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8 July to Moro Bay
 After
a last lunch, suddenly (it seemed), from the curb
in front of Merrill Gardens in Whittier, with Pat's sister, mother,
and father waving to Pat, we were on the road. As an intermediate
stop on our way to visit Pat's brother, we chose to aim for Moro
Bay, a coast town near the base of Califonrnia's Big Sur coastline
and a spot Pat remembered visiting during childhood. It was just
about the right distance for us to make in an afternoon, and it
would provide a chance for us to test the car while not pushing
it too hard.
Path
 From
Whittier, we drove across LA toward Santa Monica and, at the intersection
of Interstates 10 and 405 (near UCLA), we went north over Mullholland
Pass (past the impressive Getty museum) and into the San Fernando
Valley. Bearing westward on US 101, we headed toward Camarillo,
where Pat and I had lived in 1970 while keeping house with four
children who were former residents of Camarillo State Hospital (California
State University Channel Islands now occupies those buildings).
Pretty soon, we felt like we were really on the road, starting our
trip. This was confirmed when we caught glimpses of the coastline,
as shown here.
Sights
 Along
with that view of the coast, the sights during this part of our
trip were pretty familiar, so we didn't record a lot about them.
We caught a glimpse of our first VW micro bus (manufactured before
the time the words "mircro" and "bus" evoked
cognitive connections to computers), waved in the direction of Santa
Barbara (even though Mike Gerber wasn't at home ["hi, Kathy"]),
saw the pink sign for the Madonna Motel (which we hadn't seen for
more than 30 years, and it was still there), and so forth. We joked
about keeping a pictoral record of VW buses but decided against
boring our patient readers (all two of you) with our personal predilections
for fun.
Food
Once in Moro Bay, we stayed at the Embarcadero Inn
on (surprise) the Embarcadero. For dinner, we went to the Galley
(no Web address; also on Embarcadero, phone: 805-772-2806) and got
a nice seat at the window for the sunset (see Pat's photo). 
At dinner the night of the 8th, Pat got this shot of the rock after
which the bay and town are named. It's putatively called the "Gilbralter
of the Pacific." The setting for the meal was very nice. The
menu was an all-in-one affair (b'fast, lunch, dinner on different
panels) with a board of specials. I was intrigued by something called
"Powell's Platter" (a combination of different oysters
served on the half-shells). Sadly, our waitron didn't know why it
had that name, but I ordered it anyway. Pat had a servicable clam
chowder and salad (such a sensible eater), and I had salmon (overcooked
to the point of dryness) to complete my meal. At least the wines
by the glass were O.K. to good: Sanford sauv blanc and WildHorse
pinot noir.
Bird
 Altough
we'd put the top up for the actual trip along the coast (contrary
to the departure picture on the first page),
we quickly discovered that doing so didn't dampen the fun of driving
the Bird. It's clearly the most responsive, agile vehicle I've owned.
It's more powerful and handles more precisely than my '56 Bird.
The controls are pretty sensible and all right at hand.
Birds
Given our east coast residency, one of the problems
we encounter when travelling is that we are less familiar with the
local birds. We tend to map those that we see onto our known species.
(This is probably common to explorers, too!) So, please forgive
my transgressions of (capital B) Birding and bear with me as I make
mistakes in identifying some of the fine avian critters we encountered
along our trip's path.
 On
the way to and in Moro Bay, we saw some sundry birds, including
this gull (and those in the background, that Pat caught before dinner
on the 8th--the Galley restaraunt is shown as the left frame). There
were plenty of others--scrub jays, crows of whichever variety, grackle-like
birds, other gulls (neither of us are sharp with the many different
sub-species of gulls; they're sort of like sparrows to me: a big
glop with variations along too many dimensions to make them readily
distinguishable), and etc.
Tunes
We still hadn't mastered the iPod FM connection (via
iTrip) for playing our recorded music through the Bird's stereo
system. As a consequence, we listened to a couple of CDs part of
the time. However, every now and again, we were able to take advantage
of the recordings I'd made. I figured we would get the idea sometime
soon.
Runs
I ran the morning of the 8th, before going to pick
up Pat in Whittier, as reported on the first
page.
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