On to San Diego

After we left Two Harbors, we went to Avalon, which was tons of fun. We finally caught up with our friend Crit, who is singlehanding her boat down to San Diego from Alameda for the Haha. We hadn't seen her in years, and it was a lot of fun catching up. The first night, we took a shore boat (how cool is that? you hail them on the radio and they come fetch you) in to town and went out for dinner. The second day, we and Crit went out for a late lunch. Crit has some great pictures from lunch up on her blog.

Golf carts outnumber cars in Avalon by at least 2:1. This was outside the grocery store:






There are golf cart "trucks":








We even saw one with a trailer hitch on it:



From Avalon, we went to Dana Point. We had planned to go to Newport, but it felt like we'd be going the wrong direction, so Dana Point it was. Dana Point is fine, but what no one mentioned is that it is located on a tiny strip of land at the bottom of a huge bluff. And that all of the services - grocery store, drug store, etc. - are at the top of the bluff, not down by the water where the marina is. You'd think this would be important enough for someone to have mentioned it, some guidebook or something, but no. Also we did not look at google earth in advance. Bad cruisers.

However, we were there and we needed to do laundry. Really, really needed to do laundry. As in we haven't done any laundry for nearly three weeks, and haven't any done sheets or towels in over a month. So we have huge bags of dirty sheets and towels and then two additional enormous bags of just regular laundry. We needed to do laundry.

Hills and my knees do not get along, and we didn't want to spend more than a full day here, so I did the six and a half* loads of laundry and Art schlepped up the hill twice for necessities. The washers and dryers at this marina are located in pairs at the top of each gate. So unless I wanted to be tending laundry in a couple of places at once, I had one dryer and one washer at my disposal. I did not, in fact, want to be tending multiple laundry locations, so I settled in with my Kindle by the laundry machines (quite nice, BTW, and there's a dedicated set with a separate key for the guest dock, which accommodates many fewer boats than the regular gates). I started the laundry around 10:00 in the morning, and I finished around 4:00. The next time I've got that much laundry to do, I'm holding out for a place with multiple machines. The marina here has 6 washers and 5 dryers, all in one room. Oh, well. I did finish The Big Short. Highly recommended.

We had a gorgeous sunrise leaving this morning:














*I stuffed one load too full, and so had to run it through the washer a second time to actually get it clean.