Garage Sale

Saturday and Sunday, we held a garage sale at home in Palo Alto. It's amazing how much junk can be collected. It's been several years since our last sale. The sale was rather successful but didn't really make a dent in the "stuff". We'll hold another next weekend since we just realized it's a holiday weekend and we dislike traveling in the busy short holidays. It's also when the Stanford students should be returning so possibly they need something.

Home Again

We held open house on Saturday and Sunday 8/14-15. We lowered the price to $339,900.
On Monday, we drove out to Shafter, 20 miles NW of Bakersfield. Our house in Bakersfield is surrounded by, but not in, the City so we had to drive to the County dump in Shafter to get rid of the old oven that was replaced. While there, we started to look around the shops downtown and the lights went out, in the whole town. About 5 seconds after the outage began, we heard a loud thunder clap. It must have been a lightening strike that caused the outage.
We returned home to Palo Alto on Tuesday, 8/17. Nice to be home for a while. Wednesday, we tinkered around the house and yard. On Thursday, we went down to Dawn's house, in San Jose, to do some work on the gate, follow-up from replacing the fence a few months ago. Also need to replace the basement door, dishwasher and repair some faucets. Lou and Dawn shampooed Dawn's carpet.
We'll probably hold a garage sale next weekend and return to Bakersfield for the following weekend?

Cool(er) Bakersfield

We returned to Bakersfield and are enjoying the cooler weather. It has been 10-15 degrees cooler. We had dinner with Uncle Doug and Aunt Helen Friday and Saturday evenings. We held open house Saturday and Sunday. We'll be returning home for a couple of weeks. Then?

Arroyo Grande, Ca

We visited the village of Arroyo Grande on one of our field trips while staying in San Luis Obispo El Churro Park. It's a nice little village with a good mix of interesting shops and restaurants next to a nice creek.

Cool San Luis Obispo, Again

We were in Bakersfield Friday night through Monday Morning again to hold an Open House for the house we're trying to sell there. We sure miss the cool weather of the coast when we have to return here to triple digit highs. We came back to SLO via Hwy 46 through Pasa Robles. We took a walk around downtown Pasa Robles. They have recovered well from the earthquake last year. We arrived at El Churro Regional Park in San Luis Obispo early and had our choice of campsites. We tried one but South wasn't where I thought it was and we couldn't get the satellite. It had a big eucalyptus tree that seemed to draw crows, Lou's least favorite feathered friend. So, we moved to another site which has a great view of the park and hills and is quite private. It also has a lot of bunnies and quail munching around outside the window. We enjoyed a bike ride yesterday and rode over to the dog walk and watched the dogs socializing with each other as their masters did as well.

Guadalupe, Ca

We left our camp in San Luis Obispo and headed to the Far Western Restaurant in Guadalupe West of Santa Maria. This is where the movie The Ten Commandments was filmed. The Far Western grows their own beef and know how to prepare it. We had a nice steak and eggs breakfast then goofed around looking through odd shops like farm supply stores, then headed for Bakersfield. We took Hwy 166 East out of Maricopa just to see what was there. We had seen a bunch of black smoke in the distance just as we headed over the summit out of the Cuyuma Valley. About half way from Maricopa to Hwy 5, we had to stop for about 10 minutes due fire trucks blocking the road. They had passed us moments before. A Pickup and travel trailer were burnt to the ground. They were the smoke we had seen maybe 15 to 20 minutes earlier and the fire trucks were just arriving, we assume having come from Taft. Total loss, too bad!
We settled in to the house here in bakersfield and went out to do our laundry.
Nothing but fun when we travel!

SLO Here We Come

We packed up last night and left about 8am. After getting gas and LPG we headed out Hwy 166 toward Santa Maria. West on New Cuyuma we happened upon a hay bale spill that covered both lanes. "Hey Lou, jump out and kick that bale out of the way," Don says. Lou does and we pull through a maze of bales all over the road. As we're on the way again, the driver that spilled the load was finally on the way toward the spill and a couple of other truckers were in the road throwing the 30 or so bales off to the side of the road. A little guilt was felt for not helping but it quickly waned. Besides, Lou would have tired easily.
We headed North on Hwy 101 then Hwy 1 to El Churro Park 5 miles Northwest of San Luis Obispo. We found one of the couple of remaining full hook-up sites. The weather is cool.
We visited the arboretum about 6pm and enjoyed our wine watching humming birds, turkey vultures, bunnies, and other assorted creatures.