Dec 9-13

We are in the region where it seems like Santa is everywhere – Santa Lucia Mountain range, towns and cities – Santa Margarita, Santa Maria, Santa Barbara….

The area we have been parked in since Tuesday evening is a string of popular beach and surf towns along the “central coast” as they like to be referred to.  We are in Pismo Beach, which seems to be the hub for the area and to our north is Shell Beach and Avila Beach and directly south (1/2 mile from us) is Grover Beach. Grover Beach has a ramp onto the beach where for $5 you have access to several miles of beach if you want to drive on it. A couple of miles down there are supposed to be massive sand dunes where you can rent ATV’s, dune buggies and go wild. I intend to bike down there today (Sunday) to check this out.

On the Wednesday after arriving, we walked around town to orient ourselves and found one of the popular places in Pismo – the bakery with their famous cinnamon sticky buns. A couple of coffee’s and a large bun in hand, we headed to the pier/boardwalk area to soak up the sun and enjoy the treat. This time of year is much quieter with the cooler weather, so the boardwalk and street were pretty quiet.

We went back to the RV in the early afternoon and had a quick lunch. The weather was supposed to be turning on Thursday with a big storm coming, so with the nice weather we walked over to the Monarch Butterfly Grove to check this out. It was free (my favourite 4 letter word!) It is about a 10-15 minute walk directly south of us. As we approached the grove was strong fragrance of eucalyptus as the grove was predominantly these trees. When you first look up you see a few monarchs flying around then some of the guides point out the clumps of butterflies in the trees. See pic’s. A sign as we walked in had an estimate in the grove of 30,000 monarchs. They also had a few telescopes set up to get some real good close-ups.

For the next day and ½ the main talk was the Monster storm hitting from the Pacific. We did get rain all night Thursday and it ended in the early morning. Thursday night as we watched TV, the winds picked up a lot and the RV was rocking pretty well to the point that we had to take down our Christmas tree from it’s over the cab location.

Friday we walked over the local Outlet Mall to do a bit of shopping in the morning then after lunch we biked over to Grover Beach to a beachside restaurant called “Fins” that I had found the day before. When we got there it was closed as they had lost their power. So into Grover Beach we went and found another nice place for lunch. When we got back to camp, there was quite a few RV’s coming in for the weekend – locals with their families, dressing up their RV’s for Christmas.

The sun was shining brightly on Saturday, so later in the morning we decided to bike to the other end of Pismo Beach(north) and beyond. We ended up in Shell Beach and saw some pricey looking homes right on the coast. We never did see a beach as we were beside 150’ cliffs. After a 6-7 mile bike ride we were back in Pismo for a late lunch at an outdoor eatery. Pismo was a bit busier being the weekend. On the way back we picked up some firewood for an early evening campfire as there had been many around over the past 1-2 nights. At night the temps are going down to the high 40’s and low 50’s. Some days we have seen temps up in the mid 60’s with plenty of sun. All is good.

Sunday, Funday!

We’ll squawk later in the week.