Carmel, CA

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The reunion dinner was wonderful. The Freemont Hills Country Club did a wonderful job. The food was really quite good, but the chance to get together with so many people from my past was priceless. We had a good time.

Sunday morning we got up and drove Highway 17 over the mountains to Santa Cruz for dinner with my brother Bob and his wife Karen. It was another great meal, this time at the Crows Nest restaurant at the entrance to the yacht harbor. After lunch we walked the docks. If there is anything more entertaining than watching someone trying to dock a sailboat, it is watching people trying to back their trailers down the launching ramp and these folks did not disappoint.

Crows Nest in background

Santa Cruz harbor entrance

Crows Nest

Bob and Karen at Crows Nest. Great food!

 

Karen, brother Bob, me.

As if watching Animal Planet, we witnessed a harbor seal chasing a salmon for his dinner. The salmon made it up onto the rocks to get away, but was fatigued. It would slowly drift back towards deeper water and the waiting seal. Finally the seal crept up onto the rocks, grabbed the salmon by the tail, and pulled it into deeper water. The salmon got a burst of energy, broke free, and sped off under the docks. We don't know the final outcome, but we were hoping for the salmon's escape.

My, what big eyes you have!

We continued on down the coast to Carmel. What a great little town. More art galleries than any town needs greet you downtown, and the main street continues right down to the sea. You would be hard pressed to find a more picturesque seaside town. There is plenty of history, too. The Carmel Mission (San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo) was founded by Father Junipero Serra in 1771 as the second of the California Missions. It became the Mother Mission and home of the founder. Mass is still celebrated here.

San Carlos Borromeo de Carmelo

We have been staying with my mother’s cousin. Hyla is the last of that generation of my family, and it is nice to have a chance to spend some time with her. She is living in her parent’s home that has been in the family for many years. It is within walking distance of the town center and the beach. Walking back is up hill, though, so you need to be in shape.

We got out and visited the mission, Monastery Beach and Point Lobos State Park. It was a cloudy day, but that is a very normal occurrence here. Watching the fog coming in over the treetops has a particular charm and is part of the character of Carmel. Monastery Beach and Point Lobos are the two locations where I most frequently did my SCUBA diving in the early 60's. Great beach diving, but pretty cold water.

Monastery Beach

Carmel River

Point Lobos

Point Lobos

Point Lobos

Point Lobos

Point Lobos

Point Lobos (Find the deer)

And, at the end of the day?

Tomorrow we are off to Santa Barbara.

50th High School Reunion

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Friday started off real early, like 4:00 AM early, as we got ready to catch an early morning flight to San Jose, CA by way of Salt Lake City. As is often my luck, the center seat passenger muffin topped over into my seat for the four and a half hour flight to Salt Lake. That, coupled with the minimalist legroom for someone my height, left me very uncomfortable. The shorter flight to San Jose was not as bad even though the plane was half the size of the first leg. San Jose airport has been completely redone since my last visit. It is now huge, and pretty well lain out. While we did not use it, the parking structure looks to be a vast improvement over the earlier parking arrangement.

We drove to Dinah’s Garden Hotel in Palo Alto and got checked in. We have a nice small room with a view of the pool. We don’t plan to spend much time in it, so size is not an issue. 

View from room

Since I left my sunglasses in the car when we left Orlando we took a drive over to the Stanford Shopping Center. Once I had replacement sunglasses we drove through old haunts on the way to Saratoga and dinner with my brother Bob and his wife Karen.

1970's Menlo Park hangout, the Dutch Goose. Steamers and Anchor Steam Beer!

Home during my elementary and high school years

Parent's home while I was in the Army prior to their move to Europe

Saratoga is a nice quiet community nestled in the hills west of San Jose. We had a great outdoors Italian meal while watching the steady stream of cars heading for the BB King & Robert Cray concert at the Paul Mason vineyard a little further up in the hills.

It was a very long, but rewarding day.

Up at the crack of noon Saturday we drove over to the Los Altos HS campus for a lunch at tour. The culinary arts students at the high school prepared the lunch, and they did an admirable job. The lunch was great, and we got to meet some of the fellow alumni prior to dinner tonight. The tour was interesting. There is a lot that is the same, just upgraded and cared for, but there is a lot that is new such as a large theater and two-story math and sciences building. There is a dedicated auto shop where it was once an adjunct to the metal shop. There is no longer a woodshop, but there is a magnificent commercial kitchen supporting the before mentioned culinary curriculum. Another two-story classroom building is under construction for the language department and other classes. Our original library was not much bigger than a classroom. Now they have a very nice large modern library with plenty of digital resources. The classrooms are also updated with computers and digital chalkboards that allow the teachers to save to disk what ever is presented on the blackboard (actually white, by the way).

Finally a desk that fits the average guy!

A good time was had by all!

RV Budget Hit Hard

We have not had the chance to get out in the RV this summer due to having the travel budget consumed by serious home repairs. We returned from our trip out west this spring and very soon found ourselves looking at the Florida summer heat without the benefit of air conditioning. Yuck! The whole central heating and cooling system was replaced. We are now enjoying the benefits of a more efficient system, even if we are living with a substantially lighter savings account.

The following month it was the unpleasant odor of mold. Investigating beneath the master bath cabinet we found water stains. Tearing open the wall we found that the Poly Butyline piping used to plumb the house was failing. There was a small leak somewhere in the concrete slab the house is built upon. We could tear up the hard wood flooring and concrete until we found the leak, or we could re-pipe the house by running PEX tubing through the attic and down the walls. We chose the latter. It was a messy job, but the plumbers got all of the plumbing changed in one day, and that was followed the next day by the drywall contractor who patched the holes created by the plumbers. Now we just have to paint nearly every room again.

Once Barbara's necessities were removed we knew we were in trouble

We opened the wall and removed all doubt

The water was seeping up  from the blue sheathing on the left.

Nearly 40 holes were cut in the interior walls

PB pipe was outlawed in the late 90's because of the high failure rate of this product.
Central Florida is particularly hard hit for this problem because so many homes were built in that time frame. Copper pipe is not immune. The soil here is highly corrosive and electrical charges from the numerous lightening storms take a toll on the copper. The home I owned prior to this house needed to be re-piped, and it was copper.

If your home was built in the 80's or 90's you may eventually face this if your house was built with PB  pipe.

My future posts hopefully will feature lighter topics. Next up, my 50th high school reunion.

Hail Yes!

Sure happy we keep the motorhome in covered storage. We got hit with a small, but heavy, storm today with hail the size of marbles and a little larger. High winds, too.

The hail was hitting the house windows with enough force that I was worried there would be breakage, but everything turned out fine. Car was OK, too.

Bill Frederick Park, Orlando

In keeping with sharing our experiences with local Floridaparks I thought I would give you a look at Bill Frederick Park. Previouslynamed Turkey Lake Park after the lake it borders, this is an Orange County Parkon the southwestern side of Orlando.

We drop by periodically to take Barbara’s grand niecesand nephew to the large playground, and to walk the nature trail and bike path.This is a fairly large park as municipal parks go. They offer horse trails,bike trails, walking trails, many picnic pavilions, boat rentals and disc golfcourses. 

Boat rental dock

I'll bet they lose a lot of discs on this hole!

Nature trail

There are over two-dozen RV campsites and several rental cabins, aswell. You should bring leveling blocks because some of the RV sites are sloped.

Small children enjoy the kid’s farm where they can meet a variety of farmanimals and fowl. There are plenty of horses, too. Older kids are attractedto the large pool.

Bill Frederick Park provides a getaway stroll for locals, but for visitors with an RV this is an inexpensive, well shaded, centrally located, campgroundthat is only about 25 minutes from Disney and Sea World and only about ten minutesfrom Universal Studios. This lakefront park is located in a residential part oftown and is thus much quieter than the commercial RV parks located on busyhighways on the outskirts of town. That is not to say that there is not sometraffic noise since a small part of the park borders the Florida Turnpike. Still,it offers a respite from the more hectic commercial centers of this tourist destination.

Fort Wilderness, FL Day Two

Day two dawned early for the Dallas Burgners, and after breakfast in the RV they headed to the pool so Jack could enjoy it before the heat and the crowds got to be too much. They have two large pool areas. Each has a kiddy pool and splash pool in addition to the regular pool. Plenty of ways to cool off.

We returned to the park and joined Chris and Lisa around lunchtime and grilled burgers, then sat around and chatted while Jack had his nap. Once he was up, we walked over to the Pioneer Hall area so Jack could see the horses and the adults could get a Mickey Mouse ice cream bar. Barbara won the hula-hoop challenge, but refused a photo op.

Hard to believe he just turned two!

Jack has camping down cold.

We had another great grilled dinner and enjoyed our time together before Barbara and I returned to the house and allowed Chris and Lisa a little alone time to enjoy the campground.

Sunday morning was checkout day, so we showed up at 9:30 to start breaking camp. 

Couldn't do it without him!

All went well and we were underway by 11:00. We wanted to get a trip to Yalaha Bakery in time for Jack to get a nap before leaving for the airport. Cream Puffs, Key Lime Pie and a Bee Sting (no, the pastry kind) gave us the perfect ending to a perfect weekend. The weather remained perfect for their visit, so they were able to make the best of their time here.

Fort Wilderness, FL

My son Chris and his family, Lisa and Jack, came to Orlando for a mini vacation from the rigors of work in Dallas. By coming a day earlier than originally planned they got to enjoy the experience of washing the motorhome in preparation for the weekend trip to Fort Wilderness. The ladies and Jack tackled the interior and the guys took care of the outside.  We were able to knock it out in record time with all that help. Chris and I were soaked through by a combination of sweat and spray, while the ladies were crisp and cool thanks to running the generator and the A/C. We celebrated our accomplishment with a drive to Kissimmee for grouper sandwiches, then a dash home for naps.

This morning we eagerly packed the car and drove to the storage facility to load the motorhome for the short drive to Disney. I was disappointed to find that I had turned off the battery switch when leaving the coach the day before. That also turned off the refrigerator, so we had a warm one. The whole idea of taking the RV out of storage the day before is to allow the refrigerator to chill down. RV refrigerators are no where near as efficient as your home unit, and they take over twelve hours to get down in temperature under the best of circumstances, and much longer in hot, humid Florida. We kept things in the coolers until evening when the refer finally caught up.

As you would expect from Disney, Fort Wilderness is a first class camping experience. We arrived right at check-in time along with everyone else, so there was a pretty long wait to get checked in, but once through the gate all was well. This is a huge campground with hundreds of campsites of varying sizes, but it is set up nicely so that you do not feel cramped together. Our site was nicely wooded and had a large concrete slab for the outdoor living area that made it easier to keep the RV interior clean.

Once we got Jack up from his nap we did some walking through the campground and took advantage of the free water taxi ride to the Wilderness Lodge Hotel where Jack got to play around the pool and check out the huge lobby before getting a bus back to the campsite to grill up some dinner.

After dinner we walked over to the campfire and theater area. Disney puts on a free movie each evening after a campfire sing-along with Chip & Dale (Chipmunks). Disney sells long sticks and gigantic marshmallows the size of baseballs for the kids to roast and make s’mores. All the kids have a ball, and there were plenty of adults bellying up to the campfire with sticks in hand as well. Jack was a little intimidated by the crowd at the fire and was not having anything to do with Chip & Dale. He had the same reaction to the Easter Bunny at his school this year. Large furry things are not his cup of tea yet.

Jack wants no part of the big furry guys!