Santa Paula - 9 weeks visiting our daughter and her family in Ventura.

We have not posted in a while because we are spending time with my daughters family located in Ventura, CA.  for the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year holidays.

The nearest place that we could stay in our RV near them is 11 miles east of them in Santa Paula, CA. We are staying at Mountain View RV Park where we are surrounded by small mountains on 3 sides.

The park has a nice spa that we used several times during our stay here. 

To visit our daughter and her family we hop on Highway 126 and can be there in less than 15 minutes. There are several stores within walking distance that we have walked to many times to keep stocked up on groceries. There also is a new Santa Paula bike path that we explored on our bikes.

We visited several of the following local restaurants during our 9 week stay.

Wood Ranch for appetizers

Panda Express for Chinese dinner

The Taj for Indian lunch

Neptune's Net in Malibu for clam chowder and fish & chips

Suv Vnaphumi for Thai lunch

Lazy Dog Cafe for lunch

Mimi's Cafe for breakfast

Cafe Nouveau for breakfast

Cajun Cafe for lunch

Himalaya's for Indian lunch

WayPoint Cafe for breakfast snack

Snapper Jacks for lunch

This last Wednesday our small Bible study group that we joined for our stay here decided to put up some Christmas decorations at the Vista Cove Senior Living facility. We decorated 4 Christmas trees and then we went down each of the 4 wings and sang Christmas Carols to the residents. It was a blessing I am sure for the residents and we all enjoyed serving together as a small group.

6 weeks have nearly past and we have a little over 3 weeks left of our stay here. We cannot believe how fast time is passing since we got here.

Columbus 5th wheel Facebook West Coast Group Rendezvous at Pismo Beach California

We attended a Columbus gathering at Pismo Beach California Oct. 29th thru Nov. 2nd.

Columbus is the brand of our 5th wheel trailer and 14 other couples that have the same brand as us set up this rendezvous. They had a rendezvous last year so this is the 2nd year that they organised this event. Sue and I looked at our calendar and our map and realized we could join this event on the way to our daughters home in Ventura. We all belong to a group on Facebook that is strictly made up of Columbus 5th wheel owners and we had seen a lot of these peoples postings online. Because we all have the same brand of trailer and the are all interested in RV traveling we immediately all had common interests and everyone was very friendly. We all had a great time together on this long weekend.

Downtown Pismo beach.

The first evening (Wed.) we had a "greet & meet" appetizer potluck. As you can see the baseball playoffs were on TV and since everyone but us is from California there was great interest in the Giants.

On  Thursday evening the group made reservations at Jockos Steak house in Nipomo.

Jockos is well know as one of the best steak houses in California. The place does not look very special from the outside but the food is outstanding.

Sue waiting outside with our friends for a table. Even though we had reservations we still had to wait which we understand is normal at this popular place. 

There were 30 of us for dinner.

Sue and I split a steak dinner they call the Spencer steak. We were both quite full and we both really enjoyed our steak.

On Friday there was some interest in renting ATV's and hitting the nearby sand dunes. I rented a 4 wheel quad bike. 

Here is a picture of us preparing to ride.

Here is a picture of some of the dunes we ripped up.

It is hard to tell from these pictures but some of these dunes are 50 to 70 or more feet tall. 

If you were not careful going over a dune, you could find yourself going over a very sharp drop off and could easily get hurt or killed. Here is sand dune bowl that is at a sharp drop off that you could get stuck in.

On Saturday we went to Splash restaurant in Pismo Beach for some award winning clam chowder and fish and chips. It was some of the best clam chowder I have ever had. 

We then stopped at Old West Cinnamon Rolls to buy a cinnamon roll for Sunday's breakfast. Sorry I did not get a picture because I ate it before I could find the camera.

Below is a picture of our entire West Coast Facebook Columbus group at the rendezvous Saturday morning.

King City - San Lorenzo County Park

As I mentioned earlier we are staying for a full week at San Lorenzo County Park in King City California.

We save money when we use the week rate over the daily rate. You can save the most by staying at most RV parks if you stay for a month at a time which we do when we stay in Santa Paula near Ventura for 2 months.

This park is in the Salinas Valley at the base of the Santa Lucia Mountains near King City, CA. 

There is an Agricultural and Rural Life Museum in this park. They have a lot of old tractors and farm implements outside through out the park.

I am standing in front of an air compressor that was used near a gold mine.

Sue is standing in front of a trencher.

I am sure Roman and McKenna  would like to climb on some of these tractors but the park is not really setup for kids to do that safely.

Various farm tractors.

  

Most of the RV parks we have stayed at have been pretty full but this park with 130 rv sites has been relatively empty. There have been only 4 or 5 RV's here most of the time we have been here. Just a little scary at night because so few people and the park is not very well lit up. I normally like the RV parks not to have very many lights on at night but this park is pretty dark.

Sue standing next to one of the cactus in the RV park.

Big Sur, Hearst Castle and elephant seals oh my.... Part 2

We stopped at the Big Sur lodge and looked in the gift shop and we considered eating lunch here but it was pretty pricey and Sue had made lunches for us to eat anyways. 

We also went in one of the State Parks and admired the giant Redwoods once again. We did not do any hiking in the Redwoods because we had done that a few weeks ago.

Along the coast we came to San Simeon and where the Hearst Castle resides. The Hearst family owns many newspaper, radio and television stations and they are quite wealthy. We stopped at the visitor center and Sue bought some hot tea and I had a coffee and we enjoyed the view of the castle and the ranch from the observation deck of the visitor center. 

You can see the castle at the very top. 

They have several tours they run of various parts of the castle and the least expensive tour is $25 per person and the most expensive tour being $100 per person. Sue and I decided to be good stewards of our money and skip the tours and look at the pictures of the castle online via Google images at our leisure. If you get a chance to look at the images it is quite a castle.

We continued our drive and we could see something on the beach but we were not sure what they were.

As we drove along further there was a couple places you could pull off the road and get a better view.

They made the sounds like they were burping 

You can see a video below of the elephant seals playing in the water.

As we sat along the edge and admire the ocean for while a sea gull kept an eye on me the whole time just a few feet away from my chair. I think he thought he was my buddy.

Big Sur, Hearst Castle and elephant seals oh my.... Part 1

We took a day trip on a loop along PCH 1 to see the Big Sur and other sights along the route. It took us about an hour to get to the PCH so we could start heading south. The views are just spectacular.

As a family back in 1989, we have traveled this highway and I remember some of these sights so well but you can never get tired of these vistas. 

The temperature was in high 60's and so it felt perfect to be in the sun.

You can see how the highway runs right along the coast in some of these pictures.  

Some places there is no guard rails so you really have to keep your eyes on the road. I would have liked it if Sue could do some of the driving so I could see some of the views but she said she could not do it. 

We spent most of the day travelling down this highway.

Central California - Patterson, CA.

As we headed south along Highway 5 we stayed a couple nights in Patterson, CA. at Kit Fox RV Park. This campground was one of the tightest we have ever stayed in. The campsites were so small we could barely open our camper door because our truck had to be parked so close. Some campgrounds get so greedy that they put each campsite right next to each other to maximize their profit and really do not care if the campers have room or not. Other than during heavy tourist season though, most RV'ers will not stay very long at such campgrounds so they pay for their greed by not being very busy.

The campground is in between Highway 5 as seen below in the distance

and one of Amazon's fulfillment centers. 

I would like to tour one of these facilities since so many of my online purchases probably paid for most of these buildings. Maybe we will get a chance sometime in the future.

shopping at the farmers market and visiting the Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay

Before heading off to Bethel church for Sunday morning service, we went to a small farmers market in the heart of Redding, CA. at Sundial Bridge at Turtle Bay. We got some very fresh organic swisschard that we really enjoyed. 

We then walked over to the Sundial bridge. I am not sure if you can tell from these pictures but the decking on the bridge is made of glass. 

They had to have a machine run over it a few times to remove the wet dew because when the decking is wet, it can very slippery. 

I was curious if you could tell the "time of day" by using the sundial but there were no markings on the ground to support that.

Here is view of the Sacramento river as seen from the bridge. If you look carefully you can see fisherman with waders fishing in the river.