Atascadero Sunset

Who says you have to be at the beach to get a killer sunset. Looks like they are predicting a 20% chance of rain later this week. I hope it is nice for the rally.

On the move again

Today we traveled on down the road again since the weekend is booked at Morro Dunes. We are now in Atascadero just 30 minutes from Morro Bay. Last time I traveled from Morro Bay I was undecided if I wanted to take Hwy 41 or Hwy 46. I took Hwy 46 after talking to a few people that said they always go Hwy 46 and never have gone Hwy 41. It is a good road and has one good climb but not too bad. This time I decided, what the heck, and took Hwy 41. Mostly because it is a more direct route from where I was to where I wanted to go. I think this is a much better choice. The climb is less than Hwy 46. It is a bit curvier but nothing at all bad. It was a nice drive. I decided we will stay here in Atascadero for a few days then go directly up to San Antonio Lake. We will most likely get to the lake before any of the other rally goers show up.

Booked for the weekend

We are not happy that we have to leave this place. I have checked numerous times and they are booked up for the weekend and have no cancellations. Morro Dunes is a really nice campground. The place is cleaned everyday, sites are swept every time someone pulls out and everyone is very friendly. At $29 a night it is a real bargain. We will be heading on over the hill to Atascadero only 30 minutes away where we will be for at least the weekend, NASCAR you know.

Attack of the Giant Seagull

We are still waiting to hear if we can stay here thought the weekend. I sure hope so because we sure like it here. The weather has been mixed. We had a day of overcast, which never really burned off, and a day of morning clouds with afternoon sun. Today was mostly sunny. It has gotten a bit cooler though but we are not ready to leave the coast yet. This evening we headed for the Embarcadero for some fish and chowder. Susan had the halibut and I had the fish sandwich and a cup of clam chowder. We sat over looking the bay and kept an eye on this giant seagull while enjoying our meal. Actually it was a normal size seagull but at this angle he looks huge, but you knew that. Tomorrow I will be heading for the office to bug them again about staying. There are a couple of other campgrounds in the area but if we need to move to another campground we will just head on down the road. Toward the end of October, after the rally, we are heading for Lake Havasu. I have been checking the weather there and it is still in the 100s. Hope it cool down before we get there.

On the coast

Well we made our way out to the coast to Morro Bay today, but not until after the NASCAR race was over. We sort of overstayed our welcome at the elks lodge since they like you to pull out by 12:00. We pulled out at 2:00. Since there were other sites open and no one was waiting to get parked I wasn’t worried and no one seemed to care.

We are in an actual campground for a few days. This campground is real nice. It is clean and our site is very roomy.


We are right across the street from the beach and as I sit under my awning I am looking directly at the famous Morro Rock.

The weather was fantastic today. It was in the high 70s with a slight breeze and the skies were clear. I hope it stays this way all week.

Party in the streets

What a cool night. Tonight we went to the Thursday night street fair and farmers market here in San Luis Obispo. There was a ton of people. Every college student in town must have been there. It was like being invited to one big giant college party. What we didn’t know was this must have been initiation night for the Cal Poly fraternitys. The streets were filled with college students. Some of them were in groups dresses in togas, Mexican ponchos, guys in dresses, and other oddities.

This guy was on his own with his big foam cowboy hat, tie died shirt, and boom box dancing in the streets. He paused long enough for me to snap a photo. It would have been better if the girl hadn’t step between us.

One "must see" in San Luis Obispo is Bubble Gum Alley.

This alley is right in the middle of downtown and the walls are covered in gum. Apparently it is a big hit judging by the crowd in there. I’m wonder how long it took to get to this point.

We ate at Mo’s BBQ tonight. Mo decided he wanted to open the best BBQ place in town so he and a friend set out on a 3500 mile journey to scout out the best BBQ joints and learn from the experts. His walls are covered with best of awards he has earned along with photos of the BBQ joints he visited. While on this journey they picked up an antique chair from each stop for his restaurant. Every chair in the place is different. Pretty good eats but I still like Susan’s.

And all this entertainment for only a $.75 parking fee. What a cool night!

I can’t drive any slower

We moved again. We are now up the coast a bit in San Luis Obispo. No, we are not camped in a cemetery. We are actually at the Elks Lodge, which is surrounded by a large cemetery. Since it was only about 15 miles up the road we took all the back roads. The max speed limit was only 45 mph and still we were here in 30 minutes. We plan to be here for 4 nights. Actually on Saturday we are heading back to Pismo for a day trip in the car. There is a NASCAR store that was closed while we were there and it will open Saturday. Susan has been looking for a NASCAR store for quite a while now and when she finds one it is closed. Another reason we are heading back is because I wanted to get a bowl of clam chowder from Splash. Splash is a small restaurant that has won “best clam chowder” for years. They finally asked then not to enter anymore.
There is plenty to do here in San Luis Obispo also. Tomorrow we are going into town for their street fair.

A day in Pismo Beach

I woke this morning to Raccoon prints on the hood of the car. We thought at first it was a cat but they were very large. The Camp Host said there are raccoons that come through the park at night. Not sure what they wanted on our car.

We took a walk out on the Pismo Pier today. Nice views. As we were leaving the pier, a lady came walking up and just about every pigeons on the pier flocked to here.


Apparently everyday she comes to the pier to feed the pigeons. The old guy that was with here said she calls then her chickens and feeds them everyday.

Tomorrow we will be moving again. There is a group coming in that will occupy all the sites here. This means tomorrow will be a busy morning because everyone here will be leaving and there is only one dump station.

Another long day

Well we took the long 30 minute journey to Oceano/Pismo today. Susan doesn’t understand my reasoning for traveling less than ½ hour a day. It makes perfect sense to me. I get to see different scenery, experience different climates, meet new people, and only have to drive 30 minutes every couple of days. Life is good!

Speed Limit on the beach

Today we took a walk out on one of the few “Drive on” beaches in California. We have never seen so many sand dollars in one place. They were all over the place. People were gathering them like they were real dollars. They had bags full, which I think is wrong. These are living creatures and should be left alone. I walked up to one lady who had a bag full and said, “those are still alive you know.” Her reply was, “Yeah, some of them are.” Apparently some people don’t care. I took some too,

Sand Dollars on the beach
in pictures only. I let them lye as they were.

We will be here for only 2 nights although we wanted to stay longer. They have a big group coming in that will take up the whole RV area so we will be moving on another 20 minutes down the road.

The weather is surprisingly nice for being near the central coast of California. It is usually cooler and foggy around here.

When I looked at the flag to the left to see the forecast it said, “Smoke”. Never seen that one before. There are some fires going on in Southern California that are affecting the air. We woke this morning to the sun shinning through smoky skies.

Another easy drive

Today was another easy drive. We are 45 minutes up the road from our last destination. You think I am crazy? Well I met 2 others here that came from where we are going next only 30 minutes away, and are heading to where we came from only 45 minutes away. We have an excuse for traveling so slow. We still have 3 weeks to travel 120 miles. It was a good thing that we got here early. We got the last hookup site and after I backed into the site another motorhome came pulling in. We got here so early that we actually had to park for a while until someone pulled out. The early bird gets the worm, or in this case, the site with hookups. We actually woke a little earlier than expected this morning since the trash truck decided to come by at 7:00a and empty the dumpsters near us. Why can’t they hit the shopping centers and industrial areas first?

We get free movie channels this weekend on our Direct TV Satellite. This makes Susan happy. Between NASCAR and movies she will be happy all weekend. I, on the other hand, am happy as long as I have my Internet.

Today’s weather was nice. The evenings and mornings are getting to be fireplace weather though. We ran the fireplace for the last couple of mornings to take the chill off. I like cool nights.

California Rocks

We met a couple while here in Buellton that live in the park and have a small business they call California Rocks. They paint rocks! They are very talented and could make a very good living at what they do but they chose to live a modest life. They refuse to go big with their talent and only charge $10 to $40 for each piece. They say they only make enough to pay for food. They say they have been living in the park for about 2 years. When I mentioned I couldn’t stay put that long they said they wanted to move on several times but the park wouldn’t let them. You see, they have also painted all the signs in the park with the same whimsical style and have done murals in the office and clubhouse too. Nice job. If anyone is interested I have their phone number. I’m sure you could send them a photo of your favorite car or RV and they will paint you one.

Tomorrow we will be heading up the road again. We actually wanted to stay longer but don’t want to pay the weekend rates. I asked if they would convert us to their weekly rate if we stayed and they said no. So instead of making a few more bucks on us they get nothing. What kind of business is that?

Did I say R&R

Yeah right! Today I spent the day cleaning, washing, wiping, and polishing. I got to admit, the motorhome and car look pretty good now. If only it would last. Hopefully I can relax the rest of the week. I dodged a bullet last night. Our Convection oven mad a weird noise then would not heat up to over 150. You can’t cook much at 150 degrees. I did a little troubleshooting and found the convection fan was not working. I was able to reach up in there with a shish kabob skewer and nudge it free. I didn’t even have to turn a screw or remove anything. Seems if the fan isn’t working, the heating element gets real hot and a sensor shuts it down. I’m sure glad someone thought to add the sensor and save me a lot of money replacing burned out elements. It’s been in the low 80s today and tomorrow is supposed to be the same. After that it will cool down a bit, but not much.

A little R&R

We took a long journey today. We are 20 minutes down the road from our last stop. It was a nice casual, no freeway drive. Along the way we even spotted a field full of deer. We decided to forgo the Elks Lodges for a while and spend a few nights at Flying Flags Campground. Susan needed to do some laundry and we know from experience that they have sites right across from their laundry. This makes it a little more enjoyable to get the laundry done (as enjoyable as it can be). We cringed at paying $40 a night so we planned to stay only 2 nights. We lucked out and got a pretty good site so I went to the office and paid for 3 more nights. 5 days of cleaning and R and R.

We had to leave

We had to move on today. All the sites are called for at the Santa Barbara Elks Lodge until Monday. We have moved on down the road to Lompoc. It was a fairly easy 1 hour drive. When in this area we usually stay at the Flying Flags Campground in Buellton, however we decided that they were too pricey for the cramped sites that they have so we are down the road in Lompoc. We did decide to head on over to Flying Flags for Sunday through Tuesday though. It’s laundry time and we always get a site right across from the laundry at Flying Flags. Beats sitting in a Laundromat. Also while at Flying Flags we will have breakfast at our favorite place in Solvang. When we got here it looked as though it had rained. Everything was wet. I think it was just the morning fog. It defiantly is much cooler here which is nice.

It's much cooler here

Well, we headed for the beach today. We checked out a couple of campgrounds along the Ventura coast and found two right on the beach with hookups. One didn’t have any available but we were there early and possible someone just hadn’t pulled out yet. The other had 2 or 3 available. After staying at the Elks Lodges for $10 to $15 a night, I just couldn’t bring myself to pay the $40 a night they wanted. We left and headed for the Santa Barbara Elks Lodge. Last time we tried staying at the SB Elks it was full. This time..we got the last site and only for 1 night. We thought maybe we will stay at the Elks tonight and head back to the beach tomorrow. After thinking a while, we should have grabbed one of the beach sites because tomorrow is Friday and they will go fast. We may be able to stay here at the Elks because someone hasn’t showed up yet and they said if they don’t show we can stay longer. We are only about a mile from the beach so the weather here is cool. After all, that’s what we were looking for.

It’s hot here too

We are now in Simi Valley and it’s 100 degrees. It was supposed to only take 1 hour to get here but it took almost 2 due to traffic. I kept looking at the traffic report online, waiting for it to clear before we hit the road but it never did so we packed up and got in line on the freeway with the rest of them. This was at 10:30a on a Tuesday. Don’t these people work? Well we are here and will stay put for 2 days, got to kill some time ya know, and then we will head for the coast. It should be much cooler there. I am hopping to find a spot on the beach where we can stay put for a while.

While here we may visit the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. It’s just 20 minutes down the road from here.

Whew!

We are done with the race. It was over 100 degrees everyday. It was just too hot to do anything. We wanted to spend more time in the midway and visit the pits but we ended up sitting inside the motorhome with the generator running and the air on.

Start of race at sunset

Roof top view

At least the races were at night and it cooled very comfortably every evening so we could view the race from the roof of the motorhome. We had to get up early every morning to get in and didn’t get out any earlier than midnight everyday. We didn’t take our motorhome into the infield since our daughter had hers there. We setup at the local Elks Lodge and drove the car in everyday. This worked out well since we had electricity and could run the air all night at the lodge. Also the parties don’t end until the wee hours of the morning at the track so we got a good nights sleep at the lodge. We were going to get back on the road today but decided to rest a day and leave tomorrow. The race was great though. Susan’s driver didn’t do so good. He lost his points lead in the standings but not by much. One good win and he will gain it back.