Thanksgiving Montage

We're home!!  Thought I'd make this post (the last of our Thanksgiving trip series) more of a picture diary:

Kay making fried eggs for lunch, beach-side - great on those cooler days (we had a few!)

Kids enjoying the net result.

Kay and Mae in the evening sun at Van Damme State Beach (we camped just up river from here)

Theo drawing the night sky as dusk envelopes us at Salt Point State Park

Dusk at Salt Point State Park

Sam and Theo

Theo and Mae

Mae at sunset at Salt Point State Park

Dew in the grass at Salt Point

Another Salt Point sunset shot

Misty moment at Salt Point

Roadside shot, traveling back south between Van Damme and Salt Point

Hand made ice-cream at Mendocino

Dark closes in early in the winter

Theo

Sam

Rosey's charms... (these from Santa Cruz of course)

Manchester State Beach

This is the quite delightful spot where we ate Kay's feast of a Thanksgiving (did I mention it was good?).

Rosey's holding up well and still perky, despite the extra burden of a twisty highway 1 combined with the added weight of our bikes.

After it being cloudy on Tues, rainy on Weds and mostly cloudy on Thurs (it cleared for a view of the stars), Fri is clearing for a fantastic 30 or so mile journey to, ahem, Van Damm state park.

More soon...

Heading out for Thanksgiving in a Westy

Plan: Drive north and camp in beautiful places, get to around
Mendocino and turn around.

So far: Stayed at Samuel P Taylor, Salt Point, and tonight, Manchester Beach - all State Parks. Salt Point is probably about the best to date: Terraced, quiet sites with stunning views of Pacific and mountains and also trees to climb on! (sorry for lack of scenic imagery - too nice for using iPhone camera - will post from SLR soon)

Best moment: Tonight the astounding chef, Kay, managed to magic together an incredible Thanksgiving (not that we 'do' TG particularly) dinner; Indian veggie Korma and mixed rice together with mac-n-cheese-sauce with veg for the kids. After, we had homemade ginger cake and whipped cream. How this was pulled together with a two burner stove is beyond me!

Best tune: Kids singing 'jingle-bell rock' (before fighting over what are the right words).

Best drink: After leaving Samuel P Taylor, we stumbled across a little deli, in Tomales I think, just as the 1 reached the coast, anyway it sold Illy coffee, one of our favourites, so we got two lovely lattes to continue our journey with (sorry for not completing this sentence in an earlier version of this posting - Mae had managed to press 'send' on the phone whilst I was in the middle of typing!).

Memorial - One (Cold) Night Only

> This posting is for last weekend (I'll post for our Thanksgiving
> trip in the next day or so) when we took off for Memorial Park, our
> local fave county park campground, for just one night...
>
> And what a bl##dy cold night it was too: It was about half-way
> through the night where I realised I required a higher spec sleeping
> bag (the rest of the gang wondered what my fuss was about - though
> only 'cause I equipped them with top-of-the-range North Face sacs).
>
> Low point: Fourth kids' toilet trip in the night (I guess the cold
> shrinks the nippers' bladders) and losing the little remaining
> feeling in my cold, dead toes.
>
> High point: Realising we virtually had the place to ourselves on
> the Sunday with sunshine, fried eggs and scooting!
>
> Top tune: iPod in shuffle mode provided us with a strangely
> melancholic and ecclectic (Kay, editor, would like to suggest I use
> the word 'rubbish here') mix, but the best would have to be
> Leftfield, a song called Original, from the album Leftism (begins,
> 'sonically, we're in control...').
>

Rosey accommodates five...

Here's Mae in her brand new, fan-dabby-dosey cot!

Speaking of bed's, we've headed out to Big Sur to 'bed in' Rosey's brand new (well, rebuilt) engine. Very perky she is too... (so she should be for over $4k)

Best tune on the journey: Catatonia, Dead from the Waist Down (sing, "... like in Californiyaaay..."), whilst stuck in traffic on the 101.

Worst moment: Theo and Mae fighting over 'arm space'; Hopefully not a sign of things to come on our bigger trip to Death Valley...