Up to Thanksgiving Day

Hi Everyone

I've been out of touch with the blog since Nov. 15th. It's now Nov. 27th, the day after my son Dustin's 28th birthday. Claude and I have been here and there since my last entry in Ventura. We went to Apple Valley from Ventura and was not impressed. Neither were we all that impressed with Hemet or Beaumont which had three of the active communities we have been searching for. After we left the high dessert and the low dessert, we turned toward the west and Newport Beach. Neither of us knew much about Newport Beach but we could tell when we were driving through town toward the RV Park, that this was a NICE place. Big, beautiful, clean, wide streets and lots of nice buildings. Turns out Irvine is right there and the Univsersity district. We drove by some new impressive condos so as soon as we hooked up at the RV Park, we went there for a tour. They were very nice and quite expensive. Well, the cost of the condos weren't as much as the monthly homeowner's dues of about $1000 bucks. You wouldn't feel poor living in that building and the condo's themselves were very nice.

We took the next couple of days and discovered Dana Point, Laguna Beach, Balboa Island (too cute) and San Clemente. We discovered a superb biking trail connected to the RV Park we were in that looped around a huge estuary reserve. It was really pretty and made us like the area even more. John Wayne airport is just a hop, skip and a jump from there and you can see the big planes taking off regularly. It was very entertaining. There is nothing wrong with any of the areas we looked at along that part of the coast but we barely scratched the surface there.

We are now in San Diego and exploring Chula Vista, La Jolla, Del Mar, and beautiful and interesting downtown San Diego. It actually rained here last night and the night before which is a rare occurance here in southern CA.

While all of this was occuring this last week, Claude's daughter, Tash, was admitted to the hospital with a serious occurance of Crones disease which she has self-treated successfully for many years. She struggled through the first few days but improved and was released today with not only an improved physical condition but with a new outlook on life, a deeper understanding of how much she is loved and with a new and open mind that welcomes the best and most appropriate medical treatment for her ongoing recovery and continued health. We are blessed to know she is getting better and better.

Here are some photos of some of what we have done in the past several days for your viewing pleasure. We are grateful for each of you who are reading this and for each day that we have here on this beautiful earth and in this magnificent and free country we live in.