February 2017

Came back to the oceanfront campground for Brenda's Birthday. Perfect weather for birthday. Went into town for breakfast and dinner. And then to the local small 1 screen theater.

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On way from Palm Springs to Morro Bay. Stopped off at Channel Islands National Park. Visited the islands on the ferry in 2008. This time visited the updated visitors center and also got a sticker for the book of parks.

Very interesting it's just offshore of such a busy area and state, but so many animals found only here.

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a 9 hr drive from Phoenix to Morro Bay along Hwy 1 coast in CA. Stopped to spend night in Palm Springs.

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After the mine tour, we drove to Nat. Memorial to get a National Parks stamp book for Ann since nearby. Only a few hours till it closed so options were (a) drive up a mountain, through gravel, and hike to Mexican border area, or (b) unsupervised cave exploration.

The van isn't a big fan of washboard gravel roads, and we're not fans of accidently hiking into Mexico without our passport, so we decided to do the cave.

Parks worker said you only need a flashlight, go on your own, and be back by 6 pm when they close park. Up a steep hill and into cave. Very interesting to be able to enter any passage you chose. We hiked near the vent to outside where someone had wrote, turn back, too funny. Was hard work and really a fun thing none of us 3 had ever did before. So nice wrap up to our adventure times with Ann in Phoenix

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Ann found something really cool to do in our last weekend together in Phoenix. She knows how much Denzil talks about going into mines and exploring, and has always wanted to go to Bisbee, so looked into it, and we drove in the morning early about 3 hours to get there from Phoenix. He did indeed really like the mine and the person leading the tour had actually worked in the mine for many years so had good stories too.

After that we decided to go on to a National Monument so that Ann could also get her National Parks stamps book. It was another drive to that as well. Great idea on the mine, Ann!

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