Heading Down the Southern Coast

Here is another "in-the-past" blog to catch you all up.
Thank you for all your emails! It really is truly appreciated.


We drove from Morro Bay to Santa Barbara, and spent a few hours at the Mission (not very well run), and spent a few more at their Natural History Museum (really wonderful) and got a chance to get my younger son a new prescription for his glasses, as his vision has improved slightly. I loved the optometrist we had. As I tried to convince her that he may not wear glasses someday, she smiled and gently explained how the chances of that were like winning the lottery. I guess we are still trying to accept them. As every parent of a child wearing glasses knows, it adds an extra responsibility to both child and parent. He tries to lose them every couple of weeks, and we have to find them as he pretends they must be lost forever so he won’t have to wear them. I think it is hard for him that no one in his immediate family wears them. In fact, no one on either side of our family wears them, with the exception of my sister's husband, who always makes sure to tell my youngest how cool his glasses are (thank you!) He also gets a lot of positive attention from strangers telling him he is adorable in his glasses. If only they made Harry Potter style frames for kids, that person would make a fortune. Well, at least they would make one sweet boy extremely happy.

We left beautiful Santa Barbara promptly when we found hotels to be in the $300 and up category. Husband and I just don’t believe anything is that beautiful, so we drove South to Carpenteria. Now, when I used to live in my old Kombi camper, one of my favorite spots was the Carpenteria State Park. Not only are you right on the beach, but you are also just a few blocks from downtown. It was just as I remembered. We found a great spot late at night (we were amazed at how quickly we were able to set up our campsite in the dark) and woke up in paradise. I love the smell of salt air in the morning. The kids woke up tickled that they were on the beach and immediately began playing in the sand. We wanted to stay but found out we could only pay one night in advance and they told us that each night we would most likely have to move campsites. After playing that game one more night, we decided that as nice as the park was, we needed to move on. This was when we realized that making reservations would be a good idea, if we wanted to stay somewhere for the week. Another lesson in commitment.

We headed down the Ventura Highway past Los Angeles (as fast as traffic would allow) towards Carlsbad, which is about 35 miles North of San Diego. My cousin and his family live there and had offered to have us stay in their beautiful home for a night or two. The kids were excited to go to Legoland again, which is located about 5 minutes from their home. My parents decided to meet us in San Diego, so our visit there extended for a couple of weeks. We tried not to wear out our welcome with our gracious hosts, so we moved just down the street to Carlsbad State Park. This time we made reservations, though they only take them with 2 days advance notice. So we camped in the spot we reserved and hoped that we wouldn’t have to move. At most parks there are some sites that cost more than others, and if you are planning to stay at this park pay the extra $10 per night. It is the difference between facing the street or facing the beach. Night and day, pay the money. We loved this site and loved Carlsbad. It has a great town that is just a short bus ride away (so we didn’t have to pack up our campsite) and a beautiful beach, surfing lessons available walking distance away, and of course we had visitors who came to roast marshmallows with us at night, which was really fun. Legoland was as much fun the second time as the first. If you have young lego fanatics, I highly recommend it. Thank you so much to our cousins in Carlsbad for a wonderful time!

My parents met us in Old Town San Diego. Very cool place to visit, as you feel like you are in historic Mexico. People are dressed in period clothes and music is played. We wished we had more time to spend there, but we had to check into our hotel. My father was in the military, so we were able to stay on Coronado Island on the military base. The feeling for both my husband and I was torn. Here on this active base you saw and heard the navy and navy seals training. You sit relaxing on the beautiful long beaches with the grass roof huts like you see in romantic getaways, while the young people around you are training for war. It filled us both with great sadness.

We had a good time visiting with my parents (thank you!) and we were able to go out on a precious date. A date was something we knew we wouldn't have the chance to do again until we made it to Houston. My parents took us all to explore the San Diego Zoo. I have never been to a zoo where the only way to see it all is to take a bus. Yes, it is that big! The kids just loved the zoo and so did the grown-ups. Watching the polar bears, panda bears and elephants with wonder is a great way to feel young again. Of course, at the end of the day, the kids were still filled with energy, while we were all glad to sit down and rest our weary bones on the the drive back to the hotel. We planned to hit Sea World, but we were all tired and my father became ill, so we decided to stick around the beach and enjoy the rest of our time there, while he rested.

My parents left after a few more days, while we were able to stay a couple extra days saying good-bye to the beautiful west coast before we headed off into the unknown of the great wide desert.

Back Online....

Yes! It has been a long time.... We finally have a new laptop after the mishap at BestBuy. We have made it to Houston, Texas and have done so many things along the way. I found the last post I had written and saved on our old laptop before the Chocolate Milk Incident. To get things started for the day, I thought I would go ahead and post it, even though it was a couple of months ago. Thank you to all of you who have encouraged me to start writing again. I hope to write often while I catch you up with our trip so far, so please check back every couple of days for new posts. For now, here is that post...

CAMPING AT LAST!
You are not going to believe this. We did it! We spent the night in San Simeon State Park. We camped! Was it beautiful? Magical? Perfect? The beauty was there all right. This park is right on the beach, which you can reach by going under the freeway and we found a lovely site. It had the ocean view and privacy. Everything else seemed frustrating. We couldn’t really level the car accurately, since we had not installed any bubble levels inside the van. The pop-top wouldn’t stay up due to too much weight from Golf clubs, etc., in the roof carrier, so we had to come up with a quick brace solution, so the boys could sleep up there. We couldn’t get the refrigerator going, we had bought way too much food, and it wasn’t all fitting in the cooler. The sun was setting, and we had forgot to pay for the campsite and buy wood at the front kiosk, which was about 1 mile downhill from where we were, so we were unable to have a campfire, which was probably a good thing, since I forgot to buy marshmallows. Worse than anything else, we left our very favorite pillows at the hotel in Aptos, and we were very far from any Bed, Bath and Beyond. It was dark, we were tired, and quite honestly, we didn’t really know what we were doing. This was the first time we ever tried to camp Eurovan style.

Now, I have camped every year of my life growing up with my family. In the college years, I continued camping, even so far as living in my van at various state parks, backpacking in Big Sur and hitching across the USA with a backpack. And here I was 10+ years later, and I had become a whiny non-camper. I had all my worries about failing on this trip culminate into a big giant force that lay over my head telling me I would never be able to be comfortable in this outdoorsy-ness. There were mosquitoes, there was dirt, and there were no lights shining the way to the outhouse, just dark, pitch dark... Had I really become one of those non-campers who complained about cold, and dirt and bugs?

I was a mess, feeling defeated, I wondered why we had come out here in the middle of nowhere thinking it would be fun, and decided to go to bed with my fleece sweats as my pillow. Husband was also overwhelmed at first as we unpacked, but seemed determined to enjoy the night. The boys were all outside in the dark when they called me to join them. I went outside and that was when everything changed. The night was lit up by a mystical full moon. It had been waiting, hidden in the clouds waiting to impress those who might stay up to see it.

“Wow,” I said, “so that is why we are out here.”

A surprisingly good night was spent in the van, and I woke up to a beautiful sunrise. I began to read waiting for the others to wake up. What was this? Fresh air? Quiet? Yes, all that. Heaven. Maybe this was worth the bugs, dirt and lack of bathroom lighting.

When everyone was awake, we had breakfast and quickly packed up to get ready to go to Hearst Castle. We had bought our tickets for the 10:20am tour. New to both of us, Husband and I were absolutely amazed at this castle on a hill. The kids loved it, too. Now we were told that there is no touching, and it is true. No touching anything that isn’t cement or iron railing outside and nothing inside, while staying on the tour carpet. We were warned that this might be very hard for small children and that maybe my 5 year old would be too young. However, we found that there is so much to see and our tour guide moved us through so fast, that there is not really a chance for the young ones to get into too much trouble. Our sons, who are obsessed with castles and knights, thought this was all so cool. Husband and I both felt strange at the end of the tour and movie. This guy was not someone who shared the wealth. His didn’t use his money for good, just for flash. Yet the state park was celebrating him as though he was the greatest man in American history. It was an interesting conversation at the end for the kids. “Yes, wonderful tour to see, though it is too bad he didn’t help people with just a fraction of that money.” Of course, now California State Parks are making a killing. My youngest was free and we still paid $50 to see a small part of the estate, and there are 5 or 6 tours you can see.

Since we needed pillows, we decided to leave our beautiful camping spot, to head to San Luis Obispo. We bought a few camping items, a wooden brace for the pop top, new sandals for our little guy, and made an appointment at our Eurovan shop, Go Westy in Los Osos, and headed back to a hotel in Morro Bay. After a night to get ourselves clean and the food into a refrigerator for the night, we went to Morro Bay State Park the next morning to camp out for the week while we waited to take our van in for a few repairs.

We felt a lot more comfortable camping already. We were so happy to be finally resting for awhile in the same place. We bought tons of ice, since our refrigerator still wasn’t working. This park is great. Close to the beach, a state park run golf course and driving range and a children’s museum that teaches kids all about the estuary and the bay. After two days, we realized our van’s camping battery was dead. So we had no lights to light the night, though the flashlights were fine. Oh, and we finally had our campfire with marshmallows. Though we realized we had no outside lighting either and we needed a lantern. The list of items that needed to be fixed or we needed to camp more comfortably for the week began to grow. In a few days, life got hard. My oldest son got a fever. It was a hot one and he slept for two days. By the third day he felt better and his fever was gone. That was about the same time that my younger son started his fever. He had his for the next two days, and the day we were leaving, my husband started to feel bad and took a 4 hour nap. Also, we woke that morning to find the van not starting. We called AAA and had a tow truck come out to give us a jump start, but it didn’t work. He thought it must be the starter. “Great!” we thought, another item to add to the list. He told us to call him back when we were packed and ready to be towed. We were packing up and waiting to hear from Go Westy about a loaner car, when I told Husband he had to wake up so we could get out of camp ground. All of a sudden like by magic the car mysteriously started up as easily as it had always done. Just a hint to all Eurovan camper owners, you can’t start the car if you have either of the front seats turned toward the back. So we happily skipped the tow truck and headed for the hotel once more. All the sick members of our family were happy to be in a bed watching TV while I was dropping the van off and picking up a loaner car.

Within a few days, the van and the family were as good as new, items were improved and fixed and we bought all the supplies we needed to begin a camping adventure properly without fear.
We love the Morro Bay area, and added it to the list of possible future places to live, as we headed off towards Santa Barbara.