Because of the eye thing I came back from my trip to the southwest a lot earlier than I figured. I then decided to do some more traveling up the coast of northern California for two weeks and then down to the Monterey and Big Sur area for a week.

It again took me a lot longer to get out the door, but when I finally left at 2 PM I was glad to be on the road again. I wasn't too worried about the time as there are plenty of state parks along the coast with campsites and it was early May and a weekday so they probably wouldn't be full. About 6:30, an hour and a half before sunset, I started looking for a good campsite in a nice park. I finally settled on a campsite in a campground in Salt Point State Park that was west of the highway and on some bluffs above the coast. The coast was foggy though, so there was no sunset.

It was nice to be living out of my vehicle and on the road again - comfortable in all the procedures and rituals to have dinner and bed down for the night.

The next day was sunny and I stopped many places along the coast to take in the view. I also spent some time exploring the quaint picturesque town of Mendocino…. And wasted a half hour looking for non-existent internet cafes. I finally found internet access in Fort Brag a little further on from Mendocino. Afterwards I drove to MacKerricher Beach State Park and found a campsite, showered, ate, walked to the beach for sunset and read some before turning in.

I drove about two more hours north through the Avenue of the Giants and then on to a dirt road that traveled over a ridge and then down to a desolate beach on the coast below some bluffs. There as a small campground there and I found a good site next to the beach with a great view towards the west, but it was only about 2PM and sunset was still another six hours away. I could still get some traveling done. I took me a while again, but I finally decided to leave and travel up the coast some more to a hostel in Klamath. However, about two miles down the dirt road I remembered that that night was the full moon AND a lunar eclipse and decided the beach might be a good place to spend the night after all. I turned around and spend the rest of the day walking up and down the beach and reading. Unfortunately the bluffs to the east of the beach were too high to let me see the eclipse. The ocean was nice to see in the moonlight though.

The next morning I decided to head home. It was about a 450 mile drive. Traveling down the highway 101 in the center of the state would have been a couple hours faster and I figured that if I went that way I'd get to the city at rush hour and so I decided to go back down the more scenic coast on highway 1.

My first stop down the coast was to visit my friend Michelle and her husband, Robert and young son, Zander. We had dinner and talked as we always did. I was kinda blown away though, as Michelle, who has always been an independent thinker and very intelligent, was now firmly convinced that global warming and biomagnification were hoaxes and that recycling and biodiversity were not important. I would spend much of my idle time in the next couple days marshalling words to convince her otherwise.

The next morning I continued to drive down the coast to Monterrey.

After several scenic stops along the coast I arrived in Monterey at noon, had lunch and then paid a whopping $17.50 to enter the aquarium - where I spent the rest of the afternoon. The three best things that the aquarium had were: the sea otter tank, the touching skate (ray) pool and the many jellyfish tanks. After the aquarium I walked to the youth hostel where I had parked my car (two blocks away) and registered and then cooked my dinner on my camp stove in their parking lot - their kitchen had no stove top.

The next day I drove down the coast and stopped in Carmel, Point Lobos and several spots along the coast to Big Sur

That evening, on the way back into town I stopped at my friend Paul's house to pick up tapes of the 49er games I had had him make while I was out of the country. Missing those games would have been the biggest regret of my trip.

I am home now and don't plan to travel any more soon as I have jury duty next week.