Short Road Trip

Home Search Pacific Beach Kings Canyon Carlsbad State Bch Backyard Flowers Ramona Overlook Las Vegas & Mojave San Elijo State Beach Memorial Day 2003 Laguna Mountain SD County Fair Scottish Games Martini Tailgate Iron Mountain Las Vegas The Move Williamsburg Jon & Elise Visit SD Short Road Trip Padre Game Renaissance Faire San Diego County Fair Filling Visit Hawaii Williamsburg Christmas 04 2004 Review

April 26 to 29, 2004. The poor van has been sitting in the driveway, neglected and lonely as we have flown to Virginia and otherwise spent our time cavorting around our new home town. We decided it was time for a short road trip so we packed up, gassed up (major expense these days if your rig holds 55 gallons and you live in SoCal) and headed north. drove through Orange County and LA and passed by Santa Barbara. There was a major heat wave Monday and Tuesday. The temperature in LA was 102 degrees a record high. Thankfully, where we camped Monday night, was right on the beach and very pleasant; perfect, I would say.

Here is our spot at Refugio State Beach. We recently bought a screen tent from REI and just had to set it up and try it out although there were no bugs at Refugio. It worked great, a perfect spot to set up the chairs, kick back and enjoy a cool drink.

Later we had a nice little fire and cooked some teriyaki chicken on the Barbie.

    

This is the beach. It goes for about a mile east-west and is very clean and nice. If you look closely at the photo on the right you can see one of the Channel Islands on the horizon.

On Tuesday we hit the road again. This is what it looked like. We went up along the coast through Lompoc and Vandenberg and ended up at Pismo Beach where we nabbed a spot at Pismo State Beach Campground which is just a short hike over the dunes to the beach. Pismo is one of the few beaches on which you can drive your own private vehicle and camp. We chose to camp in the campground to be out of the wind and sand. Big mistake. The campground was infested with more mosquitoes than I have ever seen in California. They were nasty and we sure were glad we had the screen room.

This is our mosquito infested camping spot.

   

Here we are on the beach. On the right is the pathway over the dunes back to the campground.

The next day we packed up and went to San Luis Obispo where we had a nice lunch and the SLO Brewing Company and explored town a little. Since we like Refugio State Beach so much, we headed back there for Wednesday night and drove home on Thursday. It was a short but sweet trip, except for the mosquitoes.