Identifying the Unknown ~ w/Update X2

I’m still packing up and moving, so pardon if this post is rather short.. It’s going to be short on a lot of information as well because that’s what I’m finding in my local newspaper’s website.  The authorities in this area are in search of information about 2 people in 2 separate cases.

This morning, I read about an accident that happened late last night where a woman on a bicycle somehow crashed into some trash bins and landed head first on the road pavement.  She was unconscious when found and was not carrying any identification.  The authorities are seeking any information about the woman.. Somewhere a family is missing someone or there are some friends who can’t contact someone..  The article on the newspaper’s website gave very little identifying information about the woman; “The woman weighs 120-130 pounds and has brown hair. She was riding a gray Talera bicycle.”  She was taken to a local hospital and is in critical condition with a brain injury.  Hopefully she’ll be able to recover enough to at least tell them who she is soon… Barring that, then I hope that someone who knows her will report her missing…

The other story popped up in a “Breaking News” banner at the top of the paper’s website a little while ago… A body has been found in the Feather River by a fisherman this morning.   The article says that it is the body of a white male, no other identifying information, so I’m guessing that this victim had some kind of identification on him.   An autopsy is being conducted today so that the cause of death can be determined.  The authorities are treating the case as a “suspicious death” at this point… With the high water we’ve been having, I have to wonder if the person in the river had been one of the homeless people who camp out in the river bottoms that got caught in the rising water…

A lot of the stories that I follow in the news are about missing people.  Children, adults.. It doesn’t matter.  The people who are found but not known are as tragic as the ones who disappear.  Someone out there knows these two people.  Someone out there somewhere is missing an acquaintance, a friend or a loved one. Hopefully as the day goes on, more information will be found out about these two.  I know one thing though, from now on when I go out bicycling, I think I’ll put my ID in my pocket…

Hopefully I can come back later today with updates… Or, if not today then tomorrow.

Update:

(Friday evening) The Appeal Democrat has updated their story about the man who's body was found in the Feather River.  He was identified today as Zeke Malone McGuire, 41, according to the Sutter County Sheriff's Department.  It also said that he had been reported as missing to the Yuba City Police Department.  The story also says now that the man's body had been found yesterday (Thursday) afternoon around 3pm instead of this morning.  The autopsy determined the cause of death as drowning and there were no signs of foul play.  So, I suppose they now have to determine if the man's death was accidental or suicide.  So sad for the man's family and friends. 

There are no additional updates on the injured unidentified woman yet.  I'll update the blog if the newspaper updates again tonight.

2nd Update:

(Saturday morning)  The Appeal Democrat revised the story about the injured woman this morning.  They have a name and age for her now, but the article still mostly reads the same as it did yesterday.  The California Highway Patrol says that she is Melissa Joyce Procopio, 44 of Olivehurst.  No news yet about why she crashed her bicycle into the trash bins, nor any update on her condition. 

Sources:
CHP seeks help in identifying woman
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/highway-105333-woman-identifying.html
Body found in Feather River  /  UPDATE: Feather River drowning victim identified
http://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/feather-105334-body-river.html

The Water is Still High…

Just sharing some pictures we took today... Click the pictures to see an enlarged version....

My Mom came by this morning to visit and drop off some things that I’m borrowing for a bit to help me with a move I'm making.  After showing her the place I'm planning on moving to we decided to take a drive up the river to see how some of the marinas are faring with the high water. My daughter and grandson decided to come along too, so we all piled into my car and headed up river on the levee road.  The first marina upriver from Meridian is Lovey’s Landing.   All that area you see under water is normally filled with trailers and campers.  Fishermen and women usually live there year round to be close to the fishing.  One of the folks who has been living at Lovey’s is now staying with a friend across the street from me here in Meridian.  From what he told me and another friend, he's planning on renting a house here in town rather than moving his trailer back up to Lovey's when the river goes down.

One of the trailers didn’t make it out of the low area before the water level came up...

Most of the rest of the RVs and trailers got pulled out of  the low area to the levee road.. They'll sit there until the water goes back down and the ground dries a bit..

The next marina upriver is Ward's Landing, and as you can see from the picture, they've got the river in their yard too.

 Check out the angle the ramp to the dock is at.. The ramp normally follows the slope of the levee down and across to where the docks usually are, but with the high water, the ramp goes up, bends in the middle and then down again to the dock which is almost at the same level as the higher part of the parking lot.

Just upriver from Ward's is what is usually a dirt parking lot where folks store their boats, RV's and other equipment... All we saw was one lonely sunken boat trailer.

As we drove up the levee road, we looked out across some of the farmland that is underwater... It's not deep, but there are acres and acres under water right now.

The water fowl in the area are loving the high water.  We saw dozens and dozens of snowy egrets wading in the shallow water or flying away from the noise of my 4x4 on the road.  My daughter got a few really nice shots of the birds out the passenger side window.

The trees in this orchard must be terribly confused.  They're in full bloom and absolutely flooded by the Sacramento River.

See that long black thing out beyond the small trees on the "shore"?  It was rushing downriver with the current.. Tree?  Long support beam from something?  We don't know, but after seeing lots of trees, limbs along with that thing floating down the river, no one needed to wonder why there aren't any boats in the river.

The next marina (and the last one we drove past today) is the Colusa Landing.. Just a couple weeks ago, my Mom,  my granddaughter from Utah and  I were there for lunch.  They had sandbags at that time, but not like they have now.  And there wasn't water in the parking lot beyond the restaurant then, either.

I walked down near the water to get a picture of the deck on the river side of the restaurant so my granddaughter can see what it looks like now... When we were there, the water wasn't even close to the restaurant.  Today, however it's close.. And there's evidence that the water has been even higher.  The spot I was standing to take this picture was under water just a day or two ago.

 There's no access to the docks at Colusa Landing right now.. The water is just a wee bit deep...

Well, that's the end of the "tour" for today... After leaving Colusa Landing and the Steelhead Lodge, we headed on in to Colusa in search of a late lunch, which we found... And then back home for all of us...  Hope you've enjoyed the tour of our flooded river!  I may have to do another tour once the water goes down and life returns to normal... Hmm.. Yeah, that might be a nice thing to do with my granddaughters when the granddaughter from Utah comes back to visit this summer.

The Water is High………

Living alongside the Sacramento River is pretty good most of the time.  Until we get a wet winter like this one.  The streams and rivers are all running high right now..  Today, I took advantage of a break between storms to walk over to the levee to see how high the water is with my own eyes.  And to take a few pictures.. Of course.

And.. Yeah.  The water level is pretty high.  Flood stage on the Sacramento River in this area is at 70’ and according to the California Department of Water Resources website, right now the river level is about 67’.   Thankfully, the water levels are supposed to drop a little on Monday or Tuesday..  So far, from all reports that I’ve heard and read, the levees along the Sacramento River are holding up pretty well.  When the water is high like it is now, the levee districts have people patrolling the levees looking for any problem spots..  The reason the river is running so high right now is that Shasta Dam is dumping lots of water because Shasta Lake is uncomfortably close to capacity and the snow melt hasn't even begun yet.  It's the same situation on the other rivers in the area.  The Feather River is running high because Oroville is dumping water.  The American River is running high as well because the dams upstream are also making room for the snow melt.  Last week I read in one of the Sacramento papers that the summit of the Sierras had received something like 57 feet of snow and it was still snowing.. Hard.  Well, it's still snowing up there today and has been almost constantly for the past week.

Anyway, I thought I’d give you a couple pictures to compare.  Keep in mind that the photos are taken from opposite sides of the bridge and during different seasons…   The first picture was taken this afternoon and the second one was taken last June when CalTrans did a test of the mechanism that opens the bridge.  (Yes, it's a "draw" bridge, it just happens to be on a turntable.)

 As you can see from the pictures, the water level is pretty different between the two.. Be sure to note the difference on the bridge support below the up-rights on the structure.  (Sorry about not getting a shot from the same side of the bridge today.  I tried to go up on the South side of the bridge, but it was too muddy and too slick.  I didn't really feel like crawling up the side of the levee on my hands and knees.. So I used the access road on the North Side of the bridge.. You can see it in the picture below that shows both the river and the road.)

As I stood there watching the water flow past, I spotted a tree (Or the remains of a tree that fell in the river somewhere upstream.) coming down towards the bridge so I waited a bit to see where it was going to go... Under the bridge or get caught on the bridge supports.  This one went under the center span, but it's common for trees, limbs and other debris to get caught on the supports.

It's hard to tell in this image how much higher the water is than the road.  My estimate is that it's about 10 to 12 feet above the road surface.  All over town, the low areas have become pools of water that are seeping in from the river.  Including my own yard.  The back yard is mushy and I don't live right next to the levee.  The "joy" comes this coming week.  The sun is supposed to be out and the weather is going to warm up.  The river level will go down a foot or so, but the seepage puddles are still going to be there.  What does that mean for the little town of Meridian?  Mosquitoes!  It only takes a few nice days to hatch out scads of the pesky insects.  Oh "joy".

Ostrich Races Anyone? Or Maybe Camel Races?

I’m sitting out a “no internet” break because of the weather, so I thought I’d share a few more pictures from the visit to Southern California..  While we were down there, the Riverside County Fair and Indio Date Festival opened.  My Aunt, Uncle, a cousin and her husband, my Mom and I decided to go check it out.  The palm trees that you see behind the magic lamp are date palms and are all that's left of a huge grove of date palms that used to be there.  The groves of date palms are "moving" out of the town of Indio into the desert surrounding the city. 
 

Of course, while there we just had to watch the races.  It’s been a tradition at the Date Festival for many years to have the ostrich and camel races.  I can remember watching them as a kid when the family went to the fair and I can also remember how funny the guys looked mounted on those big birds..  Well, I have to tell you.  The guys still looked funny on those big birds.  As you can see from the picture to the left, the race guys have a nice little flock of birds.  They also had a few emus in a pen in the back, but I couldn’t get into a good position to get a good picture of them.

Here’s a view of the ostriches and their riders getting ready to race.  If you look close, you can see 2 of the riders getting mounted on their birds.  The 3 guys at the gates are actually trying to keep the gates closed as the birds were bumping hard against the enclosures.


 

 And... They're off!

About halfway around the track, the ostrich that was carrying the fellow in the white shirt decided it didn't want to run for the finish line.  It stopped dead, nearly throwing the rider off.  Then it started to spin and that did throw the rider off..

It took the rider and two other guys to get the ostrich back under control and headed towards the finish line and the pens.

The ostrich race was followed by a zebra race...

 Then we watched another ostrich race, only this time the birds were pulling chariots.  The fellow in red won the race followed by the one in white that you can see just exiting the starting gate.  The fellow in blue brought up the rear.

Then the race people brought 6 young boys down out of the stands.  Volunteers.  The older boys got to "race" the emus.  No riding, they just chased the birds towards the finish line.  All 3 boys were grinning from ear to ear at the end...  

The 3 littlest boys got to "race" chickens.  They had a much shorter distance to chase the chickens overall, but their race took the longest because the chickens ran every which way and most of the time, not towards the finish line.

The final race was the camel race.  As you can see from the picture, the fellow in yellow had a bit of trouble controlling which direction his camel ran.

 And at the halfway point, the fellow in red was in the  lead with the one in green following in second place.

 And the fellow in yellow brought up the rear. LOL! 









After the races were over, we wandered the fairgrounds viewing the arts and crafts that were entered in the competitions and of course, we had to have a "date shake".  We bought some fresh dates to bring home with us, as well.  We all had a great time at the fair and were ready for some serious sitting down when we left.

And, I see now that I have internet again... Hurray!  One disadvantage to living in a small town that isn't terribly close to a larger city is the fact that we are limited in our choices for "entertainment".  We have no option of cable TV, we are limited to satellites.  We don't have fiber optic cables for our telephones, so we are unable to get DSL for our internet.   The choices for internet are pretty limited.  Dial-up, satellite or wireless broadband.  I tried the satellite route and was very dissatisfied with the service.  It was barely better than dial-up which I wasn't going back to.  So, wireless broadband it is.  Until the weather knocks out the power to the town.  Oh well.  We got our power back yesterday midday and internet came back this morning.  Yay!  Enjoy the pictures!

Still on the Road & Still Having Fun

2/18 ~ Lets see.  I’m in Riverside at my Aunt’s house.  My Aunt doesn’t have WiFi, so I fixed it.  Sort of.  I went to Walmart and bought a no-contract Broadband card and one of the cards for some time online.  At least I’ll be able to occasionally upload some blog posts while I’m here.  Now, where did I leave off in the last post? Oh yeah! In Palm Springs 2 days ago!

2/16 ~ Once the Holiday Inn moved us to a different room, we had a working WiFi connection and I was able to at least let the family know where we were and what we were up to.  Only I didn’t tell everyone what we had planned.   Mom and I had decided that we both wanted to take a ride on the Palm Springs Tram.   The weather report for the day was kind of iffy.  They were expecting rain in the valley and snow on top of the mountain.  It was still nice when we set out towards the Tram station, though.  This picture shows our view back at the base station shortly after beginning our trip.  The gondolas on the tram rotate as you ride up the cable, so your view constantly changes.  Having the gondolas rotate made it a pleasant ride up the mountain because there was no jockeying for position as people looked for things to take pictures of.  We all got to take pictures of the station at the bottom and we all got to take pictures of the cables, the towers and the mountains..   And the view of the valley below.  It was absolutely spectacular.  This picture of the valley was taken from the patio at the mountain station.  It was quite a bit colder at the top.  When we walked out onto that patio, I hit a patch of ice and skated for a few inches.  I moved over and followed Mom along the wall of the building where it was dry. 





3/16~ Wow.. It’s been a month since I wrote the beginning of this post. Sorry about that, folks!  Things got a bit hectic when we got back home and then I had my granddaughter come from Utah for a weeklong visit.  It was pretty busy while she was here.. Lots of activities and fun..  For now, I’m going to pass up posting pictures and stuff from the rest of the trip.  Just take my word for  it, Mom and I had a wonderful trip.  We saw lots of neat things, did a lot of fun things and had good visits with friends and family in Southern California. 
~
Now for a small “rant” aimed at a certain “anonymous” person who keeps posting comments that I will not allow to be published.  Stop.  Now.  I’m tired of reading your little rants/comments.  I will not publish them, nor will you miraculously change my opinion, so you might as well give up.

I do not hate anyone, Phil Spector included.  Keep up your garbage, and I might come close to “hating” you.  See, the thing is, “hate” is an emotion that you have to work at maintaining.  It's not a healthy emotion.  Plus, you also need to know the person you “hate”.  I don’t know Phil Spector, nor do I know his wife so I don't "hate" them.  Mr "Anonymous", I don’t even “hate” you for what you are doing.  But, today, you must be feeling very proud of yourself.  You managed to start a ruckus that got the Phil Spector Appeal thread closed for the night.  Wow.. What an accomplishment.  Hopefully no one got banned because of your “fun”.  Go ahead and keep posting links to my blog… I really don’t care.  The post you keep sending people to is almost 2 years old and has absolutely no relevance to what is going on today.  Ok.  /Rant off.

Still WiFi Challenged But Having Fun Anyway

2/15 ~ We’re in Palm Springs tonight and we’re still WiFi challenged.  I’m surprised too.  This time we’re in a Holiday Inn and the internet has just gone *poof*, “local only”.  If this stuff keeps happening, I’m going to start believing that I’m just not supposed to get “free WiFi” while on trips..

2/12 ~ We spent most of Saturday with a cousin of mine and his wife.  After we visited for a while, they took us down to Long Beach so we could sort of play “tourist” around the harbor where the Queen Mary is berthed.  The view from the parking area isn’t much, but it was neat to see.  Mom and I had been on the Queen Mary before, back when another cousin got married there, so we decided we’d be tourists everywhere but on the ship.  We checked out the Russian submarine that is right next to the Queen, and of course, we had to check out the stuff in the Russian gift shop.  There were a few events going on in and around the ship, so we checked out the “free” ones.  For instance there was a whole line of vintage bicycles that were pretty interesting to see.   We did a bit of people watching too as we wandered.  One of the events had something to do with clothing, and I can’t remember what the sign said and silly me, I didn’t take a picture of it, but some of the folks going into that part of the ship were unusually dressed to put it mildly.  You had to pay to get in there, so we decided to go across the bay and see what kind of mischief we could get into.  So we headed over to the free shuttle busses that take you across the harbor to Shoreline Village.  It was about time for lunch when we arrived at the village.   We ate at a very noisy restaurant there at Shoreline Village.  (And right now I’m really missing my internet connection because I can’t remember the name of the place and I can’t google it!! lol)  It seemed to be quite a popular hang out for the 20-somethings that filled the place.  The lunch was very good. Anyway, there was a really good view of the Queen Mary from that side of the harbor.  If you look real close at the bow of the ship you can make out the conning tower of the Russian Submarine.

We had fun wandering through all the unique little shops in the village.   One of the sights in the harbor near the Shoreline Village we saw a pirate ship! LOL!  At least it was outfitted to look like one with skeletons, cannons and even a parrot looking out the window in the cabin. The boat looked like it was better suited to sitting at the dock than actually sailing.  There was so much stuff all over the decks that it would no doubt take a while for them to get the boat sea-worthy.  Oh well.  It was neat to see.  After the shopping and wandering, we caught the shuttle back over to the parking area near the Queen Mary and headed back to my cousin’s home…

We spent another night at that motel in Torrance that had the 1 second WiFi connection.  Before we left the next morning, I found out what it was that was providing the “WiFi” there.  The motel manager had a cell phone sitting on the desk next to his computer.  He swore up and down that the WiFi was working and picked up his cell phone and showed me.  Somebody please tell me that cell phones aren’t what other places use to power their WiFi for their hotels/motels.  The other thing about that motel was the “breakfast” that they offered.  They had a few little cellophane wrapped muffins and sweet rolls on a plate and a coffee pot next to them.  I tried to get some coffee before leaving but the coffee pot was empty.. lol.. Time to go!  Before leaving town, we had a good breakfast with my cousin at a little place called “Scotty’s” which is right on the beach in Redondo Beach (I think!).

On the 13th, we went on down to Chula Vista for a visit with my Great-Aunt for a couple days.  (And no chance of internet connections.. lol)  On our way down, we stopped at a "Vista Point” that overlooked the ocean near Camp Pendleton that had a fantastic view of the sea.  Far out to see we saw a ship and a smaller boat closer in.  And that’s the last picture I took until now.  We had a great time there visiting and playing a dice game that my Aunt loves playing.  After leaving Chula Vista this morning (2/15), we decided to take the “scenic route” towards Palm Springs.  So we caught I8 towards El Centro and then took highway 86 north along the shore of the Salton Sea.  We, and all the other vehicles on the highways got slowed by a couple Border Patrol checkpoints.  Once on I8 and once on Hwy 86.  Everyone got shuttled over into one lane and then crawled past the Border Patrol Guards and their dogs.  We also came across the remains of a bad accident.  It looked like a semi had run off the road and down into a ravine for some reason.  The tow trucks had just finished bringing the cab of the truck up on to the shoulder of the road as we passed.  (And with my lousy luck so far with WiFi connections, I can’t google to find out any information about a truck accident on I8 this morning.)  I hope the driver came out of it ok.

We enjoyed the drive up along the Salton Sea.  It was interesting to see how much all the towns have grown over the years.  It was also interesting to see how many date groves are left.  We couldn’t find a single date stand along the road, so we had no chance of buying any fruit.  Oh well, maybe tomorrow when we go roaming around.  I should have more pictures to share tomorrow.  Hopefully I can get an internet connection in order to upload stuff tomorrow!  I mean, come on! We’re at a Holiday Inn! things should work here! lol

2/16 ~ Hurray!  The Holiday Inn we’re in moved us to a different room and I’ve got real WiFi! LOL! We’re catching our breath and then will head out to see if we can ride the tram and then later maybe go visit the desert zoo that’s here.  I’ll do another post tonight with some pictures and maybe some results of google search to straighten out some of my puzzles in the last couple posts..

Still on the Road… But WiFi Challenged..

2/14 ~ Happy Valentine’s day everyone! And yes, I know it’s going to be after the 14th when I finally get this published to the blog.  I know I promised I’d post pictures often, but I’ve been a little bit challenged by the “online” opportunities I’ve had since we left Morro Bay.  More on that story later.  I guess I’m going to need to invest in one of those gadgets that plug into the laptop so I can get online no matter where Mom and I travel.  Any recommendations? lol

2/11 ~ Ok, so when we left Morro Bay Friday morning, we went on south on Highway 101 and then stopped in Solvang for a little while so we could do a bit of window shopping and, of course, visit a bakery or two.  While we were there, a nice woman in the visitor’s center gave us a map of the valley and marked some points of interest on the map.  We chose to visit two of them.   A  miniature horse ranch and another ranch with miniature donkeys.  (Hmm.. Is it “donkeys” or  “donkies”? lol.. Spellcheck says that “donkeys” is the right one.)  Ok.. On we go.. The miniature horse ranch is called Quicksilver Ranch and they have dozens of beautiful little miniature horses.  We pulled into their visitor’s parking lot and spent a little bit of time wandering around and watching the little horses as they grazed and wandered around their fenced enclosures.  The ones in the picture to the left are pretty calm and quiet, but in other enclosures, the little horses were rolling around on the ground, chasing each other or just kicking up their heels for the heck of it.   It’s hard to get a size comparison until you see the horses next to someone..  This young lady was grooming one of her horses near the barn, so there was the perfect opportunity to show the size of the miniature horse.  She told us that 3 of the little horses were “hers” and that she was responsible for grooming and taking care of them.   Here’s the young lady with another of her little horses, and you can get an even better idea of the size of the little animals.  (By the way, the barn was completely empty of animals.  There wasn’t a single horse in any of the stalls.  I guess the weather was just too nice to keep them confined indoors.)  We watched a few of the mares that were in separate enclosures,  one was in heavy labor and another one wasn’t far behind, so soon they’ll have a bunch of foals bouncing around in those fields.  After we left Quicksilver Ranch,  we went on up the road through Ballard and drove along looking for the miniature donkeys.  The lady at the Solvang information center didn’t know the name of the ranch, but she said the donkeys were right there next to the road.  And they were!  There was also a nice “Visitors are Welcome” sign next to the driveway.   This picture doesn’t give you much of a size comparison to anything but the fence.  It was about shoulder high on me and I’m 5’8”, so that should give you an idea of how small the donkeys are.  None of the donkeys were very happy that day.  They had all just gotten their shots and gotten dewormed, so they were a bit disgruntled.  One of the full size donkeys was very unhappy with the humans on the ranch.  He still had a halter on him and the woman at the ranch couldn’t get anywhere near him to take it off..   She even went in the corral with the two larger donkeys and let one of them push her around a bit.  But, the striped leg guy just wouldn’t let her come anywhere near him.  He did not want another shot or to be dewormed again. The lady said that he would calm down in a hour or two and she’d be able to get the halter off him.  The donkeys weren’t the only critters on the ranch with the little donkeys.  They have a pair of turkeys as well.   The big fellow is named Tom and anytime anyone said “gobble” to him, he’d gobble right back at them.  One lady who was visiting at the same time we were there had a ball making the turkey gobble at her.  The hen just stood there watching the tom.  She never made a sound while we were there.

After leaving the donkey ranch, we traveled on down the coast to Simi Valley.  Mom wanted me to see the Ronald Reagan Library.  The main thing I wanted to see in there was Air Force One.  They have the plane on display in a specially built building with the wall in front of the nose of the plane being almost entirely made of glass.  The “tour” goes into the plane in the front, and you exit at the back.  We were surprised at how cramped for space it was in the plane.  The cockpit was also extremely cramped for space.  There were 5 seats crammed in there with hardly any space to even turn around.  Of course, that might be “normal” for the cockpit of a 707, I don’t know.  I’d never been able to look inside one before.  The next thing you go past is the “communication center”, which was a whole panel of radios and the like along one side of the plane with a small galley on the other side.  (If I remember right.) Both Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan had their own offices, each with a couch that folds down into a bed.  Of course, there was a huge jar of Jelly Belly candies on the president’s desk.  After you get past the two offices, you come into a compartment with a number of seats that would almost qualify as first class seats.  They were for the top advisors that flew with the Reagans.  The next compartment was set up for the lower echelon of people and the security guys.  The last compartment looked more like “coach” seating and that was for any members of the press who wanted to buy a ticket to fly with the President.  The Reagan Whitehouse charged the press corps the price of a regular airline ticket plus $1.  Of course, there was a smaller, busier galley back in the section for the press and then the restrooms were in the tail.  A big man would have been unable to walk normally down the “hall” through the plane.  Even I had to turn sort of sideways to get through.  It was definitely interesting to see the inside of that plane.  They had a few more vehicles there on display, a limo, a police car and motorcycle and Marine One, the helicopter that picked the President up from the Whitehouse to go wherever.   We saw a few more exhibits, including a scale model of the Whitehouse. 

After leaving there, we went in search of a motel and ended up clear down in Torrance since it was near a cousin’s home.  And here’s a bad review of a motel for you.  If you end up in Torrance do not stay at the Super 8 motel if you want any kind of connection to the internet.  They advertised that they had WiFi, but once we got settled in the room and I unpacked the laptop we discovered that the WiFi was only connected to the internet for 1 minute out of 5.     And sometimes I didn’t even have a full 1 minute to get a web page loaded.  The network connection was more “local only” than it was “local and internet”.  The beds in the room were ok, the room was clean and so on.  But the WiFi was darn near impossible to use.  More about that later.. lol.. I’m going to end this post and will publish it to the blog the first chance I get… On to the next blog entry!

2/15 ~ We’re sitting in Palm Springs tonight and I’ve got a WiFi connection of sorts.. Uploading this blog entry and will finish typing the next one and getting it uploaded soon.

On the Road Again....

Greetings folks.. We're doing some more traveling this week and next... This time it's just my Mom and I and we're slowly driving down the coast towards San Diego in the next couple of days.  Today, our first view of the coast was Morro Bay.   Once we got our room and looked around for a restaurant that was recommended to us, we drove out the peninsula to Morro Rock.   The weather was perfect for wandering around looking at the scenery and watching the birds.  This fellow was on a rock right in front of where we parked and kept posing for us.   We just had to take a picture of him...

Here's a "close up" view of part of the rock.  We learned that Morro Rock was once a "plug" for a volcano that was active about 26 million years ago.  We also learned that there are several more "plugs" that we may be able to spot as we travel south from here.  As we wandered down the path, we kept looking up at the top of the rock hoping to spot one of the peregrine falcons that nest on the rock, but all we saw were the seagulls.. Lots of seagulls.  We wandered around admiring the view and watching a few boats coming into the harbor. 

After we wandered around on the South side of Morro Rock, we got back in the car and drove over to the big parking area on the North-East side of the rock to watch the waves come in..

There were quite a few surfers out catching waves and it was fun watching them.  We ended up getting back in the car to watch them though.  The whole parking lot was in the shade and with the wind blowing, it was a bit too chilly to watch the waves.  Especially since neither Mom nor I were wearing our jackets..  I did manage to catch a fairly decent shot of a couple of the surfers from the car..

We did have "company" as we sat in the car watching the surfers and the folks on the beach.  This young gull decided we were worth his attention.  He parked himself just below the driver's side window and peeped at me. Continuously.  He was sooo hoping I'd drop something to eat down on the ground for him.  It was tempting.  Until I looked around the parking area at the dozens and dozens of gulls that were looking for goodies and handouts.  I just took a few more pictures, then started the car up and headed out to get some dinner.  If any of you manage to get to Morro Bay, I recommend you look for a little restaurant called "The Whale's Tail".  They served us some excellent clam chowder and some delicious fish and chips.  After dinner, we headed back down to the marina so we could watch the sun set... And I'll leave you for tonight with one of the shots I got of the sun going down... And now I'm going to go kick back on the bed and veg...  G'nite all!