a couple of updates..

We got home from my Mom’s house Saturday to realize a live band was playing here at the campground. It was late but Eva (and to a smaller degree Ben too) really wanted to go check out the band. Eva and Sylviane danced the whole time they played. I started to dance but half way through the second song I looked down and remembered I had white socks on with flip flops…. Certainly not the cool fashion statement, I left the floor. I did finally take off my socks and rejoined the ladies for a few more songs.

Yesterday Sylviane took the kids to walk at Poway Lake, she went with Marie Laure and her family. I mostly goofed off yesterday but I did modify the plumbing so we can use the City water. Up to this point I had to fill the fresh water tanks and use our bus water pump to serve our needs. It’s nice not hearing the pump anymore and even nicer not to worry about the tank running dry. With the clothes washer we go through quite a bit of water.

Today we moved the bus again to our third spot here at the campground. We went ahead and drove over to the boat ramp area and gave her a bath while we could. I did notice one of the bus batteries is shot so I need to get that replaced by the time we take off at the end of this week.

Oh, I don’t think I mentioned that I got a couple more hoop nets before Ben and I went out last week. Now each of us has one. We had a great time pulling up the hoop nets. We launched at La Jolla shores, there is an area of the beach that is set aside for launching kayaks and small boats. Out in the open ocean waters of the Pacific! Very cool. We had no wind so I rowed for 30 minutes to get out to the kelp beds. No worries, I need the exercise. We had some nice warm barley soup that Sylviane put in a thermos for us, it was so nice to have in the cool night. We were too busy though to eat it all. As soon as I pulled up one hoop net I just had time to row to the next to see what was in that one. All the bugs were short but what a great night. The sunset was awesome (see the pic above). There was a seal that swam close and checked us out quite a bit. Two of the hoop nets had the bait stolen and I think it was this seal. I taught Ben how to use the shore lights to mark the location of the traps. Actually it’s pretty hard to find them in the darkness even though we had a flashlight. We looked toward La Jolla shores (East) and lined up a light near the beach with a light up on the hill, this gave us one line. Then we looked south to the city of La Jolla and lined up the close street light with lights on the building several blocks away, this gave us our second line and the fix we needed to get back to our hoop nets there. We also had two nets in a different spot but it was near a big permanent buoy that was easy to find.

Ben wrapped up in a blanket on the way from the kelp beds back to the beach, it was cold and we were tired but we had a fun and memorable evening.

Bill