Leaving San Diego behind, we headed north to Santa Barbara. Bill had purchased a Thousand Trails membership that allows us to stay for free in their group of parks. This was our first time visiting one of their properties. It was about 30 minutes inland from Santa Barbara, up into the mountains of the Los Padres National Forest. Very pretty country and the road over the mountains to the campground wasn't too bad. The driveway of the campground itself was something else. There were several parts that were so narrow and had such tight curves it could have been a serious problem to meet another RV coming out. The park was nice, but it was a pretty drastic change from our awesome resort in San Diego. The sites were dirt, but there were some trees to provide shade from the mid 90’s heat every afternoon. The most significant issue was the lack of not only wifi but also any cell service. For five days we were completely without outside contact, except for when we drove into town. This meant we could not research what to do in the area or even check the weather, which was quite different between the Santa Barbara coast and the mountain valley we were camped in. We took advantage of this lack of connectivity to do less and so we spent a couple of days doing nothing but reading and relaxing by the pool. Being in the middle of nowhere had its advantages. You would not believe the stars we could see at night. I have not seen anything like it since I was a kid.

Santa Barbara is a very pretty little town but our first stop was Starbucks to borrow some wifi and decide what to do and to find a grocery store. It really drove home how dependent we have become on having instant access to maps, information and reviews. The County Courthouse is the #1 thing to see so off we went. It is a Spanish-Moorish style building built in the late 1920’s. It is really lovely, especially for a courthouse, with murals, inlaid wood, old light fixtures, and art. While we were visiting, there was a Scottish wedding taking place in the mural room (the room looks like a chapel). The bridal march was played on bagpipes and the groomsmen were all in traditional attire and kilts.

Next stop was a farmers market with a detour. On our way to the Santa Barbara Public Market, we stopped at a park hosting the Summer Solstice Festival. It was a pretty small event, with the usual types of vendors and food stands. We walked around while enjoying some pretty good roasted corn on the cob. Revlon had a booth and they were giving away hair color, so I got a blond, a red, and a dark brown, Bill felt a little left out. I’ve already tried the blond, but since it isn’t bleach it only lightened my hair a little. We eventually made it to the Public Market and were disappointed to discover it wasn’t anything like a farmers market. It was a small building filled with restaurants, a few bakeries and a small grocery store. We had some pretty good Mahi Mahi tacos but didn’t find any fresh fruit or vegetables

Building restrictions in Santa Barbara don’t allow for a Wal-mart or a typical megaplex theater. A large section of State Street does have your typical shops but all with traditional Spanish Colonial store fronts. It was pretty cool to see a McDonald’s, a CVS, a Gap, … with that kind of décor. Most of the buildings near downtown including homes have red tile roofs and are restricted to three stories. For our second trip into town, I downloaded Zillow so we could check the prices of the California real estate. Even small, ****** looking apartments were $800,000 and up and they were several miles from the beach. We walked along Shoreline Park to the marina where we watched stand up paddle boarders, kayakers, and a group of kids in little skiffs learning to sail. When we weren’t in town, we were happy to just hang out at home, no hiking or motorcycle rides. Bill did go for a run one morning and he got lost. I was starting to really worry about him when he finally crawled back to the trailer after almost an hour and a half all hot sweaty and tired. (The RV park was tied to a horse back riding ranch with lots of trails into the mountains. At the start of my run this was great as I got out into the forest and wasn’t just running along a road. On the way back however, I made a few wrong turns. I’d like to say I ran for the whole 80 min but I don’t think any of you would believe that).

Next stop was San Jose but the closest we could camp was Gilroy, about 45 minutes south. This was another Thousand Trails park and we ended up in one of nicest sites we have had so far. We were surrounded by trees and had plenty of room to put down the patio, which became a lovely spot for morning coffee and reading. This part of California has beautiful rolling hills covered with vineyards but since neither of us drinks wine, we simply enjoyed the views.

Almaden Quicksilver Park offered hiking around abandoned mercury mines, so we stopped by for a five-mile visit. This park has forested (but still steep) hills, so it was quite a contrast from the desert-like hiking we had done in Arizona or the scrub brush covered hills we had hiked near San Diego. The mostly collapsed mine shafts and the ruins of remaining buildings had big warnings about disease carrying rats for those that might be stupid enough to try to go inside. There were also more warnings about mountain lion sightings. We ate lunch at the site of English Town, which in the late 1800’s was home to over 1000 people. We drove into Los Altos that evening for a very nice dinner with friends, but the next day we didn’t do much, except go to the crowded pool at the RV resort (mainly because Dessa was insisting that I finish the photos and videos for the San Diego blog). Next stop was back to the coast, specifically Monterey. We stayed in Moss Landing at another RV park located beside a marina. Back to the coast in June apparently means back to the foggy, cloudy, cool weather with lows in the 50’s and highs in the mid 70’s. I finally learned how to dress for it. One of the primary reasons for coming to the area was to ride the motorcycles on the famous Pacific Coast Highway 1. We got lucky and the sun came out for a while. It truly is an amazing stretch of road. There was quite a bit of traffic, and they were going slower than we like through some of the curves, but still a great ride. We rode down through Big Sur, and there were tons of cars parked all along the road. We discovered a few days later that they were all people walking into the coastal parks. We stopped at several of the overlooks, but the pictures really don’t do it justice. It reminded us both of our drive along the Great Ocean Road in Australia.

We decided to go see what all those people were doing parked along the Highway, so we headed to Point Lobos State Natural Reserve for some hiking and site seeing. We parked on the side of the highway and walked in since the parking lots were full. Turns out this saved us $10 as walking in is free but parking isn’t. The park ranger at the entrance gave us a map and suggested a 6-mile loop that would take us past the dolphins and breaching whales that people had reported seeing earlier. We of course, saw neither but still really enjoyed the hike. Here again was another totally different landscape - fantastic heavily forested cliffs along the coast. One section of the reserve was Whalers Cove, an area that was historically used to melt blubber into oil. They had a cool little museum showing the tools of the trade as well as some whale skeletons, and some blubber pots. We saw several deer and we got to climb around in some tide pools. In other words some great photo ops. J It was a great mix of coast, forest, wildlife and easy hiking in perfect temps.

The marina we were camping at had a resident otter and we were lucky enough to spot him floating on his back in the water just behind our RV. We could hear seals barking most of the time and there was one swimming around near the trailer as well. We also discovered a famous seafood place called Phil’s Fish Market and Eatery. It was named one of the world’s five best beach restaurants in 2013 by the BBC. It was super crowded, an 'order at the counter’ dumpy sort of place, and while it was good, I certainly would not put it on any world’s best list (Dessa actually prefers Cracker Barrel Fried Shrimp to the ones we had at Phil’s). On our last day we went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the #1 thing to do. It was on the pricey side at $40 each, but we do love sea creatures and they had lots of cool ones. They had a good mix of things to do for adults and for kids and a particularly good display on Jellyfish. Glad we went. Afterwards we stopped at a Tuesday night street market for fresh produce, dinner and sweets. This is farm country and in spite of the drought the fruit and corn are excellent.

Since our live-aboard dive trip in Australia, Bill has had a little underwater camera envy over the setup that one of the other divers on the boat had (as well as his results). We have another dive trip to the Caymans planned in December so we have been talking about upgrading our dive camera. While doing his usual exhaustive research, Bill discovered that there was a dedicated underwater photography store in Monterey so of course we needed to head on over. We spent a couple of hours asking questions and discussing options. Bill then spent several more hours following up on the answers, looking at additional options and checking pricing. We headed back 2 days later to get final clarification and thankfully make a purchase decision. Bill now has more research and reading to do to figure out how to use all of this stuff so he (we) can produce lots of great underwater photos and videos … hopefully.

We were enjoying the Monterey area so much, we added a couple of extra days to our stay but we ended up cutting our extension short. My Mom suffered a small stroke so we headed back to Dallas. It’s a 1600+ mile drive and we did it in 4 days. (We probably could have done it a little faster given Dessa took her turn behind the wheel as we crossed New Mexico and again as we drove from Amarillo to Dallas but we got the fantastic news that Dessa’s Mom was recovering very well and would be moved into rehab so there was less pressure to rush home). The scenery on the way home has been cool. New Mexico’s Mesa’s are great, and we have seen tons of trains, some a mile long and double stacked. I thought that mode of transportation was pretty obsolete in the US, but apparently not.

We got home in time to see some July 4th fireworks with Alex, Ashlee and Hunter. They didn’t start the show until after 10:30pm so although Hunter seemed to like them he was tired and had a limited attention span. Mom has had an almost miraculous recovery and she was released from the hospital on Tuesday, only 1 week after her stroke. She is doing really well and is moving around better than when we left.

We will be staying in Dallas until late July but then heading north for Sturgis, SD and the 75th anniversary motorcycle rally. Its great to be home to see family but we can already feel the road calling to us :-)



Higher resolution photos are available on Flikr:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bill_and_ dessa/sets/