Happy Trails with Mike & Ellen Taylor

We celebrated Ellen's birthday at San Juan Bautista, going out to eat at a great Mexican restaurant--almost as good as Chachi's in Kingwood! During our week here, we discovered a beautiful county park on Coyote Lake, and took a wonderful long hike through twisted old oak trees and lovely meadows. The dogs' favorite part of the hike was the discovery of an old deer carcass!

One of the highlights of our week was a drive on another section of the Pacific Coast Highway--out on the Monterey Peninsula. On the way there, we stopped at Laguna Seca Raceway to look around, and got to watch some test drives: Corvettes, Porsches, Ferraris, Mustangs, Lotii and Minis! Thc pictures of our day are posted at http://picasaweb.google.com/TxMike3 What a spectacular drive overlooking the Bay and the Pacific Ocean! We both decided the 17 Mile Drive is one of the most beautiful places we've ever seen. In case any of you are interested, there are lots of houses for sale there. We walked around a bit at Pebble Beach, just to gawk.

One day we decided to check out another stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway north of Santa Cruz. It was pretty but I guess we're getting spoiled because it was less than spectacular, so we decided to cut inland at Half Moon Bay. We ended up on a little twisty two lane highway that runs through the redwood forest along the top ridge of the Santa Cruz mountains...in the fog! It was occasionally clear enough that we got some gorgeous views of the whole South Bay area including San Jose and Palo Alto. It was Friday afternoon so there were also lots of bicycle and motorcycle riders enjoying the drive, including a pack of 6 or 8 guys on hopped-up mopeds.

Some asides about our trip so far: When you're RV-ing, an $18 haircut is just as good as a $40 one. The huge eucalyptus trees that are all over California shed their bark in long strips like a peeled carrot, and even though the leaves are long and slender, they smell just like that stuff you can get at Michael's. Almond and cherry tree orchards are gorgeous when they're in bloom. Driving up a mountain hugging the cliff side is much easier than winding back down on the outside lane looking down into steep canyons. You can't successfully brush a hairy dog when the humidity is below 30%. From Max: those ground squirrels are much hard to catch than our tree squirrels at home. From Gracie: being on the bed is my rightful place and I can't believe you'd put up that baby gate when you leave us in the RV. Peacocks are not welcome alarm clocks at 6:00 a.m. Even though we're technically on vacation, we still have to do laundry and go to the grocery store!

Tuesday the 24th we moved up a little north of San Francisco to a pretty KOA. We're close to wine country, Muir Woods, and more Pacific Coast Highway. More to come so please stay tuned. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to post them here or email us.