening, everyone is something they're not and somehow more themselves for it. The masks of everyday life get replaced with masks of our choosing, if only for one night. Plus, candy. 
+
+Back in Athens the kids really loved going to Boo at the Zoo, the local zoo gets all Halloween fun so it's like a trip to the zoo plus costumes. Turns out Athens is far from the only place to have one of these so we crashed the Boo and the Zoo festival in Eureka.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-29_154402_halloween.jpg" id="image-956" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-29_162937_halloween.jpg" id="image-957" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-29_164821_halloween.jpg" id="image-958" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-29_171318_halloween.jpg" id="image-959" class="picwide" />
+
+We even managed to get some trick-or-treating in down in nearby Trinidad, which was completely enveloped in fog (natch) and just spooky enough to be fun.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-10-31_182821_halloween.jpg" id="image-961" class="picwide" />
+
+We kept the car I rented to get the alternator for a few extra days because we decided we didn't want to head north to check out the Redwoods proper with the bus. It's been nice to see the ocean and all, but we also wanted to see the sun. Still, you can't come all the way up here without showing the kids the tallest trees on earth. 
+
+We left the bus at Patrick's Point and made a day trip up to the Redwood State and National parks. We hiked a few miles through a grove of the giant trees.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-01_121202_redwoods.jpg" id="image-960" class="picwide" />
+<span class="row-2".
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-01_115401_redwoods.jpg" id="image-962" class="cluster pic5" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-01_120107_redwoods.jpg" id="image-965" class="cluster pic5" />
+</span>
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-01_115646_redwoods.jpg" id="image-963" class="picwide" />
+</div>
+
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-01_115749_redwoods.jpg" id="image-964" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-01_124124_redwoods.jpg" id="image-966" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-01_125350_redwoods.jpg" id="image-967" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-01_125502_redwoods.jpg" id="image-968" class="picwide caption" />
diff --git a/published/2017-11-08_the-absense-of-glass-beach.txt b/published/2017-11-08_the-absense-of-glass-beach.txt
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+After Halloween we made our way south, ducking inland and around the Lost Coast, down to Fort Bragg where we finally, for a few days at least got some sunshine. Not that it was warm mind you, but at least we saw the sun for two days in a row.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-04_145016_fort-bragg.jpg" id="image-969" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-04_150705_fort-bragg.jpg" id="image-970" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-04_151110_fort-bragg.jpg" id="image-971" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-06_162602_fort-bragg.jpg" id="image-972" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-06_162744_fort-bragg.jpg" id="image-973" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-06_162854_fort-bragg.jpg" id="image-974" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-06_163056_fort-bragg.jpg" id="image-975" class="picwide" />
+
+I never wrote about it here, but Corrinne and I visited this area about a decade ago and went to a little, out of the way, somewhat inaccesible beach called Glass Beach. The name refered to the fact that the entire shoreline was glass shards, the soft, sea-polished variety some people call seaglass. If I remember correctly it was there because there used to be a wrecking yard or a garbage dump or some combination of those things on the bluff above. At the time, 2009 , the glass was several feet deep and covered from the low tide line well up past high tide. It looked like this:
+
+<img src="images/2017/glass.jpg" id="image-981" class="picwide" />
+
+Today it is all gone. People came and carted it home in buckets. We read about the loss of glass beach on the internet, but I confess I didn't really believe it until I saw it. It really is gone. I even saw two people trying to fill a bucket with the tiny amount of glass that still remains here and there. I have no idea what people do with a bucket of seaglass, presumably it all sits in garages and dens around the country, forgotten. Somehow, to me, this perfectly encapsulates America today: steal what's everyone's for yourself and then never even use it. 
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-07_130047_fort-bragg.jpg" id="image-976" class="picwide caption" />
+
+At least there were still tidepools to explore. There wasn't much life in them, but give a kid some puddles and rocks and they'll be occupied for hours.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-07_132503_fort-bragg.jpg" id="image-977" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-07_132541-fort-bragg.jpg" id="image-978" class="picwide" />
+
+Because it's Northern California in the Autumn the rain inevitably returned. People always ask, what do you do when it rains? Answer: we get wet. If you look closely at the left edge of the image below there's a deer, also getting wet.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-09_103203_fort-bragg.jpg" id="image-979" class="picwide" />
+
+Fort Bragg also turned out to be home to the third Travco we've run across in our travels. This one, sadly, is unlikely to ever move again.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-10_151500_fort-bragg.jpg" id="image-980" class="picwide" />
diff --git a/published/2017-12-02_the-city.txt b/published/2017-12-02_the-city.txt
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+We continued our slow meandering southward, stopping for a week to visit our friends Kate and Josh, whom we met back in Durango. They're in the process of building a yurt on some friends' land and there was enough room to tuck the bus under some redwoods as well. There was plenty of woods, fields, and streams for the kids to play in, and we got to wake up to the sound of hooting owls. They also loaned us a car, which was super nice.
+
+Our thanksgiving plans were to return to my uncle's house in Wellington, but I wasn't about to drive the bus back over the mountains. Fortunately Kate and Josh's friends (who actually own the land) said we could leave the bus there for a week. And that's what we did. Since the bus was safely stowed, we figured we'd head into San Francisco on our way to visit some old friends there.
+
+I'll be honest, I was kind of dreading San Francisco. I've about had my fill of the whole entrepreneur-as-hero, techno-utopian bullshit that's been spewing out of the Bay Area for the past decade or so. I was worried that that mindset had taken over the city, that the wealthy had squeezed the life out of it as they do everything else. I was, in short, prepared to hate what had become of the city I once loved. Fortunately for me, San Francisco hasn't yet entirely succumbed the banality underlying the agendas of a handful of wealthy residents (and their acolytes). Which is to say, San Francisco is still pretty close to what it's always been -- San Francisco.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-18_151337_san-francisco.jpg" id="image-995" class="picwide" />
+
+It probably helped that we arrived on a weekend of gloriously warm weather with wide open, deep blue skies filled with scattered clouds to match the wide open deep blue of the bay filled with scattered sails and whitecaps. We spent a lot of time outdoors, almost all our time in fact. Walking the city streets, the parks, the shore, the marina, we even made an attempt to visit [the wave organ](https://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/wave-organ/), something I've been meaning to do for decades now, though it proved too far of a walk to go all the way around from where we parked out to the organ, we could at least see it, but then, seeing is not really the point of an organ. Next time.
+
+We stayed on Lombard, down toward the touristy stuff because I thought the kids would like it and I was right. Hyde Street Pier was a hit, as was fisherman's wharf and the liberty ship we toured, of which I have no pictures since helping three children navigate a giant metal ship with stairs and railings built for grown sailors did not leave a free arm to snap any photos. But the real find was the Musée Mécanique, an antique penny arcade museum.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-18_171206_san-francisco.jpg" id="image-985" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-18_171850-1_san-francisco.jpg" id="image-986" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-18_170634_san-francisco.jpg" id="image-983" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-18_170747_san-francisco.jpg" id="image-984" class="picwide" />
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-19_114028_san-francisco.jpg" id="image-987" class="picwide caption" />
+
+And of course, you can't visit the city with kids without a trolley ride. See how thrilled they look?
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-19_120040_san-francisco.jpg" id="image-988" class="picwide" />
+<span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-19_123643_san-francisco.jpg" id="image-989" class="cluster pic5" />
+<img src="images/2017/20171119_1133311.jpg" id="image-996" class="cluster pic5" />
+</span>
+</div>
+
+One morning we made made the long trek out to the Academy of Sciences museum, mostly I think because the kids had heard there was an albino crocodile, which the really wanted to see. It turned out to be pretty cool, especially the rainforest area with all its butterflies and birds flying around right next to you. And yes there was an albino crocodile.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-20_124138_san-francisco.jpg" id="image-992" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-20_124223_san-francisco.jpg" id="image-993" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-20_132338_san-francisco.jpg" id="image-994" class="picwide" />
+
+You want to know how out of touch with the modern world we are, we took our first Uber in SF, actually it was a Lyft, which I'd never heard of before we got there. Our friends in the city got it for us and it was probably faster than a taxi, certainly faster than the bus we'd taken earlier in the day. But I felt weird and little bit dirty about the whole thing, like I was somehow contributing to the demise of something, though I'm not sure what.
+
+The next night I went to run a quick errand by myself, mostly just because I wanted to ride some public transportation alone, with headphones on. I have a [whole essay](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/03/one-nation-under-groove) on this site[^1] about what a magical thing it is to put on headphones on pubic transportation in pretty much any city. Twilight is the best time, but there's no bad time. You slip into an otherworld of music in the city, riding public transportation you feel the city around you as if it were just you and the city, a kind of intimacy of place I know of no other way to achieve, at once isolating and communing, not with man but what we have wrought, what we have made collectively greater than ourselves. Cities are living things and I don't mean that in some quasispiritual kind of way, I mean it very literally. This thing, this consciousness, we call the city for lack of a better word loves to commune if you ask it to. Paris and I get along best in this regard, though we have had our moments of disagreement. New York is all about flash and color, but here in San Francisco the conversation is always more sublte, warm yellow light and cool gray fog mingling in narrow streets, the glitter of shop windows and restaurants, blurring by as the bus lurches up Van Ness, inbound, coursing toward the heart the city. It was one short bus ride, another back but it was enough to spend some time alone with the city.
+
+After four days in the city we headed back over the Sierras to my aunt and uncle's place in Nevada. We had  good  Thanksgiving, I got to see some cousins I hadn't seen in ten years and few relatives I hadn't seen ever. The sunrises were nice too.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-23_073510_thanksgiving.jpg" id="image-997" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-23_110251_thanksgiving.jpg" id="image-998" class="picwide caption" />
+
+It was a good trip, but a week in hotels was quite enough. We were all ready to be back to the bus and when we got there Olivia jumped out of the car and ran to give the bus a hug. Home again.
+
+[^1]: Surprisingly, for someone who changes their mind constantly and generally crings when reading anything I didn't write today (and often then too), I actually still really like that essay and agree with every word in it.
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+After so much time away from the bus it was good to be on the road again. We headed out the morning after we got back, picking our way south through the Bay Area and down to, as it turned out, Silicon Valley, the epicenter of what's wrong with America, and, as you might expect, a terrible place to try to camp. After an abortive attempt or two we gave up and got a hotel room.
+
+The next day we drove the rest of the way down to Monterey, hoping to visit some friends and take the kids to aquarium. There's a well located campground, right in the middle of Monterey, up on a hill. There's too many trees to see the ocean, and there's not even the pretense of a level site, but it's far better than what you'll find in most California cities so I won't complain. It also had a nice playground for the kids.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-27_174258_monterey.jpg" id="image-999" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-28_173526-1_monterey.jpg" id="image-1003" class="picwide" />
+
+Being centrally located also allowed us to explore the town and see the aquarium.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-29_114628_monterey.jpg" id="image-1004" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-29_123804_monterey.jpg" id="image-1005" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-29_124950_monterey.jpg" id="image-1006" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-29_141005_monterey.jpg" id="image-1007" class="picwide" />
+
+I'm probably just a twisted person, but after a few hours at the Monterey Bay Aquarium I was starving and really craving sushi. 
+
+One night I managed to sneak off one night to spend some time with my friends, who I'm pretty sure really didn't understand why I refused to drive the bus up the hill to their house. I'll tell you why in the next post. For now, rest assured that I made a wise decision.
+
+From Monterey we were supposed to head south to Santa Barbara to visit some more friends, but honestly, we were a bit sick of being damp and wanted to head away from the coast for a while. This turned out to be a smart choice since the Santa Barbara fires started a couple days later. The first day out of Monterey we were headed down 101 (probably the roughest, consistently awful road we've driven, Californians I know you don't want to hear this, but you are living in a third world country and you're the only ones who don't realize it. But I digress), I stopped for gas and when we pulled out of the gas station there was a horrible grinding noise that really sounded like wheel bearings to me. 
+
+My wife on the other hand thought the noise was coming from further back, near the transmission. I crawled underneath the bus but I couldn't see anything amiss. Unfortunately I crawled from the engine and wiggled backward, which meant I missed seeing the problem. We drove back into King City and searched out a mechanic who, fortunately, had time to look around. He and I took it for a drive, then crawled under it from about midway back and immediately saw the problem -- the forward driveshaft mount had dropped down and the driveshaft was scraping against a crossbar. 
+
+A quick lift with a floor jack and we tightened up the bracket and everything was fine. It took less time to fix than it did for my wife and kids to eat lunch at the Vietnamese restaurant next door. 
+
+By this time it was midway through the afternoon and no one really felt like driving anymore. We had spied a county park on our way into town so we headed there instead of back on the highway. It was a nice place, virtually empty and there was plenty of stuff for the kids to explore. We ended up spending the entire weekend there.
+
+<img src="images/2017/2017-12-01_173929_king-city.jpg" id="image-1014" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-30_170836_king-city.jpg" id="image-1012" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-30_170657_king-city.jpg" id="image-1011" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-30_164105_king-city.jpg" id="image-1010" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-30_174503_king-city.jpg" id="image-1013" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-12-03_120616_king-city.jpg" id="image-1015" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-30_160548_king-city.jpg" id="image-1009" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-11-30_160426_king-city.jpg" id="image-1008" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2017/2017-12-03_155319_king-city.jpg" id="image-1016" class="picwide" />