Friday - Thursday

May 13,- May 19

We arrived late afternoon in Carlsbad, Ca after a trip through the desert and into to California where the golden hills soon replaced the sand and cactus of the desert. We will be here for the longest period yet. This is our chance to visit with family and recover from the mad pace of travel since we left home on May 1^st,

Along the way we checked our accumulated mileage for the trip thus far: 4,431 miles as of 5:17 pm on Friday.

No sooner had we arrived than Hannah requested that I accompany she and her dad on a weekend “Indian Princess” camping trip.  The weekend was a regular event for the YMCA sponsored program designed to allow dads and daughters to spend time together with other dads and daughters.

How could I refuse!

We packed up and left Saturday morning towing the family camping trailer heading for a campground near Julian, CA. It was a busy weekend with a carnival games in the afternoon on Saturday and activities in the evening ending with tacos at 9 pm (in additon to dinner before that).

We didn’t see Hannah much during the day as she was busy with her friends. The dads were busy organizing, cooking, and enjoying each other’s company.  Around dinner time one the tribes hosted an upscale wine tasting for the dads of the “Painted Pony’ Tribe of which Hannah and her dad were members. Very fine wines offered!!

After dinner we attended a program for all present. This was followed by tacos for the entire group and margaritas for the adults.

Off to bed at 10 pm after a very busy day.

We were up early the next morning for a short hike and breakfast.  After another program for the group and we packed up and headed for home.

I used a good deal of my time in Carlsbad catching up on the blog, adding images to earlier blogs, writing and posting the last few days, and processing the hundreds of pictures I had taken. I also managed to deal with accumulated email – and catch up on sleep.

One day we visited the Science Museum in San Diego. Carol and I drove to San Juan Capistrano on Wednesday to have lunch with friends and went out to dinner with family in the evening.

Tuesday I took the car to the local Subaru dealer for service and to have them investigate suspicious noise. Turned out to be a bad left rear wheel bearing. It seemed wise to have it repaired!!

Thursday morning we repacked the car and set off for Morro Bay where we would camp for one night before driving to Los Altos to a few days with Peter and Margaret Brooks.