Abbey's Road

ADDENDUM: I must make an addendum to this post as John pointed out to me that I was grossly mistaken in saying that we didn't go to the beach. John even went in the water, not on purpose, when Duke got excited over Abbey being in the water he tried to pull John in. In John's words, "...we DID go to the beach while you visited us in Manhattan Beach. We did so when we took the dogs and hiked the trails around Trump National Golf Course in Palos Verdes. We took Abbey and Duke (my yellow lab puppy) down to the beach, where they leaped, paddled, swam, and chased each other (and Abbey searched for edible sea life.)" I also forgot to mention Duke, their puppy. The poor guy was so excited to see Abbey but she wanted to have nothing to do with him. All he wanted to do was play like a normal 9 month old puppy.

I spent the previous weekend in Manhattan Beach with John Daegele, a friend from college, and his family. As is my bad habit, I forgot to get a family picture. Sorry, John. It was great to see them and spend more time with their kids. Like most families these days the kids were busy running around to sporting and other events most of the weekend. I got to see one of Nick’s soccer games and a hockey game, too. I actually have fun watching the games of my friends’ and families’ kids since I don’t have kids of my own. The weather was still a little cool, and the water definitely too cold, to go to the beach.

On Monday I took off up the coast and stopped first at Santa Barbara, a very nice and scenic city north of LA. We camped in the national forest about 10 miles out of town and in the morning drove further up the canyon. We had to cross the river, driving the RV through the water, 6 or 7 times to get to the end of the road. The water was pretty low and it was paved all the way across the river, luckily. I was tempted to get out and take a picture of the RV in the middle of the creek, but I didn’t really want to leave it sitting in the middle of the river. We hiked up along the river until it got too rocky and Abbey had a ball in the water as usual. It was so green and lush it didn’t seem like we were still in southern California. We camped at Morro Bay on Tuesday night and Abbey got to go to the beach for the first time since the Gulf Coast.
The waves were pretty tame so she even went in the ocean. As usual she found all kinds of interesting things to eat like dead fish and sand crabs.

She got to go to the beach again on Wednesday, at San Simeon, and I got to do some wine tasting at a few wineries in Paso Robles. Paso is not as well-known as Napa or Sonoma, but there are several good wineries there and it is a beautiful area. I spent too much money on wine so I decided to skip the Hearst Castle tour the next day, even though it came highly recommended. Moving on up the coast we stopped at a few more beaches plus we stopped at an elephant seal sanctuary.
There were hundreds of them mostly lying around the beach, but they were quite vocal and some were even sparring.
Abbey was dying to get a closer look, but they are supposed to be pretty mean so I didn't dare let her.

The next few days I reserved a campsite at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park in Big Sur. The drive along the California coast starting a little north of Santa Barbara up to Monterey is gorgeous with the highway right along the water most of the way, and Big Sur is probably the most popular, and most beautiful, spots along the way.
Besides having a rugged coastline, Big Sur also has huge redwood trees and the campground is in the middle of the redwood forest. The trees are so tall and thick that I had to use the lights inside the RV even in the middle of the day ‘cause it was so dark. My pictures were even too dark. On Friday, we hiked a couple miles down a road to Pfeiffer beach ‘cause they didn’t “recommend” driving RV’s down it. It was yet another beautiful spot, but unfortunately we got “sandblasted” on the beach because it was so windy. Even Abbey didn’t want to stick around. Being Memorial Day weekend it was getting really crowded so I left Big Sur and headed up to see the Kupecs again in San Jose. It seems like Memorial Day weekend at their house is becoming an annual thing for me.