[Zeke]

Jeff, I don't have the answer. I can't really leave my wife much and no one seems to be available to take her for a bit. Her kids, 50 and 55 are too busy to accommodate their mom. A few years ago we went to Mt Wilson and she was dicking with her phone for the most part, even when we stopped at a look out point.

A little later in terms of months I needed to make a trip down south. We got as far as Huntington Beach and she was car sick. Had to come home. She might be better now but I don't take the risk.

Now all of that sounds like I'm blaming her (or the nasty meds she takes) but I'm really not. I could find a way if I had to. However, going to Griffith alone is not so appealing. Completely out of nowhere last year the daughter got tickets to the Greystone and the 3 of us went. I drove. I had a wonderful time. I'm sure I saw 10 times as much detail and interesting things there. I don't take pics when I visit places, I just soak everything in. I don't need pics to remind me of what I saw and did.

But guess who was asked to take pics of mom and daughter? I think that's fine. The daughter someday might look at the pics when her mom is gone. It took my wife a few days to recover from that outing.

So those are the circumstances. She's tough to travel with, even locally, and I'm not keen about setting out alone. I used to be always on the run to see everything. Maybe I burned out. Traffic and crowds seem to be the biggest problem anymore.

And costs. These days we live on a fixed income which is not enough so retirement savings are being drawn down monthly. I can still work but not 8 hours on a construction job. Can't be gone all day anyway. My work as a restorer has come to a halt just like construction did on '09 and '10. Those days I spent my mornings in a donut shop with a group of regulars. They are all gone, mostly died. That's over.

So if I want a tank of gas, I either have to earn it or draw from savings. When it costs the better part of a hundred dollar bill to fill up, I just stay parked until I have to get groceries.

However, in spite of what I just said, I still maintain that after 60 years of traveling around the state when it came up, that I've seen quite and bit even though I've missed a few iconic landmarks. Maybe that is because I don't gravitate to the most popular spots favoring more interesting lesser known places. If you find my thread "Back in Black" where I brought my '88 Carrera down from San Jose, I stopped at some great places and had an absolute ball. Everything was extemporaneous. Not a plan whatsoever other than to keep moving south.

That kind of thing I can do alone. But the circumstances mentioned above prevent me from doing so. But I will state here and now, that if I were to reprise that trip from SJ to home, I would not take the same route. Once seen, I've BTDT and need a new route. If I marked every road in CA that I've traveled in red, you'd see a lot of red. I've done a lap in AZ too and I think I saw what they have to offer. No need to go back and retrace those steps. Sedona is Sedona. If I need more Sedona I'll look it up on Google. Didn't really do that much for me when I was there.

Enough. I'm done here so yeah, get off my lawn. I haven't been stuck in some little place all my life and not seen a lot of this country. I hate Long Beach but I can't live in Santa Barbara. And I wouldn't live in 99% of the places I've been out of state.

And then there are my wife's kids. Ball and chain. I'm devoted so I do what I need to do.