We spent yesterday getting to know two of my favorite artists a little better. One is known for the pictures he paints on canvas, and the other is even more famous for the pictures he paints with words.

We started out in Salinas, at the National Steinbeck Center, where native son John Steinbeck is honored for his work and for the recognition he brought to this region of California.

I have been a Steinbeck fan ever since I read The Red Pony as a youngster, and over the years I thought I had been through all of his works. How wrong I was! Besides such well known classics as Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, and The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck wrote a total of 27 books, as well as short stories, a few screen plays, and numerous magazine articles.

Exhibits throughout the Steinbeck Center illustrate many of the author’s best known books, including a red pony that kids can touch, produce crates much like the Dust Bowl Oakies would have filled with crops, and a Chinese grocery store from Cannery Row.

It is interesting to note that while Salinas celebrates John Steinbeck these days, at one time his depiction of the plight of the Dust Bowl refugees in The Grapes of Wrath outraged the movers and shakers in this farming region. The book was banned in libraries throughout California’s agricultural communities, and  twice the book was publicly burned in his old hometown. Steinbeck wasn’t the only author that was once vilified in his own hometown. Sauk Centre, Minnesota once burned Sinclair Lewis’ book Main Street because they felt the author showed the community in a bad light.

I learn something (usually a lot of things) new every day, and at the National Steinbeck Center, I learned that the author served as a war correspondent during World War II, and was known to shed his identifying armband that showed him to be a noncombatant, and pick up a rifle when things got ugly.

My favorite John Steinbeck book is Travels With Charley, his road journey epic, and National Steinbeck Center has the GMC truck and camper that the author and his canine pal made their trip in. And yes, I know, Charley was, dare I say it, a French poodle! But at least he was a standard size poodle, not one of those yappy little mutts that aggravate me so. Since he was such a great and prolific author, I’m willing to give Steinbeck a pass on this one indiscretion. The truck and camper are behind protective shields, but we were able to get a picture of the outside of the truck and the inside of the camper.

John Steinbeck was born just two blocks from the National Steinbeck Center, so once we finished our tour of the museum, we walked down to check out the handsome Victorian style house, which is now a restaurant.

From Salinas, we drive to Monterey, where we had planned to tour the Monterey Bay Aquarium. But somehow, communications broke down, and the person who was supposed to leave our passes and media packet at the front desk was unavailable, and the receptionist I spoke to obviously didn’t care enough to look into it, so we scrapped that idea.

Yeas ago, we spent one night in Monterey while on our honeymoon, and we quickly left to return to the slower pace of Morro Bay.  Yesterday, traffic was so hectic, and everybody seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere else, that we both found ourselves getting uptight. With the aquarium visit canceled, we decided to get out of Dodge. Or at least, out of Monterey.

But then we spotted this sign for the Thomas Kinkade National Archive, and decided to stop and check it out. Just as John Steinbeck is my favorite author, Thomas Kinkade is my favorite artist. Known as the “Painter of Light” for the way he incorporates colors to illustrate natural sunlight on a country lane, or the light of a fireplace glowing in a cottage’s windows, Kinkade speaks to my soul, and I could just stand and admire his works for hours.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have hours, since the gallery, which is housed in this beautiful 1886 mansion, would be closing soon. But the very nice young man on duty allowed us to take as much time as we wanted to, and we enjoyed seeing a nice selection of Kinkade prints, as well as some of his original works. Due to copyright laws, we could not take any photographs of the works on display, but you can get an idea of how beautiful they are at the artist’s online gallery.

By the time we stopped for dinner and got back to the Thousand Trails campground, the place was a zoo, with weekend campers, kids, and dogs everywhere.

Everybody seemed to be having a good time, though I did have to go across the street and speak to a group who are camping together in two RVs. Having fun is one thing, but when we’re in our motorhome, with the windows closed and the air conditioner on, and we cannot hear our television because of a loud boom box, Bad Nick gets aggravated and needs to get off his leash. One person’s rights end where another person’s rights begin.

Thought For The Day – If at first you don’t succeed, try again. But this time, do it the way your wife told you to in the first place.

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Before I get into the topic of today’s blog, I wanted to tell you that I received an e-mail last night telling me that that Red from Too Crazy Ladies has fallen and broken her hip, and required replacement surgery while in Marshall, Michigan. Please send your prayers and postive thoughts their way. 

There are a couple of threads on the Escapees RV Club forum about folks with low incomes and limited financial means who are considering the fulltime RV lifestyle. Some of them just want to follow the dream that so many of us already have, while others are considering living in an RV due to economic reversals.

One poster referenced the second category and said that these people often did not have the resources to purchase a quality RV fit for fulltiming , and had no idea of the maintenance costs involved in RV living. He said it was reminiscent of photographs of those who fled the Dust Bowl in the 1930s to find a better life in California.

It may have been a hard experience, but it worked out for a lot of those Dust Bowl Oakies, including my wife’s grandparents. They came from good stock, they were used to hard work and hardship, and they were willing to do whatever it took to make a better life. Maybe it will for some of these new folks too.

While I agree with a lot of what was said in that thread about the fact that the RV lifestyle can present many unexpected challenges, there is a flipside to that coin. You can do it with limited resources. We know because we have!

 When we started out fulltiming, we bought one of the most expensive new gas powered Class A motorhomes on the market, and it turned out to be a lemon. After eighteen months it was falling apart. About that time my wife was diagnosed with stage four cervical cancer and they told us to start planning for her funeral. The day after she was diagnosed, our health insurance company found a loophole in the policy that let them deny her claim. The nest egg we had put away disappeared in minutes and we found ourselves facing a mountain of debt. So I guess we were as desperate as some of the folks described in that post. But as they say, when you hit rock bottom, there is no way to go but up.

Our first order of business was getting Terry healthy again, and today, almost nine years later, she is cancer free and fully recovered. That’s all that really matters. The motorhome went to wherever it is that motorhomes from hell go to, and we bought an ancient MCI bus and converted it into a comfortable home on wheels slowly over time, as we lived and worked and traveled in it. We used to laugh and say it was our buckboard, because every time we got a buck, we bought another board and took another step forward in our project.

We have worked hard and things have gradually turned around for us, and we continue to enjoy this wonderful lifestyle. And the view out the windshield of our old bus is the same one the guy in the high dollar luxury coach parked next to us enjoys!

It just goes back to what my Dad told me over and over again as I was growing up: If you want something bad enough and you are willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen, you’ll get there. 

Thought For The Day – Ask your doctor if medical advice from a television commercial is right for you.

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