July 20th

We said goodbye to Brian and Sara and headed south on 280 towards Santa Cruz. It was foggy out to the west. We made it to Santa Cruz by 1pm and visited Lynne's Great Aunt Florence Phillips. She is 90 years old and has lived in Santa Cruz since 1959. We had chicken sandwiches and tea and talked about the family, California and her life as a Public Health Nurse. She worked mainly with school children and used to check their immunizations and such. It was great for Lynne and her to talk about public health - then and now.

After lunch we drove through Monterrey and did the "17 mile drive". We thougth it was a scenic nature drive but it wasn't exactly. It seems that a private company owns most of the peninsula between Monterey and Carmel. There are a lot of private homes in there but also the Pebble Beach golf course and many miles of beautiful coast. Many people must have passes to go in and out of there due to their home or country club affiliations but mere mortals such as ourselves have to pay to get in. We paid and did the drive. It was nice but we probably wouldn't recommend it because there was a lot more country club than nature. We popped out on the Carmel side and drove through there. It is very pretty and definitely a shi-shi rich getaway. Remember, Clint Eastwood is Mayor!

We continued south on highway 1 and it quickly got very remote. At Big Sur we were surprised to see that gasoline is $1.92 a gallon! That's twice as much as we have been paying across the country but there is no more gast for miles, so they've got you!

We found a great campsite at Limekiln State Park, nestled in a canyon up from a little bay. Nice quiet place, with some young redwoods and big firepits. Dinner consisted of bread, cheese, salami and couscous. We could hear the stream running down the canyon as we slept.

July 21st

The air was cool and we slept late. Breakfast was simple: graham crackers and peanut butter, and Earl Grey tea. We took a walk to the little bay and watched the waves crash on the beach, listened to the cars speed past on highway 1 above. It was foggy.

Highway 1 twists and turns down the coast to San Simeon and then begins to straighten out a little. The Madonna Inn was waiting for us in San Luis Obispo, and we had lunch in the pink and gold coffee shop. This place is truly worth a detour-- one of the gaudiest, glitziest roadside stops in the west (named, by the way, for it's founders Mr. & Mrs. Madonna, not the queen of 80s disco). The rooms at the Madonna Inn each have a theme... the Caveman Room, the Jungle Room, the Madonna Room, etc. There is so much pink in this place it almost made us sick...even the sugar crystals are pink (see photo, below). Lynne wishes we could have gotten married in this fairyland of pink and gold and suggested the same to Brian and Sara in a postcard (you guys will get it soon!).

We had the greatest waitress there too. She was looking at the postcards we were writing and especially loved one of Van Halen that we were sending to Ash and Justin in Atlanta. She took it in the back to see if the kitchen crew could help her figure out all their names. We got David Lee Roth and the Van Halen brothers figured out but who was that other guy? The mystery remains to this day because no one knew. She told us about how she used to live in San Francisco and that there was a great shop there with just post cards. We said, the one in North Beach? That's where we got the Van Halen card! Another one of those small world moments.

We drove further down the coast and finally settled at McGrath State Beach. Nice place, but a great many screaming kids and beer guzzling parents, bonfires and spaghetti-o's. We slept well, but were awakened by the same kids at about 6am, so we just decided to make the best of it and get on our way.

We drove down to Simi Valley, home of Prisbrey's Bottle Village. It took us a long time to find the place, but a helpful cop showed us the way. It was closed, but we took some pictures and checked it out. Apparently Grandma Prisbrey started this concrete and bottle construction in 1959 to house her 17,000 pencils. She completed the project in 1965. She died sometime in the 1980's. Her place is in sort of disrepair, but there is a preservation society. There is a website you can check out HERE to get more info.

Los Angeles was big and weird. The drive through Topanga Canyon is really pretty, and dropped us off right at the coast. We drove down Santa Monica, Hollywood, Sunset, and finally found where Kathleen lives in Los Feliz. We had lunch across the street at a place called "Birds" and thought about her (she is in San Diego, ironically).

LA was hideous to get out of, especially route 5 south. It was either a screaming 85mph or a standstill. We were tired when we hit San Diego. We found Van and Ruth's apartment in Coronado, and said hello to them and Aunt Sybil who is visiting for the week. We just saw her in Amarillo! Amazing, this jet-set crowd we hob-nob in.

Ruth's parents, Margie and Sheldon, took us all out for dinner in La Jolla. We had a great time and unfortunately forgot our digital camera. Photos tomorrow....

We are going to CHILL for the next few days, doing nothing more than sit on the beach and listen to the surf. We are going to resume our cloud-watching we gave up at Flaming Gorge.

	The California coast
	Our campsite at Limekiln State Park
	At the beach near Limekiln SP.
	The painting on this tire cover is absolutely HID-E-OUS!
	Lynne augmenting her coffee with pink sugar crystals at the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo
	Us in front of the Madonna Inn, as someone asked us if we wanted our picture taken
	The picture that the person mentioned above took.
	Prisbrey's Bottle Village
	Too bad Prisbrey's Bottle Village was closed!
	See if you can spot the baby doll heads here at Prisbrey's Bottle Village
	Lynne in Los Angeles, near Kathleen's apartment