The GPS lives

Location, At home, CA

We arrived home about 3:15 yesterday and immediately started the unloading process and the laundry. By 7 PM we were ready to quit for the day and have some dinner but the fridge was bare so we drove to the local Cal Taco for Mexican food. It was adequate but filled the need.

This morning after church I washed Clyda’s car which was badly needed from all the ash which had accumulated on it. I need to wax it also but that needs to wait until I get the truck washed tomorrow.

I have the camera ready to mail to Canon per their instructions. Apparently my problem is well known and they say they will fix it for free on their website. After talking to one of their people I received three emails with instructions for mailing and a pre-printed UPS label. So off it goes tomorrow. I hope it doesn’t take to long as the Grandkids arrive the middle of August. It would really be a bummer to not have a camera while they are here. I have also been thinking about a new SLR digital camera but the cost is hard to justify right now.

Oh, by the way, the GPS lives. I had it on charge for the trip home and decided to see if that would bring it back to life. I tried turning it on in Santa Paula and wonder of wonders it came back to life and worked all the way home. I had stored t in my truck center console and I think it got too hot and drained the battery. The program went into some kind of recovery mode but came back after a good charge. I am sure I didn’t help the battery by storing it in the heat.

A little retrospective is in order concerning the “Gap” fire burning in our coastal mountains. This has been a widely publicized fire with national attention because of the large number of houses close to the fire area. This fire still burns and about 1000 firefighters are on the line. The local high school has been set up as a relief area for food and rest for all the firefighters and looks like a disorganized mess to the untrained eye. There are cooking facilities, Uhaul trucks, RV’s for sleeping, tents pitched every where for crews to sleep in even on the tennis courts, and stacks of supplies piled every where. All organized chaos. Or so it seems.

For the past several years as we have been traveling in our RV we have been fortunate to “miss” most if not all the major natural disasters in our area. Winter rains have produced floods which a few years ago cut off all roads to our part of the California coast, and we were gone. Last years “Zaca” fire burned for months back of our coastal mountains and rained ash on everything but we were on our 4 months trip around the USA and missed it. This fire also produced a lot of ash along with power outages as the fire burned near major power lines but we were gone. Our son Craig has had to endure the hardships of dealing with all this each time something happens and for that we are grateful. We do get to cleanup some of the mess from the ash and I am sure we will be dealing with it every time the wind blows. This winter there will also be mud flows from the burned area but maybe we will be gone again. One can only hope.