6/21/17 - Day 11 - Happy Summer Solstice!

We said goodbye to LA today.  And the traffic.  And the crowds.  We had a good run at Disneyland, and we are so happy it worked out to get there when we did.  Lilly is already planning her next trip back!  We headed out of the city, and back out to the coast on highway 101.  Chad and I both let out a small sigh of relief when we saw the Pacific Coast again. 

This is where we spent the evening of the summer solstice.  
This is Jalama Beach Campgrounds, north of Santa Barbara.  The Native American Chumash tribe used to inhabit here, and it is a serene and relaxing place - despite a full campground with over 80 campsites.  It was filled with surfers and families and interesting people from all over.  We met a father and his son taking a 6 week motorcycle ride all over the west coast.  The father has seven children (!), and lives off the grid 7 miles outside of Yuma, Arizona.  Henry is noticing all the different license plates on our trip and he spotted one all the way from New Jersey!
 
Fun fact - the campground is just south of Vandenberg Air Force Base, and sometimes the campground is closed for a rocket launch to send supplies to the international space station!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

6/27/17 - Day 17

Image
Good news - we noticed very few mosquitoes when we woke up, and no rain!  We built a campfire to keep the bugs away, and had a leisurely morning.    We headed out to our next destination around lunchtime and found a small bookstore/restaurant in Newport where they had delicious homemade bread and pasta.   Next stop was Devil's Punchbowl, which the kids thought was "boring," but Chad and I loved it!  And we seem to have found the sun!       Of course there was a stop in Rockaway for this:   And then a random Wizard of Oz mini golf game.    Henry is in Glenda the Good Witch's castle, and Lilly seems to be in Oz.  This wouldn't have been complete without a windmill-like bubble machine created from 9 previously broken smaller bubble machines (or so the owner/creator told us).  He numbered all the golf holes with Roman numerals to "give the kids a learning experience while they were on summer break."  He rode around on the...
Read more

6/29/17 - Day 19 - Home!

Image
On our last morning we all slept in until 9!  We woke up to comfortable temperatures and the sun  actually came out in Gray's Harbor! Here we are enjoying our last road trip cup of coffee.   We have been a really great team over the last few weeks!  We are ready to see our kitties, sleep in our own beds and not use public restrooms.     We packed up and left Grayland State Park by 10:30, and headed home.  
Read more

6/26/17 - Day 16

Image
The thing about the fog is that with it often comes this drizzly stuff that just gets everything wet. That's what we woke up to.  Not exactly spirit lifting.     Even with the drizzle I still managed to build a fire - kinda proud of myself!   After awhile it started to clear a bit and there was this!       And this!   The kids happily rode their bikes around all the loops in the campgrounds checking for license plates from all over the country.  So far in the last 16 days we have seen vehicles from 31 different states! Then, since we were traveling at a more leisurely pace, we had time to go to the nearby botanical gardens and stop and smell the roses.   The kids had a rousing game of hide-from-their-parents.  Can you spot the kid?   Caught the blue blur trying to get away.   Then I made them pose for a picture.     The gardens used to be property of the Simpson family (not Marge and Homer), and there was one rem...
Read more