Hello again, welcome back to the story.
Our last chapter concluded on Thursday, June 12th, when
we left Silent Valley after a month in the trees and headed west to
the Fullerton, California Elks Lodge for a couple of days. We
arrived at the Lodge about 1:00 or so and managed to get the last
available RV site. They have nice sites here, full hookup 50 amp
with great views since the lodge is built on a hill. It is located
about five miles north of Disneyland and one of the nightly
highlights here is the 9:30 fireworks show from Disneyland.
After we got settled in we rested until
about 6:00 when we walked over to the lodge for a cocktail. They
were having a meeting tonight, so we knew we wouldn't be staying too
long, but we wanted to visit the lodge. While we were standing in
the lobby talking to some of the members of the lodge some old
friends of ours, Dick and Mary Moore, walked into the lodge. We have
know Dick and Mary since shortly after we started full time in 2005.
They have been members of this lodge for many years and our friend
Marianne Conner, who now lives in Banning, used to be a member of
Fullerton with her ex husband. Because of our travels with Marianne
we met several members of the Fullerton Lodge, including Dick and
Mary. Dick is a past Exalted Ruler and is still a member of the
Lodge's executive committee. We have not seen Dick and Mary for
about four years.
We had a great time catching up with
the Moore's. We had cocktails and then sat down for dinner. This is
a very active lodge and they have lunch everyday and dinners several
nights a week. I had some broiled fish that was wonderful while
Jackie had a chicken pasta dish. When the lodge meeting started
around 8:30 we left and went back to our coach for rest of the night.
Friday, June 13th, yikes,
Friday the Thirteenth AND a full moon! We left the coach about 10:30
or so and headed out for a day of sightseeing. Before we left the
park we talked to another couple that was parked in the Lodge. They
had a Monaco coach and a Monaco International placard, so we went
over and said hi when we saw them outside. Turns out that they are
coming to the MI rally in Coos Bay Oregon next month, as are we.
Jackie talked to them about our Full Timers Chapter rally, which is
just before the Monaco rally and they said they would like to come.
They filled out an application and gave us a check on the spot. Yea,
another coach for our rally.
Our sightseeing today was primarily
Jackie nostalgia. We first drove to south-central Los Angeles to see
where Jackie graduated high school, Susan Miller Dorsey High School.
I have heard many stories about Dorsey High when Jackie and our
friend Barry Cohen get together. Barry also went to Dorsey, although
they didn't know each other at the time. For an old high school it
actually looked pretty good. Well taken care of and nice looking,
but really big. Now this is a primarily black area, but when Jackie
and Barry went here the area was racially diverse with only about
half the school black. We spent about an hour driving around the
area, mostly the Baldwin Hills area, checking out places Jackie lived
as a kid and some of her hangouts. One of those was a place called
the “Wich Stand” drive in. It is now a food store, but she said
except for the color of the building it looks much the same as it did
back in the fifties. This is another place I hear all kinds of
stories about. We also went by the very nice house that Jackie lived
in with her parents just before they moved to Las Vegas so Jackie's
dad could open up a casino.
We took a lot of pictures and then
headed south towards the city of Gardena, where Jackie spent much of
her young adult years. We found the building that used to house
Little Caesar’s Bar and Restaurant, which was owned by Jackie's dad
back in the sixties. The building is now boarded up and vacant, but
Jackie recognized it instantly. She actually worked there as a
waitress for a time. She also pointed out several other places in
the area where she lived and hung out, including the church where she
had her first wedding. We also went by the condo where she lived
when we first met and where she lived until she moved to the
Coachella Valley in the early 80's.
We stopped for lunch at a fast food
place and then drove the Torrance Elks Lodge. When we were first
talking about coming to the Los Angeles area for a couple of days of
sightseeing we talked about staying at the Torrance Lodge because it
was closer to the areas we wanted to tour. The Elks book said they
had RV parking, but when I looked at it on Google Earth I was not
impressed. It didn't appear to have very good facilities and was not
in a good area. That's when we decided to try the Fullerton Lodge.
After looking at what the Torrance lodge actually had, I'm really
glad we changed. The RV facilities are even worse in person. We did
go into the Lodge for a cocktail and to pick up a lodge pin. There
were only a couple of people in there. One guy was pretty friendly,
but the bartender didn't seem to have much time for us. We had to
struggle to get her to look for a lodge pin for us.
After visiting that Elks we started
back towards Fullerton. Since it was rush hour on a Friday afternoon
it took us an hour to get the 20 miles from Torrance to Fullerton.
Around 6:00 we went back over to the Elks lodge for cocktails and
dinner. Tonight was their Friday night dinner, and they had lamb on
the menu, so Jackie definitely wanted to go. We had dinner with Dick
and Mary Moore, as well as Mike and Dona Spratt. Mike is one of the
officers of the lodge. They were a very nice couple and we had a
nice dinner. I had a grilled seafood special that was very good.
Jackie said the lamb was only fair and tasted frozen not fresh. She
still liked it but would have liked a fresher taste. They had a very
nice turn out for dinner and had a band for dancing. We finally left
around 8:30 and went back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Saturday, June 14th, we left
the coach after lunch to do some geocaching in the area and explore
Fullerton a little bit. We were able to get six new cache finds,
along with two DNFs, before we decided to stop and check out a few of
the downtown Fullerton stores. We spent a while shopping before
driving to nearby Anaheim to do a Walmart run. After the Walmart we
headed back to the coach where we spent the rest of the evening with
the TV.
Sunday, June 15th, Happy
Father's Day to all the dad's out there. My bio father left when I
was eleven and I never saw or heard from him again. I was raised by
a step-dad who really didn't take to my brother Dennis and I until we
became adults. Up to that point we didn't much care for him, but we
changed our views as we grew older and he came to love us. He passed
twelve years ago and I miss him. Happy Father's Day Russ.
Today was a travel day for us. We were
packed up, hooked up and ready to travel around 10:00. We left the
Fullerton Elks and headed west through the Los Angeles basin, headed
to Santa Barbara and the Elks Lodge there. The trip was about 140
miles and for most of the trip traffic was moderate. We had a couple
of stop and go spots, but overall the trip was fairly easy. This is
why I always plan trips across the LA area on Sundays. We got to
Santa Barbara around 1:00 and got set up. We will be here for three
nights before moving on farther up the coast. Once we got set up we
just relaxed the rest of the day and evening.
Monday, June 16th, Happy
Birthday to my eldest, Tye Lynn. We left the coach about 11:30 or so
and drove into Santa Barbara for lunch. Jackie wanted to try a taco
stand that she had seen written up in an article in Sunset Magazine.
The place is called La Super Rica Taqueria and is in a really old
walk up window type restaurant at the edge of downtown Santa Barbara.
The place was rated four stars on Yelp and very highly hyped in
Sunset, however, we found it to be average for a taqueria. We both
had the chili relleno special which I thought was very tasty. Jackie
thought it could have been hotter, both in temperature and spices.
It was in a cream sauce which was very good, but there was no other
garnish. The carne tacos were OK, but nothing really special. Lots
of meat, but the garnish station only had a couple varieties of pico
de gaillo, no lettuce, onions or extra stuff. I would probably go
back for a couple of tacos, but it didn't live up to the extreme
hype. 
Tuesday we left the coach after lunch
for some more geocaching and sightseeing. We took a back road north
up into the mountains. There were some great views of the ocean from
up there, as well as some spectacular homes. There were a number of
caches along the road and in a few hours we had captured a dozen new
finds, along with one more DNF. We then drove around Santa Barbara
for a while and then drove through the campus of the University of
California Santa Barbara. This is a very big campus, with over
23,000 students, although there were very few people around now in
the summer. We then drove back to the coach where we stayed in the
rest of the night.
Wednesday, June 18th,
another travel day. We were packed up and ready to leave Santa
Barbara about 10:30 and we set out west and north to Santa Maria,
about 70 miles up the coast. We arrived at the Santa Maria Elks
Lodge right around noon and got quickly settled into their RV lot.
We had reservations, so we were not worried about being able to get a
spot. By 2:00 or so we were completely setup and ready for our two
week stay here in Santa Maria. Jackie has an aunt and a cousin that
live here in the Central Coast area, so we try to get here for a week
or two whenever we can. Since this was a travel day we decided to
not go anywhere else today, so we just stayed in and relaxed the rest
of the day.
Thursday we left the coach after lunch
and went out to do our laundry. By about 3:00 we were finished
washing and headed back to the coach, stopping at a KFC to pick up a
big bucket of chicken and fixings. After we unloaded the clothes we
left to drive to Pismo Beach to visit Jackie's Aunt Donna and her
family. Donna lives in a big house on the hill overlooking Pismo
Beach, along with her grandson Corey who takes care of her. Donna is
the reason we come to Pismo Beach as often as we can. She is nearly
89, although still pretty sharp and up and around, she is getting on
and she has always been Jackie's favorite aunt.
We got to Donna's around 4:30 and
relaxed with the family, talking and enjoying the view. Jackie's
cousin Judy, who also goes by Pia, came over with her boyfriend
Korby, and we spent the next several hours catching up. We had the
KFC for dinner and around 8:30 we finally decided we needed to head
for home. We will be spending more time with the family during our
two weeks here. We were back home by 9:00 and watched a little TV
until bedtime.
Friday, June 20th, we left
the coach after lunch to take care of some errands. We first stopped
at a full service car wash and got the car cleaned up for the first
time in a month or so. It's white! After that we stopped and let
Jackie get a haircut. We also picked up two geocaches that happened
to be along the route we were traveling through Santa Maria. After
Jackie's haircut we did a Walmart run. We thought we might get
together with Donna again tonight, but she and Corey had also been
running around all day and she was tired, so we just went back to the
coach.
Around 6:00 we walked over to the Santa
Maria Elks Lodge for dinner. Friday is their CYO (cook your own)
dinner night. You buy a ticket and get a piece of steak, chicken,
fish or ribs, then go out back to a huge wood-fired BBQ and cook your
dinner. After you get your meat cooked you go back inside and go
through the line for salads, potato and other stuff. We both had
steaks that were very tasty. There were probably close to three or
four hundred people in the dining room by the time we left a little
after seven. This is a very popular dinner night for the Elks.
After dinner we went back to the coach and watched TV until bedtime.
Saturday, June 21st, welcome
to the first day of summer! We left the coach after lunch to do some
geocaching. I had originally thought that I might want to go to the
big car show in Pismo Beach this weekend, however, after talking to
Corey and reading a little about it I decided that there would be way
to many people and way too much walking. Pismo Beach is a tight
little town with very little parking. What space is available would
be taken up by the expected 1,000 cars on show. Donna's house is
about a mile away from downtown, and on a big hill, so walking from
there was not an option either. I finally decided I would just wait
until next weekend when there is a car show at the Santa Maria Elks.
I can just walk out my door to that one.
We did a couple of caches in Santa
Maria and then moved north up to the Arroyo Grande area. We ended up
getting a dozen new finds for the afternoon, with no new DNFs. After
caching we drove up to Donna's house for cocktails. We weren't going
to stay for dinner, but we did have cocktails and talked for a couple
of hours. A little before seven we left there and headed back to
Santa Maria. It was a little late to go home and fix something, so
we stopped at a restaurant in Santa Maria called The Pantry. It was
a nice little home cooking type place with really good food. Jackie
had a crispy chicken salad that she said was excellent and I had a
grilled Santa Fe, roast beef and green chili and cheese on grilled
sourdough. It was very good. Portions were big and the food tasted
great. The servers were very nice and friendly, but a tiny bit
inattentive, only coming around once in a great while to check and
see if you needed anything. Nonetheless, we would go back. After
dinner we went back to the coach for the rest of the night.
Sunday was a relaxation day. We had
the Sunday paper with our coffee in the morning and after lunch I
retired to the Man Cave to watch the NASCAR race and play on the
computer. We had dinner and watched TV the rest of the night. A
very nice, relaxing day in the Central Coast.
Monday, June 23rd, Jackie
left the coach in the morning to pick up her aunt for lunch and
pedicures. She and Donna met Pia at a local restaurant and they had
lunch before going to the salon. I stayed home and did some chores,
one of which was replacing the seal in the toilet. This required me
to crawl around in our three by three bathroom disassembling the
toilet, putting in the seal and then reassembling. I was stiff, sore
and soaked with sweat when I got done, but the toilet is fixed. Yea!
It wasn't leaking on the floor, it just wouldn't hold water between
flushes. Now it works right again. I got nine years out of the last
seal, so I hope I won't have to do it again any time soon. Jackie
got home about 3:30 and we just stayed in and relaxed the rest of the
day.
Tuesday we left the coach about 2:30 or
so and drove to Arroyo Grande to go the movies. Corey dropped Donna
off and the three of us went in to see Jersey Boys. This was the
movie about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, based on the Broadway
Musical. It was a very entertaining film, especially the music which
was from the era that Jackie and I grew up in. The acting was OK,
not Oscar material, but good enough to get the story across. I
didn't realize that the Four Seasons were as tied to the mob as it
depicted, but being as that they were from New Jersey I shouldn't
have been surprised. I thought it was a good movie and if you like
the music of that time, go see it.
After the movie we drove back to
Donna's place and had a cocktail. We left there a little before
8:00, so we stopped and picked up some In and Out for dinner before
going back to the coach. We had our burgers and then watched TV
until time for bed.
Wednesday, June 25th, we
went out after lunch to do some geocaching in the Santa Maria area.
In about three hours we had managed to get a dozen new finds, along
with one new DNF. Several of the caches were in a large park in the
southern part of Santa Maria, a public park we had not seen before.
It had a lot of green space, a pond, a very nice dog park, and a
frisbee golf course. We also got a couple of caches in the little
oil town of Orcutt, which is on the southern border of Santa Maria.
The area is actually unincorporated and started out as a railroad
siding at the turn of the century that became a place where oil field
workers settled and built homes.
After caching we went back home to
clean up and then drove north to the town of Nipomo for dinner at
Jocko's, our favorite steak house in the USA. We always have at
least one dinner at Jocko's when we are in the Central Coast area.
Donna and Corey met us there and we had a very nice dinner after a
couple of cocktails in the bar. As usual, I had the Spencer steak,
which is actually a rib eye, and Jackie had the lamb. Also as
always, the meat was cooked perfectly and the flavors were wonderful.
We finally got home around 8:30 and settled in front of the TV for
the rest of the night.
Thursday, June 26th, we went
through our mail, which we had picked up from Corey yesterday, and
found the last couple of registrations for our upcoming Full Timers
Rally in Oregon next month. The deadline was Friday and we needed to
get the final count and registration info to the RV resort in Oregon
by tomorrow. Jackie called the resort and they told us that Monday
was fine, so we put everything together and took it to the post
office after lunch and mailed it to Oregon. We will have 20 rigs at
our rally, which is a pretty good number for a Chapter rally. We
also went to Walmart for a shopping run.
After shopping we went home, put away
the groceries and chilled for a while in the coach. About 3:30 or so
we got on the road again and drove up to Donna's house to pick up
Corey for a trip to San Luis Obispo for the Thursday night street
fair and farmer's market. Donna didn't want to go, too much walking
and too big a crowd for her. The three of us drove to SLO, as it's
known in the area, which is about 12 miles north of Pismo Beach on
Highway 101. We found parking and went down into the downtown area
where the market is held. We were there early, so we walked around
the area, checking in shops and just killing time.
We stopped at a cute little sports bar
called the Creeky Tiki for a cocktail before the market kicked off.
I even bought the tee shirt because I liked their logo. We then
spent a couple of hours walking the market. We bought a few things,
some strawberries, chips, a couple of shirts. Nothing big, but we
had a good time. We then decided to go back to the same bar to get
some food before we headed back home. Big mistake. The beer and
drinks were fine, the food was awful. Tasteless, dry hamburger,
wings that looked a week old, not very good stuff. The service was
bad too. Only one waitress for a big place on the busiest night of
the week. After “eating” we headed back south, dropped Corey off
at home and then went back to the coach for the night.
Friday we left the coach just before
lunch and drove to the nearby Costco for some shopping. Our intent
was to have lunch there at the snack counter and then do our
shopping. When we arrived we saw two fire engines parked in front of
the place with barricades up all around the parking lot. The front
doors were open, but no one was going in or out. We didn't see any
smoke and no one seemed to be moving around very fast, so we figured
it wasn't a big fire, but Costco was clearly closed for the time
being. As we were leaving we could see all the employees sitting out
in the side parking lot.
We left there and drove to what was
supposed to be our second destination of the day, the Pismo Beach
Outlet Mall. Since we missed lunch at Costco we stopped at Denny's
near the mall and had some lunch. We then spent a couple of hours at
the outlets. We bought a few things, some shirts, shoes, underwear,
but nothing major. Lots of good sales going on. We finished there
around 3:00 so Jackie called Costco and learned that they were now
open, so we headed back down there and did our shopping. We were
stocking up the freezer, a task we do every three or four months, so
we ended up spending a couple hundred dollars. But, we got lots of
food now. After the Costco run we headed home and put everything
away and then relaxed the rest of the night in the coach.
Saturday, June 28th, I was awakened at
6:30 by the sound of glass pack mufflers and rumbling engines. Today
was the Santa Maria Elks annual car show and the display area was the
lawn right behind where our coach is parked. The show started around
10:00 and I went out and walked around for a while checking out the
cars. It was not a huge show, maybe a hundred cars, but they had
some very nice examples of most of the types, from restored stock to
street rod. About 2:00 Corey and Donna came over to visit and have
dinner. Cory and I went out and looked at cars for a while while
Jackie and Donna talked in the coach.
Pia came over around 4:00 and we had
cocktails and chatted. Jackie served dinner about 6:00. She made
her chili relleno casserole with rice and beans and we had some
Costco tamales, which are really good. Corey had brought some
guacamole he made, as well as a tub of his very tasty homemade salsa.
We had a great dinner. Everyone left about 7:30 and we relaxed the
rest of the evening after a great afternoon with family.
Sunday was a stay at home day for the
most part. The morning was coffee with the Sunday paper. After
lunch we made a quick trip to Staples office supply to pick up a new
printer. We have been shopping for a new printer, one that is
wireless so we can print from any of our computers, and Staples had
the one we wanted at the lowest price. After we got home it took an
hour to get everything setup and working, but now we have a nice
printer.
About 4:30 we drove up to Grover Beach,
about 15 miles north, to meet Corey, Donna, Pia and Pia's boyfriend
Korby, for dinner at a steakhouse called AJ Spurs. Today is Donna's
89th birthday and Corey picked this place for a celebration dinner.
We were all excited about the birthday, but the restaurant was a
disappointment. The food was actually quite good for the most part.
I had the grilled scallops and they were tasty, large and they gave
you a huge portion. Jackie had the calamari steaks which she said
were very tasty, if a little on the tough side, as if they hadn't
been pounded quite enough. Donna's Cowboy Salad was huge and looked
really good. However, for the good tastes of the entree's you pay a
big price, financially and in service. The prices were way too high
in my estimation, and the service was appalling. Our server paid
little attention to the needs of the table and had to be asked to do
any of the normal duties, bring water, clear plates, refills, and
other issues.
My other big beef was with their dining
"format". You can choose an entree, but everything else
you get is dictated by the restaurant. As soon as we sat down they
plopped a big bowl of their vegetable beef soup (they call it chili)
down on the table. Our server didn't even ask if we wanted
cocktails, just dropped the soup. Now the soup was very good, but by
the time we got through the drink orders and had time to settle in,
it was lukewarm. It would be better if they asked you if they could
bring you to the soup. You also have no choice in sides. You get
rice, whether you want it or not, and you get a big skillet of "AJ
Spuds," fried potatoes that tasted mediocre and looked awful.
The included root beer float at the end of the meal was a hit.
All in all, I don't like a place that
dictates what I want to eat with my meal and when I want to eat it.
The tastes don't justify the cost and the poor service. We won't be
going back. We did have a great time with family and enjoyed being
together to celebrate Donna's birthday. We finished dinner around
7:00 and everyone went off to home. We spent the rest of the evening
with the TV.
Monday, June 30th, the last
day of the first half of 2014. We had a day on our own, trying to
finish up the things that we wanted to do while we were in the
Central Coast area. About noon we left the coach and drove to Pismo
Beach so we could have lunch at Splash, a cafe just down from the
Pismo Pier. Splash has THE BEST clam chowder anywhere. Our last
trip here we missed coming down for chowder, so we didn't want to
miss it again. I had a bowl of chowder and a grilled Ahi sandwich,
both of which were excellent. Jackie had a bowl of chowder and some
of their sourdough bread. After lunch we walked around downtown
Pismo for a little while.
After Pismo we drove south a little
ways and parked in old Arroyo Grande to walk around some of the shops
there. We hit a couple of antique stores and some other shops,
spending about an hour and a half or so. We then drove out to the
east to see Lopez Lake. Lopez is one of the local resevoirs and we
had never been out there before. It was a very pretty drive, but we
were shocked to see how far the lake was down. They had a sign that
said the lake was down 58 percent from normal. This drought is
really hitting hard. We drove back into town, stopping at another
antique store on the way, and then we headed back to the coach. We
spent the rest of the night with the TV relaxing.
Tuesday, July 1st, Happy
Canada Day to our Canadian friends, eh? We left the coach after
lunch and went out to do our laundry. We wanted to get it done
before we left here because our next few stops are shorter and we
don't want to have to laundry during these visits. After the laundry
was done we went back to the coach for a while. Around 4:30 we left
again and drove up to Donna's house. Corey had invited us to a
“farewell” dinner and Jackie wanted to see her aunt one more time
before we left. We had some cocktails and then Corey served a very
nice dinner with some grilled tri-tip and some sauteed halibut.
Corey is an excellent cook and the food was delicious. Way better
than we had the other night at the so called top notch restaurant.
We left Donna's around 8:00 and headed back to the coach to relax
with the TV the rest of the night.
Wednesday, July 2nd, another
travel day. We were packed up and on the road just before 10:30,
headed north and inland to Fresno, about 175 miles away. We are
headed to Fresno because another of Jackie's cousins, Stephanie,
lives there with her husband Ron and their three kids. We arrived at
the Fresno Elks lodge about 2:30 and got quickly parked and setup.
It was a bit of a shock because the warmest day we had in Santa Maria
was 74 and it was 105 when we arrived in Fresno. Yikes.
We didn't go anywhere after we got
setup, just sat in the coach trying to get cool. Because I had
worked up a sweat getting setup it seemed like it never got cool
until after the sun went down. It is supposed to be this way for the
whole five days we are to be here. I know that we should be used to
hot weather, coming from the desert, but we have been away from it
for the most part for nine years, so it kind of gets to us now.
Our arrival here in Fresno marks a good
point to close this chapter and get it published. We will be here
for five days before moving on to Lodi and then the Sacramento area.
Until the next time, enjoy every day of your life. As they say,
dance like there's no one watching. See ya.
