I had the day well planned, I thought, but I didn’t account for the ‘casual’ approach of the photographic galleries. More about this later. Still, the morning went well with a trip down the coast to Point Lobos and then to Big Sur. After my healthy and filling breakfast at the B&B I drove a few miles south to Point Lobos State Park. Why Point Lobos you might wonder. In addition to being a most spectacular place to walk there are ocean scenes that are in some ways iconic while in other ways unique. Several photographic icons of the early 20th century made some of their best known images there. Point Lobos is truly beautiful and inspiring in an artistic way - for painters or photographers. Edward Weston spent an inordinate amount of time there and ... read more

I had a pretty good sleep. It started sort of rough with the sound of snoring from the person beneath me drifting up through the floor, but my earplugs took care of that. I woke up at 6 in the morning because I wanted to get on the road early, but I was so tired that I drifted back to sleep. When I woke up around 7:15 I was annoyed that I hadn’t got an early start. I then found out it had been pouring with rain until about 7:10, so starting early wouldn’t have worked. Today I drove down Highway 101 to Legett where I then took the old Highway 1 toward the coast. This was one of the slowest highways I have ever been on as it wound its way over two mountain ranges ... read more

I had planned to make Crescent City a hub for a day or so. As it turned out I had little choice because on Thursday (May 8) it rained and blew hard all day. There were a couple of reprieves from the rain and I got out a bit, but it was basically an inside day. Still, I have one event to write about and a few images to show. I went for drive north of Crescent City looking for an access point to the shoreline called Pelican Beach. It was prominently noted on the map I had, but I couldn’t find a sign telling me where to turn. It was about lunchtime so I turned off highway 101 into Smith River to see what I could find. Smith River is another ‘almost surviving’ town. There ... read more

Today’s destination is Bend, Oregon which is about seven hour drive away according to my mapping software from Apple. It is a pretty direct route, but 10 miles out of Spokane my GPS decided to send me off on a side road parallel to the freeway for about 10 miles, only to join it again. The only thing I can think of was that there was a traffic jam or accident ahead. In the States that feature is functional on the GPS. I decided to ignore it and it turned out there was nothing causing a delay. Just another computer hiccup I guess. From then on it worked great and without it I would have been lost getting through Pasco. That city is a challenge for someone who doesn’t know the place as Les and I ... read more

We allowed ourselves a couple of days to drive back to Cochrane from Portland. We thought we could make it from Portland to Kimberley in one day. That was all fine and good at 10am when our GPS displayed an arrival time in Kimberley of 4:30pm. What transpired was a bit different. The time shift or, as I started thinking of it, a time warp, started with a coffee break at a unique coffee shop just outside of Portland. It was a quaint place on a side road with a talkative, older woman (all right - our age then), who gave us the complete background of her business, her husband’s health, and her positive philosophy on life. All this was fine, but she didn’t seem to be able to make our drinks and talk at the ... read more