California 3

Half way through May and we are still here at SKP Park Sierra up near Yosemite National Park. We’ve been here since May 5^th and will stay until the end of next week. I haven’t written about our stay at Pismo Beach. Readers need to know about that beautiful place for sure. Holiday RV Park where we stayed at was not so beautiful. It is just a big parking lot with campers lined up with just enough room to walk around and hook up to water and electricity. But across the road and behind the other RV park is the Pacific Ocean in all it’s splendor. We spent many hours walking and exploring around there listening to the waves crash, watching surfers, feeling the wind and spray, and even standing back and out of the way witnessing a wedding on the beach. I will post pictures.

I’ve been reading a book by John Muir, My First Summer In The Sierra. All he had was a gift for describing in words what he saw and felt, along with a sketch pad. If he would have had a smart phone would he have just posted pictures instead of vividly describing what he saw and experienced and deprived us of sharing his experience so vividly? I will post pictures

Our first day there, after we set up the camper, we drove south down the 1 and discovered the Oceano Dunes Natural Preserve.  As we drove down the road leading to the ocean we had no idea what we would see. The road narrowed and in places the sand was drifting across the road. We came upon a front loader clearing sand off the road. There were huge hills of sand and we finally came in view of a parking lot and then saw the ocean. There were warnings about the dangerous surf. The wind was blowing up off the ocean and the waves were crashing onto the beach. There were a couple of people standing in the shallow water throwing out fishing lines. Other than that we were the only ones there. We talked to a park ranger for a while and learned that it is a very popular fishing spot and on weekends there are many people from the big cities that come to fish. We spent some time just walking over the sand dune down to the ocean and then along the beach. Don was particularly interested in the sand mining operation which has existed for a 100 years and they never run out of sand. I will post pictures.

The following days we checked out the beaches nearer to where we were staying. These were safer beaches for swimming and surfing and were much busier. We enjoyed long walks in Pismo Beach and then to the north around Avila Beach San Luis Obispo Bay. We drove through a development of very lavish homes and came to a parking area near a trail head. We walked about a half a mile over a hill and came to a parking lot overlooking a beach and some caves at the bottom of a steep hill. We went partway down to a a natural arch overlooking the ocean. There we talked to some folks who told us about another beach a little farther north and that is where we went for an ice cream cone and were able to observe the wedding. While we watched the wedding preparations from a discreet distance, we talked to some folks from Scotland who had exchanged their home with a local family for the week. After that they were going up to Oregon for another exchange. Many ways to enjoy traveling.

Ken and Lori will be joining us here next Monday so we will stay for another week. Since we have been here for a while, we’ve had some time to explore. We’ve seen big trees and snow in the mountains, hiked a steep trail to the top of a mountain for some amazing views of Yosemite Valley. I’ve been trying to learn the names of some of the trees and have met some different birds. We have met the Western Scrub Jay and Acorn Woodpecker here in the RV park. I think I can identify the Silver Fir, Sugar Pine and The Giant Sequoia. Later, I will post pictures.