Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Wayne was on spring break, and went in to campus to get work done on his projects even though he had no classes. He got to sleep in, and we stayed up late several nights. One night, I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday, we came up with a brilliant plan to go on a car trip [after we threw out ideas to fly somewhere, like Boston]. We went to maps.google.com and started scrolling along the CA coast -- south at first, since we've been north before. That's when we saw the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area near Pismo Beach. Excellent. We've always wanted to visit dunes. What else we would do and where to stay we left open-ended.

Thursday we left after I got off work, making it to the intended area much quicker than expected -- it only took about 3 hours to get there. However it took about an hour to decide where to spend the night. We tried a couple of state parks: one wasn't well enough labeled to find in the dark; the other was full to the brim with RVs -- this is a big turn off for us tent-dwellers [they need to start labeling campgrounds different on maps for RVs than for tents]. But on the way, we noticed a regional campground, so we turned around to find the camping area. It wasn't much cheaper; considering all we needed was a place to put up a tent and park our car, camping is pricier at most campgrounds than I would expect. But it's still cheaper than a hotel...and we get to wake up to the sound of birds chirping.... At the El Churro Regional campground we actually woke up first (around 4am) to a weird conversation on a loudspeaker system that was far enough away we couldn't understand it, but close enough to hear. Later we woke up (around 5am) to what sounded like men shouting back and forth. As it turns out, we were sandwiched between a "men's colony" (aka prison...the loudspeaker we heard) and a military camp (the shouting was drills). I still don't want to know what the loudspeaker conversation from the men's colony was all about. Ignorance is bliss. [ooh! and don't forget the mountain lion warning signs plastered everywhere! -wayne]

We packed up our belongings and headed into Pismo Beach to learn what we could about dune buggies/ATV rentals. Fortunately we lucked about a tourist information center, and got some convenient, if disjuncted maps of the area and directions to some of the rental places. We found one, asked questions about safety, and got ready to take a bus across the sand to where the ATVs were located. It was a blast riding the ATV. We got just one because I hate driving, but was interested in riding. Our lives flashed before our eyes only twice; the third time doesn't really count for me because we were at a complete stop on a very, very short hill when our ATV started to tip over. It was all in slow motion and we both had plenty of time to clear the vehicle. The other two times we were moving faster and just came across unexpected "features" of the terrain. But we only tipped the one time. Our conclusion was the short hills are more dangerous than the big ones. :) We did get charged for "rolling" the vehicle, even though we merely tipped it. We didn't feel like arguing that tipping at 0mph was hardly the same as rolling. We just won't recommend that particular rental company to anyone in the future due to poor customer service (it took them two hours from signing the paperwork to getting us on an ATV...most of the time was spent just standing around waiting). It was a blast chasing the clouds as they rolled in. We were faster than the clouds, but not as fast as the fog. The fog came in about halfway through our ride and changed the whole landscape; we suddenly couldn't see the ocean, and our depth perception was ruined. But it sure made the place look magical!

After our ride, we stumbled upon a nice park and we thought we'd have a picnic lunch of pb&j there. However, the geese were determined that their pond was a communistic society and that we must share our food amongst them. We didn't have enough for everyone (there were a lot of geese), so we had our lunch in our car parked beside the park. Hehehe. We outsmarted them in the end! [Ultimately, they ended up parking outside our parked car, hissing at us in an attempt to communicate their displeasure at being left out of our lunch.]

That afternoon we were exhausted from our adventures and thought we'd scope out our next campground and relax and perhaps take a short hike or something. We headed to the Los Padres National Forest nearby, and found the ranger station before he closed up. We learned that national parks are much cheaper to camp in, but the directions we got led us to a one-lane dirt road that meant crossing a small creek (ankle high) and traveling 6 miles over more bumps than the dunes gave us. We decided after a mile or so that our little car wasn't meant to endure such conditions, and tried the next camping area the ranger mentioned. It was a little better; at least there was no creek. But the road was just wretched, so we made our way to a state park by a lake and picked a campsite as far from the lake (and other people) as possible. Our neighbors instead were the deer! Deer, toads, and rabbits [and no mountain lions]. What fun. And apparently the deer weren't afraid of our car, just people. They ran away when we got out of the car, not when we drove past them. Tee hee. The state park wasn't as primitive camping as we were hoping for; we don't really need running water when we camp. But I guess running water + insurance of no car troubles getting to the campground is worth the difference of 17 dollars in price and company with RVs. :) Sometimes you just need a 4-wheel drive vehicle to go primitive camping.

Our next adventure led us a bit further south, to Santa Barbara. We found some lovely beaches along the way. The best kind are the ones that you just pull over on the highway to a gravel area and hike a bit to the beach. What fun. We then found a local couple to ask a restaurant recommendation from (pb&j sandwiches will only get you so far!). And we ended up in a tourist-y part of town! We normally would have avoided such areas in any given town, but we carried through with the recommendation to eat at Brophy's. We waited 45 minutes just to get a table at 2:00 in the afternoon. The food was alright, and the place was packed. Shouldn't a long wait have meant a superb ambiance, or excellent food, or cheap food, or something? Ah well. It was part of the adventure. [You just have to follow through when someone gives you recommendations they were so excited to give you.]

Our final quest on our way back home again was to find a good place to fly our kite. We succeeded in all our other quests, but alas, we were foiled left and right in this one. It was foggy, not windy. I didn't realize the two were mutually exclusive. We even followed one recommendation to a park 15 miles from a small town on a very windy road. We felt so alone on our drive to this particular park (Jalama State Park). It was a beautiful drive in the middle of nowhere. Imagine our surprise when we finally turned the corner at the end of the journey to see a ton of RVs and cars! Apparently we weren't lucking upon the locals hidden beach at all! The flags weren't even flying, so we decided to continue driving north. We'll have to fly our kite here in town somewhere. At least we had a beautiful drive.

We made it home last night. Star cat was very happy to see us. And general conference today was nice. Helpful topics for the talks we are supposed to give in Church next Sunday.