Monday 23rd and Tuesday 24th April

Monday

Back down the dreaded interstate 5 to have the rv repaired. 34 miles in only 1.5 hours, not bad
but horrible driving again.  Having great difficulty not creeping in to the right with the van and having
to concentrate hard on the driving.  I find I am looking about 20 to 30 yards ahead and little more, scenery town or country is so far non existent.

Two and a half hours to repair the van but now it is dry inside.  Back to the campsite after some more shopping with only a little sightseeing unintentionally thrown in as we got lost.  Sat nav proving an absolute must in these areas.

Weather again today cloudy and quite cool.

Tuesday

Off into the wild unknown, well not quite at least leaving Los Angeles behind which seemed to take a long time about two hours or more though along route 101 the names of towns changed but all were closely connected.

For MASH fans, ourselves included, we called in at the site of the outside set of the MASH hospital in Malibu State Park.  Not much of the set left as the last ever  MASH filmed and it was  scripted and advertised as such weeks before being filmed was filmed with a bush fire raging nearby.  The fire was used in the last episode and the crew cast etc just got away before the whole set went up in flames and it and thousands of acres around was totally destroyed.

          Sort of area for MASH map shows detail and can be enlarged by clicking on it.


I got my distances wrong today thinking we had about 75 miles to travel when we had 160, not very impressive and will lead to revising some of our timing but we have set dates for the Grand Canyon of 16th to 23rd May so have to get that right.

Arrived eventually at Morro Bay State Park for the night, Large and quite empty. There are a lot of State Parks all through I suppose most states and as separate entities there are the National Parks such as the Grand Canyon, Yosemite etc
.
We called in at a Catholic Mission founded around 1780 there being a string of these missions 21 in all each a days walk apart founded to convert the local Indians.  A calm and quite benign image is conveyed nowadays but the earlier reality was of quite brutal evangelism with the local population being used by the church for little or no return.  Same the world over in times gone by I fear.

.Tomorrow sees us at Hearst Castle but that will have to wait for now.