I thought I should write a slightly longer post about our trip from Seattle to Tempe. We left Redding CA and drove down to Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park just south of Monterey on the Pacific Coast Highway. That park has a large grove of redwoods, the Big Sur River, mountains, and beautiful rocky coastline. Few campers shared the park in the winter. We found a site in an open meadow with views of the mountains and light. As I shared in an earlier post we saw a great sunset and celebrated Jean’s birthday there. I cooked a pasta dinner and we cracked a bottle of special Sattui wine saved from our last visit with Aunt Gen.

The next day we drove down Highway 1 through light drizzle, fog, and construction projects. For those who have never been on that road, it is not for the faint of heart. Pulling a trailer makes it even more exciting. The construction is mostly associated with places where the sea has eaten the road from below. Jean snapped photos while I white knuckled it at 25-30 mph. The fog creates a beauty of its own, but deprived us of some of the distant views that must have been there. I recommend this for those visiting that part of the the country unless you’re pulling a bigger trailer than ours.

We had no trouble finding our friends’ house in Arroyo Grande. Suzie, our GPS, took us right to them. Norman met us on the street a block from their house, which proved to be as close as we could get with Picasso. Therefore, we parked her there for the duration of our visit.

When we left Arroyo Grande on Friday it was raining and windy. The drive to Los Angeles was uneventful, but slow due to a head wind and rain. Going around LA proved to be the slowest part of the trip so far. There seemed to be an accident blocking the freeway every 10 miles or so. It was a great relief to hit the east bound freeway to Palm Springs.

We tried something new for overnight that night. We stayed for free in the parking lot of a casino in Indio. There were dozens of RVs and semi trucks taking advantage of the free parking. We had on board water and toilet facilities as well as our own electrical system, so we were pretty comfortable. The only reason we found this was a billboard I had seen 25 miles before the casino that advertised it as a place for truckers to park overnight.

Yesterday we had a very nice drive to Tempe with temps in the upper 60’s and low 70’s and sunshine all the way. Traffic wasn’t bad through Phoenix and we had Picasso unpacked and set up before Pat got home from work. This morning Jean and I took a walk and then I spent a couple of hours sitting in the sunshine reading my Kindle. Retirement is great!