Monday: (09/02) Granola and yogurt for breakfast. I worked on organizing the van stock. I took the Jeep out for an oil change. I removed lots of stuff to make room for Lou and Dawn and thinned out and organized the storage bags that were in the van from 6 down to 2. One my extra clothes and one with backpacking extra stuff. Pizza for lunch. I also repaired a compost bin lid latch. That required grinding off a bolt and going to ACE to get a new bolt. I finished my preparations to leave. Lou and Dawn were out shopping and did their preparations in the evening. I prepared some smoked pork chops with tater tots for dinner.
Tuesday: (09/03) Frozen maple griddle pancake, sausage, egg, and cheese breakfast sandwich to start. I pretty much wait for Lou and Dawn to finish preparing to leave. We got away at about 1030. We’re taking both the van and the Jeep separately. We’re taking the van because we couldn’t get a large enough site for the motorhome. The site we got was listed as 24 foot max and was the only space available for more than a couple of nights. E stopped in Greenfield at the Rancho Market for lunch. Dawn and I shared a torta. I had to stop at Bradley for a nap at the Rest Area. Lou and Dawn stopped in Paso Robles at the thrift store while I napped. We arrived at Morro Bay SP campground about 1600 and set up camp. Only the second time we’ve set up the tent that Lou is using. I had ramen noodles and wieners while Lou and Dawn had macaroni and cheese and wieners. It was 110 degrees in Bradley when I left, it was 65 degrees in Morro Bay and there was fog and a light drizzle.
Wednesday: (09/04) Granola and yogurt for breakfast. After 1000, we drove over to downtown Morro Bay for a look around. We had lunch at Giovani’s on Embarcadero in Morro Bay. We returned to camp about 1300 and relaxed in camp. About 1700 we tried to make grilled cheese sandwiches and warm up some soup for dinner. It was foggy all day and we barely received any charge to our batteries so I was running the engine to recharge the batteries. We want at least 90^ to start the evening so i didn’t want to use the microwave for dinner. No problem, just use the butane stove, Unfortunately we couldn’t get it to light. So we had a cold dinner of avocado bread for dinner.After dinner we went to Miner’s Hardware and got more gas. While it didn't seem like the stove’s fuel canister was empty it would light. We got a couple of spare fuel canisters. Back home, I tried to light the stove again. I was able to light it with a cigarette lighter but not with the igniter. I suspected that some of the burner holes near the igniter were clogged by my boilover last night. I blew through the burner and it then worked. Now ready for a hot meal tomorrow.
Thursday: (09/05) Granola and yogurt for breakfast. We returned to Miners Hardware for more looking. Also explored the antique store next door. Also visited a thrift store downtown Morro Bay. Leftovers for lunch. We went to the San Luis Obispo Farmers Market downtown at 1700. We decided on dinner at Urbane Cafe.
Friday: (09/06) I prepared smoked pork chops with hash browned potatoes and eggs for breakfast. I relaxed most of the rest of the day in camp. Lou and Dawn tried to hit the thrift stores in SLO but it was too hot, at 103 degrees, to continue that so they retired to camp. I did take a short estuary walk near camp in the afternoon. Leftovers for my lunch. Lou and Dawn had lunch at IHOP. For dinner we had pan toast and soup.
Saturday: (09/07) Granola and yogurt for breakfast. Lunch from Safeway, chicken and ambrosia. Dinner at Pismo Fish And Chips. Chips and guacamole for supper. We shopped at Walmart and Grocery Outlet. Then thrift shopping.
Sunday: (09/08) I Had a breakfast sandwich while Lou and Dawn had nectarines. We all took a walk on the Morro Bay Estuary trail near the park. Lunch at Bayside Cafe next to the park. About 1300, after all the weekend campers had departed, I took the van over and dumped the gray water tank. It had indicated it was full by bubbling some bubbles from the vent tube. Salad for dinner. I turned on the Starlink and Dawn attended her storytelling group Zoom meeting.
Monday: (09/09) Leftovers from Bayside Cafe for breakfast. Lou and Dawn were off shopping and thrifting today. I Relaxed In camp. Leftover salad for lunch. About 1430 I took a walk along the Estuary toward town. I stopped for a look around the natural history museum on the way. I walked past the Heron Rookery and v peaked in at the birds. continued on stopping at the Morro Bay Inn Cafe to check the menu. Then on to Bayshore Bluffs Park to look over the bay. Back home I prepared wieners and baked beans for dinner.
Tuesday: (09/10) PBJ waffles for breakfast. Dawn visited the Natural History Museum in the morning. Lou and I relaxed in camp. We all took a drive over the Baywood for lunch at a Thai restaurant. Then we drove out through the Montana De oro State park. Back at camp we disassembled the tent so Lou and Dawn can get away really early tomorrow. We’ll all be inside the van tonight. They have to get back for a meeting while I will be able to mosey back home. We watched the Presidential debate and had a campfire in the evening. For dinner, we had ham and cheese sandwiches.
Wednesday: (09/11) PBJ waffles for breakfast. Lou and Dawn were then off back to home. Dawn had a class to attend. I wasn’t in a hurry so I relaxed a while after breakfast then headed off. I stopped in Morro Bay at a health food store where Lou found some good gluten free bread and bought her a couple of more loaves. Then on to Atascadero where i did some shopping for the van. I restocked the freezer and got a new misc items box for the floor near the driver set. My existing box keeps tipping over so I got a wider one. The box holds all the loose items in one place. Then off to Greenfield where I got lunch at the Rancho Market, a nice torta and a flan, then relaxed there tinkering on the computer for a couple of hours. While there, I tried using the Starlink Mini by just placing it on the dash rather than on the roof. It still worked well. I left it on and it continued to work well all the way home (in motion). This is nice. At home I tried putting the windshield cover over it but that did cause a loss of signal. We had some canned chow mein over rice for dinner.
Thursday: (09/12) Soft boiled eggs for breakfast. I had a dental appointment this morning. On the way home I picked up my lunch from Wok On Chinese restaurant. I did some cleanup in the van and otherwise relaxed all afternoon. Ham and cheese sandwich for dinner.
Friday: (09/13) Granola and yogurt for breakfast. I worked in the backyard garden. I repotted some fuchsia, a wisteria, and some donkey tail succulents from the hanging baskets. They were root bound and included weeds and other plants. I also cut off a couple of hiking poles to fit Dawn. I got gas in the van at the cheapest station in the area, Maude at Borregas in Sunnyvale for $4.17, the usual cheapest was $4.49 and those near home over $5.00. Ham and cheese sandwich for lunch. I tinkered and napped the afternoon. I also looked for some SS thermal cups for the van and looked at ELV Electric Bikes in Santa Clara. I’m looking for a small folding scooter with good range and suspension. Looks like I’ll be looking for a while.
Saturday: (09/14) A frozen egg, sausage and cheese pancake sandwich for breakfast. After tea in the backyard, I set up the new screen tent in the backyard. I also got the Tuctek Kayak out of the van and gave it a better wash off to be sure the alkaline water of Mono Lake doesn’t cause any problems. After some shrimp eggplant soup for lunch. I cleaned off the workbench by my shop. The eggplants came from Lou’s garden. I had leftover Chinese food for dinner. Lou and Dawn made a run to Costco today.
Sunday: (09/15) I prepared some smoked pork chops with hash browned potatoes and eggs for breakfast. It was the usual slow Sunday morning. I then started the repair of Ernie's rear trailer door which was falling apart. I intended to just put a strap to pull up the far side of the door and return it to square but then it really fell apart. Some of the wood framing has rotted. I headed off to the hardware store to get materials. I stopped for lunch at Super Taqueria in Sunnyvale then went to Lowe’s. I got a sheet of medium weight metal and some sheet metal screws. Then I went over to the Super Walmart in Milpitas to get some butane fuel for the stove in the van. Even though they showed it was in stock there on their website, there was none there and not even a place where it had been. I was able to order it there for store pickup but I didn’t think they really had any, just a bad inventory system. I did order it for pickup in Mountain View which didn’t have any in stock so I thought they would just be sending it to the store for pickup in a few days. Nope, the order was canceled without a reason given a couple of hours later. Their price is half the price anywhere else so I thought I’d get some but Walmart seems to have some problems. Back home, I cut the sheet metal into six inch triangles for each corner on both sides of the door. It secured the metal framing together so it can now be supported with the cross strap. I reinstalled the now squared door and it works well now. A salad with a couple of wieners for dinner. I also notified Amazon of a missing shipment for my Harris Walz sign for the front yard. It was supposedly delivered by UPS on 9/12.
Monday: (09/16) I received my two high capacity Ryobi batteries and started one in the Inverter powering the Starlink at 0830. Theoretically the 7ah battery powering the Starlink which uses a max of 30 watts should run for over 4 hours since the 4am battery powered for over 2 hours. I had a sausage and cheese English muffin for breakfast. I tinkered in the office all morning. Leftover breakfast and salad for lunch. I repaired Ernie’s dead range hood fan. I tried to use my meter on the fuse panel but it didn’t show me anything incorrect. I pulled some fuses to verify that the panel was labeled correctly. The fuse labeled for the fan was good. I had to remove the whole assembly and discovered the wire color and there was only one that color and size on the fuse outputs and it was labeled as lights and was the one that I didn’t see a light go out when pulled. I removed that fuse and it was open. A whole lot of work due to an improperly labeled panel and a wire color and size change under the top of the hood. Did I mention the terrible difficulty getting in to see things? But, it now works. Leftovers for lunch. Salad and pork with potatoes from breakfast. Zucchini and sausage for dinner.
Tuesday: (09/17) An unfrozen sausage egg and cheese pancake sandwich for breakfast. I took off in the van for the day. I shopped at Target and found a good coffee thermos mug. So many are so poorly designed. This seemed just right. I also looked around Best Buy and REI before heading home before dinner. Lunch from US Chinese Food in Redwood City. I had chowmein, coconut shrimp and egg foo young. On the way home I picked up pastrami dinners from Harry’s Hofbrau in Redwood City.
Wednesday: (09/18) Granola and yogurt for breakfast. I tried to port our home phone number to Google Voice but Google can't port anything but cell phone numbers. In order to do it I'd need to port the home phone to a cellular carrier and then port from that carrier to Google. Too much work for right now. I’m thinking of deleting my fiber Internet to the house and just using Tmobile. But, I don’t want to lose the phone number. So, for now, I just transfer all calls to the home phone to Google Voice number, then to each of our cell phones. I tinkered with the van load, taking the bike out and reloading a bunch of clothes and backpacking gear I needed to go through. and fought with Amazon all morning. Leftover Chinese food for lunch. After lunch I rode my bike down to Whole Foods to pick up some Amazon packages that decided, by themselves, to be delivered to the store rather than my house. Nice ride anyway. Lou called and said she backed into a school bus. No damage to the bus, very little to the Jeep but they all had to wait for the Highway Patrol to come to make a report because students were on the bus. Dinner from Tacos El Grullense down the street.
Thursday: (09/19) I made my historical ciabatta ham egg and cheese sandwich for breakfast. I finally seem to be on my way for a refund for an Amazon package that was not delivered but was logged as delivered. The order was from Amazon, shipped via UPS and final delivery by the Postal Service. Evidently the USPS delivered it to themselves. Amazon has a problem giving refunds for items logged as delivered. It’s taken hours of effort to get that damned refund. The blame is shared by the USPS not providing proper tracking and Amazon making refunds way too difficult. I announced an event at Dave’ Ranch for next month. PBJ sandwich for lunch. Lou made spaghetti for dinner.
Friday: (09/20) Spaghetti for breakfast. Lou was off to a doctor’s appointment. I took Dawn to a vision equipment event at Vista in San Jose. A BBQ pulled pork sandwich with cheese for lunch. On the way home I stopped at Walmart Neighborhood Market to get a few things. Then I got to play tetris to fit it all in the van refrigerator and freezer. At home I worked doing a little cleanup. I cut some boxes and sheet cardboard to place in the recycle bin. I pruned the neighbors wisteria plant that takes over one of our fron side gates. I pruned back one of the artichoke bushes and I dug out a bunch of freeway lilies that were too close to the motorhome and provided ant access paths. Lou made Chinese cabbage, peanut salad for dinner.
Saturday: (09/21) Granola and yogurt for breakfast. We were all off to the Caltrain station for a ride on the new electric trains. They started today with new trains and a new every 30 minute schedule. Now like a real transit system. A consistent all day schedule, smoother ride, and nice car layouts. Each seat even has its own power outlet. We rode it to San Francisco. We took a walk there then came back down to Menlo Park for lunch, then on home. We may head south on it tomorrow. I had a chicken pot pie for dinner.
Sunday: (09/22) A banana and a wiener and cheese sandwich for breakfast. We all took the free Caltrain electric train down to San Jose then back home. I made a run to Lowes for some plywood. On the way home I got some Chinese food for lunch. I painted the rust spot on the Hyundai roof. Also went through some storage boxes in my shop looking for materials for the van mods. Ham and cheese sandwich for dinner.
Monday: (09/23) Granola and yogurt for breakfast. Leftover Chinese food for lunch. It was very hot today. We had a power failure for about 3 hours due to a car that hit a pole. It destroyed the front of the car and seriously injured a bicyclist on the way to the pole. But, the wood pole was undamaged at the impact spot. The whipping of the pole though caused the high voltage wires to short together. I powered Ernie's trailer from the Motorhome and our refrigerator from the van. My Honda generator wouldn’t start. The power went off at 1745 and was supposed to be out until 1045 but came on at 2045. Not bad. We have power from the city utility and our power outages are counted in years between outages. I made a salad for dinner.
Tuesday: (09/24) A couple of waffles with ham and cheese made into a sandwich for breakfast. I worked all day on the van modifications. I emptied the rear of the van then removed the existing bed platform. I cut new panels for the bed. I’m making it be able to be tilted up from either the front or rear for easier access to the garage storage. I also cut the parts for the new 3rd bed platform. I had a sausage and cheese sandwich for lunch. I made reservations for this Sunday at Sunset State Beach for a few nights. For dinner we went to Panera Bread.
Wednesday: (09/25) I had a breakfast sandwich from the freezer then went to Lowe's. I got some carpet for the new bed platform to match the diaz. I also got paint, sandpaper, and hinges. Back home, I modified the bed supports and cut the vent holes in the platform. :po took me to lunch at Bajis restaurant. We shared a salad and garlic fries. It took all day to finish cutting all the holes in the platform boards. Then, I prepared dinner. I made a stuffed bell pepper casserole. It was very good. When we had finished dinner, Lou found the two diced onions in the microwave. I had forgotten to add them into the mix after steaming them
Thursday: (09/26) Lou woke me at 0330. She heard the sounds of the paving equipment on El Camino Real. We both got up and took a walk out to see the activity. They are grinding the pavement then paving. The project is all through Palo Alto and Mountain View. I had a breakfast sandwich from the freezer. I got to work sanding the wood parts I made for the van. That was a lot of sanding because of all the holes I sawed in the panels. Leftover bell pepper casserole for lunch. After lunch I painted the panels with a coat of primer and a color coat. Dawn made Fettuccine Alfredo for dinner.
Friday: (09/27) I had a breakfast sandwich from the freezer then got busy with the Van bed frame. I had to add a brace to the frame then paint it so it will be dry to install tomorrow. After that, I was off on Caltrain to San Francisco then I caught the Muni Light Rail to Chinatown. From there I walked over toward Columbus street to get lunch at the Golden Boy Pizza on Green Street. They make one of the best pizzas. I got a couple of pieces and ate them at the nearby Washington Square park. From there I walked to Polk Street and got a Bob’s crumb donut for dessert. They have award winning donuts. Then I ordered my first Waymo driverless car ride. Their app seems to have a problem and wouldn’t do a pickup where I was per GPS. I tried to find an address but none of the buildings had one displayed. It insisted it be a couple of blocks away. So I tried by business name. I was in front of a Walgreens on Polk Street. It showed the Walgreens in a list, The only Walgreens shown so I selected it. My ride said it would arrive in 8 minutes and cost $23. It did, but not where I was. It was at a Walgreens eight long blocks away. I had 5 minutes to get there and just made it but it had departed during the supposed last minute of a countdown window. They charged me $5 for a no show. So I ordered another ride. It arrived in 13 minutes, almost where it said it would be about 100 feet from Walgreens around the corner. Close enough to see and walk to. I have absolutely no concerns about Waymo’s ability to drive safely, unlike my great concerns for Tesla’s FSD. It made many of the other drivers look like bad drivers and, for a taxi ride, was infinitely safer than the typical taxi driver. I arrived at my destination near Golden Gate Park. I took a short walk there, and enjoyed a free concert there before going up to Irving Street to get a hand pie from a pie shop there for dinner. Then I caught the Muni “J” train back to the Caltrain Station. The next three trains were canceled so I finally arrived home 2 hours later than I had planned. I was home about 2100. I noticed the repaving crew starting to set up on El Camino Real. I also noted I had forgotten to tag off the train. I drove back to the station and tagged off. Only saved $3 but used $5 in gas to save it. I then drove over to where the repaving was being started and watched them start grinding and paving. They started grinding at 2130 and paving 2300. OK, now I fully understand their methods.
Saturday: (09/28) I relaxed all morning. Leftover pancakes and bell pepper casserole for breakfast. About noon I made potato onion soup for lunch. I installed the rear bed frame and panels and put the mattress back on and made the bed. I installed the carpet on the 3rd bed and installed magnetic latches to hold it to the wall. I moved all the remaining items that were on the bed, back to the bed. I also did my laundry. Now ready to quickly pack up and head out tomorrow. Dawn made an eggplant tomato salad for dinner.
Sunday: (09/29) We were on the road by 0930. We headed over the hill to Santa Cruz. We stopped at a Thrift Store and the Library. For lunch we had leftovers. Then on to camp after another thrift store visit and my visit to Dollar Tree to look for my breakfast sandwiches. No luck. We checked into our camp. For dinner, we had linguini noodles with Chili.
Monday: (09/30) We drove over to Watsonville to look around. A Goodwill and a Reuseit store. Breakfast About 1100 at the Farmers Cafe in Freedom. We managed to leave our step at a shopping stop. While Lou and Dawn ordered breakfast, I returned to try to find it. Fortunately a street vendor had the steps in front of her truck. I thanked her for it with a $5 t tip. About 1300 we stopped near the park entrance and relaxed overlooking the ocean. About 1400 we returned by camp and noticed our chairs had been taken. Actually we dropped by to check if there was any sun at camp. None so we went to the other camp beach. While there we thought that there should have been some chairs at camp. We checked with the hosts and a ranger stopped by our camp and took a report. Hopefully someone in maintenance will have them. Leftover Chili and noodles for dinner.
