Our way of thumbing our noses at $4 a gallon gasoline that has stomped on the ecomony and our jobs

The newest challenge to our trips is financial. While Andy and I have always attempted to travel inexpensively, when he took the job at United we were counting on his steady job to provide the funds for an occasional inexpensive hotel and rental car. This summer, the economy is so stinking that no one is spending money on pool construction or repair and his work has all but dried up. We're both looking for other work but in the mean time the great adventure continues. Not ones to be thwarted by something as unimportant as lack of money we've had to make a few changes to our travel plans. Even cheap hotels won't work and rental cars are a bit of a luxury we don't want to afford. Our new challenge is to go places with good public transportation or where we have friends to mooch a place on the floor. The last two weeks have been day trips, which eliminate the need for a hotel room.
This week was Monterey, CA. I love Monterey. I remember coming here once as a kid and loving it then. I love it even more now. We discovered that Monterey has a public transportation bus that picks you up for the airport and drops you off at a variety of stops downtown for $2 a rider. You just call and make an appointment and they show up in a mini bus right on time. The driver was great and told us of a couple of places to eat and even arranged to pick us up in the evening when we were heading home. It's called the DART system.
Kei went with us this time. She's a delight. We laughed the entire time and her artist eye is wonderful for the photography. She also loves seeing new things and is incredibly patient. We stood and watched sea lions for an hour. The goal this week was to walk along the coast and stay away from city stuff. We partially succeeded. We got lost in the morning at a wonderful French bakery that we just happened to walk past on our way to the coastline. It's easy to get lost in a French bakery.
We eventually were able to extricate ourselves from our pastries and headed down to the wharf. The seal lions in the bay barking, growling and biting at each other and the seals sunning themselves in the shallow water were a delight. Next time I want to rent a kayak and go out into the nature preserve that runs all along the coast.
We really did nothing of importance. We ate some food- including a shared Ghiradelli Sundae, and lots of samples of amazing clam chowder. We walked, laughed and took photos. It made me feel amazingly self indulgent and rich and the entire bill, except for the food (and you have to eat anyway) came to $12 ($4 each) for the bus.
I could get used to this.