Central California Coast

We spent an uneventful month at Travis AFB with several comings and goings by us and the Schulers. They spent New Year's Eve with us - about the 30th that we have spent together. Now we are parked at Camp San Luis Obispo, about five miles north of the city itself. This is a small National Guard base, but it has a very adequate RV park with about one dozen spaces. We drove to the dining hall for dinner the first night we were here (we won't be "dining" there again), but it was so dark coming home, with no street lights, that we couldn't find our RV. Since there is pretty much nothing moving around here, especially on a Sunday night, it was just a matter of minutes before base security stopped to ask if they could help. Thank you!! We have visited San Luis Obispo which seems to be driven by the local campus of Cal Poly, and yesterday we drove south to check out Vandenberg AFB and Solvang. There was little happening in Solvang, and we walked a lot before we could find a place for lunch. We have made three treks north; driven primarily by the prospect of wine tasting, of which there is no shortage. So we now have some favorites from central California. We drove north on Highway One today to take a look at the sea lion colony that is located just north of Hearst Castle. It is a great viewing area with an elevated walkway right above the animals. One of the docents pointed out a calf that was just 45 minutes old. The adults, especially the males, are enormous and look extremely ungainly when moving around on the beach. Hearst Castle now belongs to the state, but the Hearst corporation has retained ownership and control of the surrounding ranchlands. Right along the highway are herds of cattle grazing............and zebras. Hearst accumulated quite a collection of exotic animals, but the zebras are the only ones that remain. Our plans are to leave here next Tuesday and drive to Edwards AFB, then on Thursday we will go on to the Quartzsite desert to meet up with Rod and Karen at the Desert Rat Rally. After the rally, Karen and I will drive to Ontario (CA) to meet up with Bev and a friend of Karen's for a quilt show while the guys go on their merry way. Ken and I will meet up in Casa Grande. As we have observed the comings and goings of our fellow RVers, we have taken to assigning these strangers nicknames that we use for reference. "Harvey" was parked next door, so named because he was as fussy and fastidious as someone we knew by that name. Trailer Man was parked here behind us for several days. We were told he is a veteran who spends his days at a local veterans' center, and sleeps in his "trailer". It is a well-made aluminum clad "trailer" about the size of a large chest freezer and just a bit taller. He had 3 ice chests stacked outside and the rest of his worldly possessions inside a small station wagon. I approached a couple parked nearby to ask if in fact they were from Airway Heights. They weren't, but they were from Deer Park and knew the one person I had known when I was a teenager - Mike Layton. In fact this man and Mike were classmates and are still friends. We did get acquainted with this couple and had them over for dessert one evening, but since their names didn't seem to stick with us, we referred to him or her as "Deer Park" and the other of us immediately knew who we were talking about. it is time for a walk in the sunshine. Ciao.