Go West Young (at heart) Man (and wife)

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

ET phone home

Sometimes it was a while between detailed posts, the reasons for which are varied. It was more of a challenge than I realized to be in WiFi range. Most of the sites we were scheduled to be in had WiFi, but not necessarily at our dining room table. And when we did have it, the signal strength was not consistent. The last place we were in, before Yosemite, was a campground in Lee Vining, pronounced Le Vining, California. It had pay as you go WiFi, but the bandwidth was ridiculously small, consequently I could not tell if pictures were posting to the site. Well, enough with the technical stuff that I don't understand but sounds impressive to put forth.
Well, maybe not. While we are on the subject of technology, I have been very aware of how it could ruin a great vacation. It would seem as though a battery would quit, or a signal would disappear as a result of malicious forethought, leading to nearly missing what was around us or what we were doing because we couldn't capture it digitally.

It Never Rains in Southern California

We turned in the camper , Wednesday the 8th, then all piled into a Ford van, along with a Swiss family(not that one), and headed for the airport in order to pick up a rental van. The Swiss family was catching a flight home. The rental process went surprisingly smoothly, as I used the self serve kiosk since I had a reservation number. We did what the kiosk asked, grabbed our confirmation receipt, and headed out into the car area where we had our choice of three vans. In the end we got a white one, and then I entered the queue leaving the garage, intending to pick up the crew at ground level, where they were guarding the bags. The attendant gave me directions, which I followed easily, and soon I found myself headed for San Jose, albeit by myself. I managed a rapid change of direction, without the help of the GPS (turning around when possible and no, it was not a legal U-turn), and headed back in the direction I had just come. I followed the route the RV shuttle driver had followed on the way to drop us off, and sure enough, there were my doughty little travellers, standing guard over the baggage. I pulled in, and after a moment or two of trying to figure out how to stow the back seats, an Alamo Car Rental attendant came over and set things aright. We loaded our bags, many of them, and headed of in the direction I had just come from, only this time with a full van, towards Pacific Grove.