Southbound*

I think we were the only people staying in last night's hotel that were not going fishing this morning!  I have never liked fishing but I studied the fisherpeople (is that sufficiently woke?) loading their trucks and fishing seems to involve very large coolers full of beer.  Maybe I should give it a try.

We are now following the Pacific Coast Highway; which means long stretches on our nemesis - US101.  This road runs all the way from Seattle to Los Angeles and is the main alternate to the I5 interstate.  We avoid it wherever we can and this puts us on quiet country back roads where the people have fewer teeth and bigger beards...sometimes even the men.  

The citizens of these back roads communities are not gardeners.  Instead of well-trimmed lawns and tended flowerbeds the locals use their yards (gardens) to store crap.  Well, actually 'store' implies more purpose than I think lies behind the abandonment of cars, machinery, old caravans and other junk that seems the norm here.  If you want to know how many years a property has been occupied, you just count the abandoned cars and multiply by about 10.  This isn't foolproof because this formula sometimes gives a number approaching two hundred.

Today is the longest of the whole trip at 82 miles with the 2^nd half all spent on US101.  On the plus side the sun is out and after two very cold days it is pleasantly warm.   Tomorrow we will cross into Oregon and surviving the whole of Washington State without a drop of rain is more than we could reasonably hope for in April!

I am parked up beside the road, 20 miles from the hotel, to create the only available services in a 40 mile stretch of road.  Once they are all through I will head to the hotel and see whether we have any rooms.

*I'm pretty sure I have used this song before but too bad