Quick update from Monterey

You can see the ocean from the dump station!

We are at the Monterey Elks Lodge, on a hill overlooking Monterey Bay (map).

They have perhaps a dozen tightly packed RV spaces here, with water and 30-amp electrical service, for $15 per night. Considering the location, this is an incredible deal, although there is a three-night limit. No problem for us, since that's how long we usually stay. The county parks at the fairgrounds and Laguna Seca raceway, by contrast, are upwards of $30 per night (although the spaces are considerably more spread out).

Oddly enough, this is our first stay at this lodge, even though we've stayed in Monterey several times. Usually we are southbound, and Laguna Seca is north of here; we did not want to drive the extra 15 miles or so only to find the lodge either full or inaccessible (the driveways are steep here, and we had concerns about getting Odyssey in; also, only two or three of the RV spaces will accommodate our 39' length).

Since, this time, we were northbound, and the lodge comes up first in that direction, we thought we'd stop in and give it a try. We're glad we did; it's a great location, and, of course, we're saving at least $45 over the course of our stay. There are even a handful of restaurants within walking distance, should we have needed that. Since we're visiting Louise's dad and stepmom, though, we have use of a car for our stay, and we've been taking advantage of that to get some errands done while we are here.

Speaking of visiting, we've had a nice couple of dinners out, and Kay seems to be recovering nicely from her knee replacement (not well enough to drive yet, though, so lending us the second car has been no hardship). We will have a final meal with them this evening, and tomorrow we will roll north to San Jose.

We had a very nice drive here from Kirk Creek on Tuesday, although a dry weather system had moved in to California, bringing wind gusts to the coast of 50mph. Odyssey's 47,000 pounds make it pretty stable, even in high winds, although steering was more work than normal. We passed quite a few rental RV's, though, and a number of travel trailers, and I can imagine what sort of day they must have been having. That stretch of road is a lot of work even in dead calm (rare).

We learned in the comments here that we have been playing leap-frog with readers and fellow bloggers Hitek Homeless since Box Canyon. They've passed us now, but I am hopeful that we will catch up with them in Washington. Jenn is a web designer, and has been working on a great site for locating free campgrounds, FreeCampSites.Net -- check it out.