On the road to...??

Time to head out again!  Winter has come and gone, so time to move on!  Pack it up and move it out!

Unless...   We have to go back.  Mom got very sick in Jan. with fungal and bacterial pneumonia (yes, a double whammy!!)  She's much better these days but still having some issues, so we may end up having to turn around at any time...  But hopefully that will NOT be the case, for all our sakes!!!

For now, we charge on!

 Our friend Karl (whose property we live on when in the San Diego area) took a couple of pix of us on our way out.  I'm trying to get Zou to wave, but I think she's looking for bunnies (a full-time occupation for her!!)...

A familiar scene...(http://carriebarton2014.blogspot.com/2014/06/ready-here-we-go-again.html).  Although this one has a bit of flashback quality to it, with those kayaks atop the truck...!  They went with us for our trips in the Winnebago Brave.  But they have done too much sitting these past years and are lonely and bored, so we're taking them to a friend near San Fran.  Hopefully Mark and his son, Brett can get good use out of them!!

 When "EF Barton" talks, "people" listen.  

And if he says "eat!"  They ask "how much?!"  

"String cheese?"  "Yes, please!!"

 For Shorty here, he's got to find an opening in between all the junk on the dashboard in order to have any kind of view.  A special sort of tunnel vision, you might say...

 Heading north through Los Angeles, we pass through a lot of high rent district areas...

And so much for timing our departure to miss the traffic...!!  Hah!  It was awful much of the way, not to mention the beat up roadways, the continuous road work and narrowed lanes, the idiot drivers darting in front of us (even when all common sense said there wasn't the room to do so!!)...  Gotta love LA, right?  NOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!   I don't think there IS a good time to get through there!!

 Looks like downtown to me!

 We're taking the 101 up the coast (the old "El Camino Real:"  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Camino_Real_(California)).  I guess you might say we're on a mission (ha-ha!!!)...

Our first, two-night destination, is Lake Casitas, in Ventura County.  Seems like almost all the campgrounds in the southern (and western/coastal) half of CA are either always totally booked-up already, way too expensive, not very nice, or all of the above.   So, after lots of research and calls, we ended up with this.  Not cheap, but at least it sounded nice.  And it mostly is.  Except for one frustrating detail (that was only spelled out in small writing on the receipt that I printed out - and somehow I managed to miss it, or not understand the full implications):  our kayaks were not allowed in...!!!  Not what you want to hear/deal with after a stressful, tiring drive!  So we had to get out, right there, take them off the truck and leave them in some little locked cage thing.  And we'll have to load them up when we leave (IF we can find someone to unlock the cage...?!).  I understand the wish to protect the lake/reservoir from invasive mussel contamination or whatever, but of course we weren't planning on kayaking there!  But no matter, they didn't give a hoot about the fact that we were just transporting the kayaks - too many people have lied too much of the time for such a "wild claim" to be believed anymore, I guess...

But we finally got settled in, met our nice neighbors, and took the kids out for their turns around the block.

 Some cool clouds (never did anything where we were but were nice to look at).

Scratty (Princess on her Pillow) and Hayes enjoy the view out the small bedroom window (can get a glimpse of the lake which is kind of low and far off - but undoubtedly the water's at a much higher level than a few months ago!!).

Morning motorhomes.
We woke up to fog this morning, which made for pretty scenes and wonderful herbal scents.  A lot of the native CA plants are very aromatic, esp. with some moisture in the air.  The predominant smell this morning was of the mule fat (see here for a good description:  http://www.laspilitas.com/nature-of-california/plants/118--baccharis-viminea).  I (and some other weird people, from what I read on-line) love that smell!

 Pretty morning with the sun burning off the fog.
And now, time to go see what the day brings...