Fill'er up and take a drive

Some good things happened this weekend....

The only gas station in town finally re-opened after almost a year (so we no longer have to drive to another town to get gas) and they managed to contain enough of the basin complex fire to re-open highway one! So it seemed a good reason to get some gas and take a nice Sunday drive.

Since there are still a lot of firefighters, equipment, major clean up along the road that needs to happen and residents are still headed back home, we didn't want to get in the way, so we decided not to go all the way to Big Sur and stopped Lucia instead to have lunch. It was comforting to see that it is still our beautiful coast. Though we didn't go into the heart of the worst of it and I imagine that will be sad to see when we do, I will take and share the good when I can, so I am thrilled to report that from what I could tell LimeKiln appears to be in good shape and though they were all closed to the public, all of the parks and forests from like Sand Dollar up to Lucia, looked okay from what we could see. The visible smoke in the air is far reduced from a few weeks ago and the scent has diminished as well, though both still around.

Also managed to stop in for a quick bite for sunday sunset at schoonies on the way home, usually a mostly locals only event but tourist demand for locals entertainment was on high last evening. So the locals were on display and in rare performing form for their viewing pleasure. I seriously wonder sometimes how many peoples home videos and photo albums I (& others that live here) am on/in around the world. Sometimes I think of it like a Jeff Corwin experience, I imagine him walking through town describing us like they do when exploring some exotic location and its natural species..."Hopefully we'll spot a native today, the "ucan" native can be seen along shorelines, in the surf, on the pier and at various watering holes in the region...though mostly sun creatures this species does suprisingly well at night too...prone to frequents smiles, loud laughter, melodic bursts of song and colorful artwork...often seen riding boards and bicycles or wandering aimlessly about town..."

Saturday was spent puttering luxuriously around the house in the morning and then a planned attendance at a summer art show held by some damn talented folks from Forever Stoked. There was so much eye candy I had to walk through the exhibits several times just to take it all in. If I had roughly 12 grand to spend, I would have come home 3 very large paintings, two of which would have taken up an entire walls by themselves and one of which is comprised of 3 large panels. I was inspired by almost all of them though really. Since my budget is not that phat at the moment, I instead purchased gratefully a print of Charlie's Old Cayucos, a small print of Chris's take on Morro Bay - the 3 stacks and a rock view from Los Osos, and a print of a lovely tree done by an new artist for the Forever Stoked crew, OH! and a diggin' sketch print in black and white of a surfer surfing by flashlight! Yeah, I love art! It was also just a really nice sunny day, at a beautiful little ranch out in Morro Bay, live music, time to be creatively inspired, super nice people - including meeting someone who works for my company too - sooo random but fun! I never meet anyone who works at my company unless I am up at the office, half the time I have to explain how it isn't the food company!