Places Visited: Monday, May 23 Golden Shore RV Resort-- Long Beach, California: $45.90 with GS discount FHU-50amp. Paved interior roads gravel sites. N33° 45.919' W118° 12.210' Upon returning to the motorhome yesterday we realized that we had left one of our cell phones at Donna's yesterday. Oh, what a headache this is going to be! Neither one of us is willing to hazard that drive back through LA to get that cell phone. We will just have Donna Fed X it to us when we get to an RV-Park where we will stay for a few days. What a bone head thing to do. Today portends to be a down day. Not totally down but we had no plans other than to sleep late. We did need a few things from Wal-Mart and that experience was a hoot. The Long Beach Wal-Mart is like none we have ever seen. It doesn't have a parking lot. There is public parking in a garage next door. They are exactly like every other Wal-Mart in the country in that they do not have enough cashiers manning the check out booths. Company policy must mandate at least 4 in line at each check out. I used the time to post two travelogues to the web site. It takes time to create HTML document and copy the written travelogue into it then add pictures, (pictures have to be edited, as in cut & cropped and the .jpg file added to the website) then edit the web pages that access that travelogue. It is nothing really hard but it takes time. Tomorrow we are heading north along the coast toward Morro Bay. Tuesday, May 24: Evergreen RV Park Oxnard, California: $35 FHU-30amp. Paved interior roads & sites. N34° 13.475' W119° 10.686' Joyce is as nervous as a long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs. To say she is not excited about our trip across LA in the motorhome would be an understatement. However, like a good trooper she assumed her duties as navigator and we headed out around 9:15 this morning. We were hoping that the morning rush would be over by that time and for all practical purposes it was. The first two miles of our journey was on I-710 the interstate spur that services the container ship docks. For those two miles we just mingled with the container trucks as they headed east then we exited onto CA-1 and headed north. That small stretch of I-710 was the only interstate we traveled on as we made our way through LA. Our first order of business once on CA-1 was to get diesel fuel at a Mini-truck stop that we located the other day. Not only could we get in and out of the place they had diesel fuel for $2.27 instead of $2.89 like most of the places we see. We got in and out of that place like clock work. By now Joyce was calming down. Things were no where near as bad as she had anticipated. We were on the Pacific Coast Highway heading north through LA on surface streets. Our route would take us through some communities with familiar names like Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, LA International Airport, Playa del Rey, Marina Del Rey, Venice, Santa Monica and Malibu all before we actually exited greater Los Angeles. After Joyce settled down she started taking pictures that will be on the web site and actually do a good job of "telling the story" of traversing LA on the Pacific Coast Highway.
This is Marina Del Rey. The big marinas are to the left behind those big buildings.
By the time we got to LAX, Los Angeles International Air Port Joyce had settled down and shot these two pics. Note the aircraft taxiing across CA-1 in the pic to the right.
It took a little time but the traffic really wasn't bad. One thing different about LA is the total lack of RV-traffic on surface streets and interstates. We don't know where they are but they aren't in LA. Joyce actually spotted two motorhomes on the Pacific Coast Highway during the 40-miles or so we were in the greater Los Angeles metro area.
These pics are taken by Joyce from the motorhome as we drove north on CA-1 in Malibu.
Still in Malibu.
It took us about an hour and a half to go 40-miles. Neither of us is complaining. Once we settled in (after getting the diesel fuel) we made a sightseeing excursion out of it.
North of Malibu CA-1 runs along the coast unobstructed for the most part by buildings. Parking was available for surfing beaches and we passed the beach near El Matador where major pieces of Bay Watch were filmed. The wide expanse of sandy beach was virtually empty this morning. Of course this is Tuesday morning not a weekend. The coastline changes dramatically as we head north. Long Beach, Venice and Santa Monica are all in the relatively flat alluvial plain created eons ago by the Los Angeles River. That all abruptly changes between Santa Monica and Malibu. Mountains appear along the coast in Malibu. Entertainment industry personalities have homes perched on the sides of these mountains with commanding views of the ocean. While Malibu is but a few short miles north of the gridlock of Santa Monica and Hollywood things change dramatically. Across CA-1 from the Pacific we see feed stores and equestrian facilities. North of Malibu the property must become government because there are no buildings. The drive is easy and pleasant as CA-1 snakes along the rugged coast with beautiful mountains rising to the east and rocky shoreline to the west accented by the pounding Pacific surf. Small sand beaches dot the area. Surfers congregate in areas known to produce good waves. We really enjoy this part of the drive. It is not long before we passed through the small Navy Community of Port Hueneme, (pronounced Waneme). That name brought back memories from my working days at CNET (Chief Naval Education and Training). As a headquarters command we were responsible for funding infrastructure needs for Training facilities at Port Hueneme. The comptroller there was a "pistol-ball" to work with if you get my drift, and I think you do.
Strawberry fields forever! As soon as we get to Port Hueneme we start seeing agriculture for the first time since leaving Los Angeles. By the time we neared Oxnard hundreds if not thousands of acres of strawberries and one giant tomato operation consisting of hundreds of acres were visible from CA-1. Huge fields of lettuce and collard greens and some type of legume were also in evidence. Oxnard is a beautiful town on the southern bank of the Santa Clara River that appears to be holding together this agricultural region. Oxnard like Ventura on the north side of the Santa Clara River are situated on a broad alluvial plain created long ago by the River. The intense farming in this area utilizes rich soil deposited in that alluvial plain. Crops that we see require abundant, cheap manpower. Strawberries require hand picking every day. We can see hundreds of workers in the fields performing this essential chore. That is how we get our relatively inexpensive produce; someone is actually in the fields performing the necessary back breaking work.
We pulled into an RV-Park in Oxnard where we set up for the night. Then we were off to see the area in our Saturn. Oxnard has a huge marina district called Channel Islands Harbor with hundreds of recreational boats moored to modern marina facilities surrounded by restaurants and condominium complexes. The entire area is truly beautiful and first class without being "opulent".
From the Channel Islands Harbor we headed north on Harbor Drive to Ventura and the Ventura Marina which is another spectacular marina with hundreds more recreational and commercial vessels. On the extreme NW side of Ventura Marina is the Channel Islands National Park Visitor Center where we stopped to see what they had to offer. We can't find time to make the boat ride to the Channel Islands but it is something both of us would like to do. They are not running the trips on a daily basis until this summer and we are not going to be here this weekend when they have a boat scheduled.
As we were leaving the Channel Islands NP Visitor Center we noticed two helicopters in the parking lot with a number of people standing around. Then we noticed "Fear Factor" on the side of one of the choppers. That piqued our interest so we stopped and asked one of the "security" people what was going on.
The net------------------------- He said they were filming. I said it didn't look like they were filming and he smiled and replied "well, not at the moment but in 30-minutes they will be heading out to pick two contestants off the back of a boat. The contestants will have to jump from the boat onto that net, pointing to a cargo type net laying in the parking lot----- it will be dangling below the helicopter. They will have to climb to the top of the net, retrieve a flag then jump in the cold Pacific". Now that information was better so I asked "where might I be able to see this?" Mr. Security pointed to the northwest somewhere out in the Pacific. I had obviously gotten all the information I could out of this guy. We needed to move up the coast and see if we can spot a crowd or somewhere that we might be able to get to the beach.
Moving up the beach put us in Ventura where we found San Buenaventura State Beach. From there we could scores of surfers and watched them for a bit before asking some local "surf-dudes" if they had noticed any helicopters flying around here today. They had seen some and pointed south. I asked them if there was a place where we could get near where those helicopters had been. They told us about a city park but could not give us directions. You know kids and directions. All we understood was you go down there until you get to the white house then take a right for several blocks then turn left you will see it before long.
Fortunately we did locate that city park and got there just in time for the "action" to start. Parking the car and grabbing the camera we headed toward the water. In order for us to get to a good spot to take pictures we had to pass the trailer where these scenes for this upcoming "Fear Factor" were being coordinated. Only a few yards away were the contestants waiting to attempt the feat.
We could see a large boat about one-half mile offshore with people standing on the back. Water was squirting in the air from what appeared to be fire hoses. Someone with Fear Factor was standing next to us and explained that people on the boat would try and knock the contestants off the net with blasts of water from those hoses while they were attempting to climb the net to retrieve the flags. As anyone familiar with the Pacific Ocean off California knows the water is COLD. I have on jeans and two shirts today and I am not hot. I can't imagine how cold it must be to be in swim trunks much less being blasted by that cold ocean water.
It happened very quickly. One helicopter arrived around the boat that would be taking video of the stunt as the other helicopter arrived with the big net dangling on cables beneath it. Without any playing around the helicopter with the net went directly to the boat and hovered overhead with the net dangling near the deck. The two contestants grabbed onto the bottom rungs of the net while the helicopter lifted them up a bit and clear of the boat.
The contestants started to climb that net while the people manning the fire hoses tried to knock them off. Within one minute both contestants had climbed to the top of the net, retrieved the flags and bailed out.
We heard the announcement that the contestants had successfully completed the "challenge". Then we overheard producers telling the camera crew what questions to ask the remaining contestants that were milling around in a small area to the south of us. The questions were both funny and dumb. If you have ever watched Fear Factor you will know what I mean. Wednesday, May 25: Cypress Bay RV Park Morro Bay, California: $31 FHU-30amp. Paved interior roads & sites. N35° 72.165' W120° 51.044' It is time to move on. We are heading to Morro Bay today. Morro Bay is about 150-miles north of Oxnard with several interesting towns locate in between where we intend to stop and look around. Santa Barbara is only 25 miles or so up the coast and it was the first place we wanted to stop but it didn't happen. We were on US-101 a highway that emulates an interstate in that it has limited access and is in terrible shape. We don't dare get off US-101 at just any exit and California doesn't give any info on what to expect in the way of services. We kept looking ------- but alas we were through Santa Barbara and never saw a place we could exit in our motorhome and have a chance at finding a place we would park the motorhome while we explored town in our Saturn. That was the first disappointment. We really wanted to spend time in Santa Barbara. Thirty miles north of Santa Barbara we are still on US-101 all the while thinking California had imported it from Louisiana. Did I mention that it is in terrible shape? Anyway, in Gaviota US-101 abruptly turns from the coast and heads inland through Gaviota Pass. The mountains have become real mountains along here. Tectonic forces deep within the earth have pushed sandstone strata almost vertical on the northern side of the Gaviota Pass. We stopped in one of California's rare rest stops (this amazing rest stop was fairly typical in that it held two 18-wheelers and my motorhome with tow car). What gives with California, don't they think truck drivers need a potty break? OK, enough of that we stopped to absorb the geography across the pass. As soon as I got a few pictures we jumped back in the motorhome and headed out to make room for an 18-wheeler. Within a mile or two of the coast we exited US-101 and took CA-1 across a steep unexpected mountain pass on our way to Lompoc. More than half the world's flower seeds are grown in the fields around Lompoc. For much of the summer thousands of acres of fields are in bloom. Once arriving in Lompoc we located a Home Depot where we dropped the motorhome and headed out to the flower fields in our Saturn.
Unfortunately, many of the flower fields were not in bloom. These are pics of some that were in bloom.
We did see some flower fields but enjoyed seeing many more acres of tomatoes, cauliflower, cabbage and artichokes.
We even spotted several groves of trees that we didn't recognize. These trees looked like they had been grafted late in life. Hopefully, someone will look at these pictures and help us identify these trees and possibly tell us what is going on with these funky looking trunks.
After connecting the Saturn to the motorhome we continued north on CA-1. The next place we intended to stop was Guadalupe a community known for produce stands. For some reason, there weren't any produce stands today. All along CA-1 from Las Cruces to Halcyon through Lompoc and Guadalupe are thousands of acres of produce fields. Unlike grain fields of the mid-west ------- produce fields rely on manpower. This manpower is evidenced in the fields. Pismo Beach appeared to be one large conglomerate of RV-Parks and campgrounds. They just went on and on and most looked pretty full. Then we breezed through San Luis Obispo past all the signs for the famous Madonna Hotel and into Morro Bay and our RV-Park.
We finished off the day with a drive around the harbor and Morro Rock where light fog blanketed the area in an eerie stillness.
This is a pic of the small town of Morro Bay taken from Morro Rock across Morro Bay.
Of course Joyce selected an appropriate seafood
restaurant on the harbor for us to finish off the evening. Mike & Joyce Hendrix
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