Here we are, on the road: We’re in Santa Maria, California

September 14, 2014 Lorraine’s report

Welcome and thanks for stopping by. We are parked at the Elks Lodge in Santa Maria, CA. There are about a dozen spaces in this area, with about 20 along side the lodge that have power and water. Not bad, especially when you look around the area and see what they are charging for your typical site for parking big rigs at different areas by here.

Well this week was one of just hanging out, checking out the area and taking it easy. I would like to thank all the people who prayed this week for me. Many, many thanks, but there is more, so if you call, I will tell you about it.

It is so much cooler than up in the mountains where it was so hot. And my oh my, I’m so glad to be out of the area where Yosemite is on fire. We made it through just in time…What luck.. And while it pretty, I still love the water and enjoy the many areas it affords. I really liked visiting Pismo Beach. What a pretty area, really liked the pier…

So I guess that is it for me. Take care everyone and see you down the road…

Hugs,

Lorraine

9/14/14 Chuck’s report

Thought about not writing a report this week but figured I probably should as we don’t have major plans for today.

Like I said in our last blog, I asked Lorraine to pick our next destination and she wanted to go somewhere along the coast, it was cooler for on thing and she really likes the water. So Monday morning we packed up, dumped the holding tanks and headed out, knowing we had to travel over/thru a few hills to get to the coast. We had stopped at the Elks in Santa Maria when we were here last fall and knew they had a nice RV set-up with a dozen or so sites so that was our first choice. Our back-up was the Pismo Beach Elks, not as nice but in a really nice area.

We had a pretty uneventful trip over, boy is this area dry however. There are two fires in the Yosemite Park area, started the day after we left. They had to evacuate some people but I think where we were is still open, the fires are not too close. But glad we were gone before the fires started anyway because of the smoke.

When we got here, we found lots of openings in the RV park here at the Elks so that’s where we set up shop. We like to have the front of the coach face the North or East when its hot and the sun shining all day, it helps keep the coach a bit cooler. We were able to get a site under the trees, facing NE. We have full hookups here, 50 amp and sewer at each site plus we are able to get TV satellite service, all the things we like to have. We decided to stay here for a week, that would give us time to explore the area some and still have a couple of days to just rest from our visits to the two National Parks we were in last week.

After getting set up, we headed over to the lodge for dinner, they were serving chicken fried steak. This lodge is the place that has the well known BBQ every Friday, serving over 300 people each week so they have the dinners down pretty good. We picked out a table and soon went through the serving line for our salads and entries. They even had fruit for desert. We were both a little disappointed in the chicken fried steak, too much breading and way overdone. But besides that, we had a good meal and returned to the coach to watch part of the second Monday Night Football game.

Tuesday we ran some errands and checked out the town here a bit, sort of just to get the lay of the land. Seems like a nice place but won’t make our short list of places to live when we get off the road. Not sure why, just didn’t rate high on our list although it has most of the items we want.

Wednesday was more of the same except we stopped for a good BBQ lunch at BBQ Land, not too far from where we are staying. We ordered two different plates and shared, one was with BBQ sauce, one with dry rub. I think we both liked the sauce but both were styles really good. That was the highlight of our day, doesn’t take much to make that when we have these quite, restful days.

Thursday we headed up highway 101 to Pismo Beach area. We stopped at the beach access points a couple times, checked out some RV parks and the Elks Lodge just in case for a future visit. We had a really great day in a really nice area. I think this area might make our short list but would require more exploring and research, guess we’ll have to come back someday.

Friday we headed South on 101, I wanted to check out a 1000 Trails park in the hills above Santa Barbara. We set the GPS but it wanted us to head down a “shortcut” through the hills and even though we were in the car, I didn’t feel like driving more narrow, curvy roads so we stayed on 101. Finally we got to the turnoff and headed up into the hills, the temperature climbing as we got further up the hills. When we got to the drive into the park, it was another narrow, curvy road. A couple of places the road was only one lane wide and some of the blind curves had a mirror set up to help see around the corner. We got to the park, drove through and check it out and decided we didn’t need to return. It was 104F, all the sites were serviced with only 30 amp power so we would only be able to run one air conditioner and it was REMOTE, nothing in the area. Glad we checked it out via car first, would have been disappointed to drive the coach that far and not like it.

We wanted to drive into Santa Barbara but when we got back to the main road the afternoon traffic was starting to get heavy so we decided to get outa town before rush hour. So we turned around and headed back to the coach. Later we returned to the lodge for their BBQ dinner we’ve heard about and found it was cook your own steak, ribs, chicken or sword fish. We both decided to have steak so when they were ready I cooked the steak over their large, 35’ long, wood fired BBQ. They have it set up in sections, one for each type of meat. When the steaks were done I went back out and Lorraine had made our salads and was ready to finish. We went through the line, picked up potatoes (baked or fries), bread and vegetables then ate our meal. Except for the cook your own part, it was all we expected, very good. We talked to a couple who had the fish and they said it was good too.

Yesterday was another rest up day for us, we headed out for a short while, I got a haircut and filled the car with gas. I found some guys set up with a trailer that a large soft water tank and they were washing cars in an vacant lot. I pulled in to see if they would be interested in washing our coach but they wouldn’t come to us and we didn’t want to break camp just to get it washed, shoot. I asked them if they would be around on Monday when we leave but they only do this on the weekends I guess.

Afterwards, we came back to the coach and watched the Washington Huskies football game. Unfortunately, the baseball game went long so we missed most of the first half but we got to watch them beat Illinois. Both teams need more discipline, too many penalties on both sides. But at least Washington won.

The weather has been really nice this week, guess that’s why all the folks want to live in California, ya think. Before we came over the hill, the temps were pretty high, into the low 100s in Visalia. But as soon as we got over the hill, the temperatures started dropping to the mid 80s, pretty nice. Plus we’ve had a nice breeze every afternoon. Of course, it was hot when drove up to check out Ranch Oso but that was just a trip, we weren’t staying there.

Our travel plans are to head back to Susy’s place for next week. I have ordered a new motor for the broken windshield shade and will replace it while we are there. Lorraine also has a package waiting for us to get back there too so we’ll pick that up. I just called the campground host at the Elks and he said our normal site just opened up and he’ll save it for us so we’ll head up tomorrow. Our plans for after that are not firmed up yet, we need to work on those as well as our plans for the winter. Tough life, huh?

I don’t think we’ve taken too many pictures this week but I’ll go through them and pick out some to add here.

Some scenery through HOT mid-California.