California - Day 17 - in the Salinas campground

Salinas/Monterey KOA, Salinas

Thursday, 17 March 2022

I'd spent the last 3 days on the road, so it was nice to have a day to just sit in one spot.  Except for needing to walk the dogs.

This campground was built on a serious hill, so any walking we did involved climbing.  Gracie is normally reluctant to walk up inclines but she didn't seem to have much problem with it here.

They had 2 areas for dogs.  One was an off-leash dog park that was in a grove of redwoods.  Very shady and cool, which would have been much nicer in summer weather, though Dexter and I found some sun there.  It was a big area and the dogs found plenty of things to sniff.  

The other area was called a dog walk and was a short trail through an area of trees and grass and wildflowers that was the buffer between the campground and a busy gas station on the access road beside US-101.  That was actually a much nicer area than this sounds, especially when the day warmed up enough for the shade to be comfortable.  Lots of pretty flowers for me and apparently lots of smells for the dogs.  It was a pleasant way to make the climb from the lowest area of the campground to the highest, and even Gracie enjoyed it.

Otherwise, the campground was entirely paved over, which is hard as a place to walk the dogs because there isn't much place for their bathroom activities.  Still, Gracie prefers pavement - I think it's easier on her feet - and there were areas of grass near the entrance, so we did okay.

I spent the rest of the day planning my driving routes for the next few days.  I'd made plans to visit my cousin and her family in San Francisco tomorrow, and then to visit Paula and Bruce's son Morgan and his family in a park in Los Gatos, where they lived.  We'd originally intended to get together on Saturday, but the forecast was for a lot of rain, so we moved it to Sunday, and I rearranged my campground reservations.  In fact, I now had reservations for a week ahead, still trying to see as much of the state as I could in the time I had left, but acutely aware that I was still in the part of the AAA map for Southern California.  That meant I had less than half a month to cover more than half the state.  Ah well.  We all do what we can.