California, Here We Come (08-14-21)

 

Having spent our last week in Texas helping Paul’s mom, we were ready to head to California. Before we left, we were treated to one hellacious storm, with winds apparently clocked at 60 mph- based on the damage we saw in the RV park-I can believe it.

Along the way we decided to make a short stop at home. We dropped off some stuff and fixed the irrigation system at the house.

Our original plans for California were thwarted by the lack of available RV spaces in southern California. We were going to start south and then head to northern CA, but ended up heading north first. We called our friends in Fresno and gave them the heads up that we would be arriving in a day or so. 

We haven't seen our CA friends in over 2 years, due to Covid, so it was awesome to be able to catch up on all the happenings. The week was full of group meals, including the night that Nancy and Bill came down from their farm to meet us all for dinner.

They brought with them boxes of fresh peaches and tomatoes. Wow. Peaches that taste like peaches, and tomatoes that taste like tomatoes. It’s one of the things I will miss about California- no where else in the country have I had fruits and vegetables that taste so good.

We were invited to a “zoom wine tasting” at Karen’s friend’s house. The winery shipped boxes that contain 5 small wine samples per person, and at 5 pm, the zoom meeting started, and the tasting began. We had technical difficulties with the TV we were using so our zoom ended up being a call on speaker phone. It was still fun.

As the night wore on, we made the switch to tequila, and more silliness ensued.

Once the weekend arrived, we headed up the mountain to Kirk and Karen’s cabin. We knew the 2020 Creek Fire came close to their cabin, and caused significant damage to the area, but it was awful to see the devastation and loss of property  first hand.

 

We heard that the fire moved so fast at times that the firefighters couldn’t save all the homes, so they made their decision based in part on who had maintained a “defensible space”. The structures that had all the debris and deadwood removed from around them, were prioritized. I guess it makes sense to do it that way, since not everything could be saved.

We had our usual fun time at the cabin, with the guys finding enough projects to keep them busy.

  And again, most of the fun seemed to revolve around food and drink. With the temperatures in the city reaching over 100 degrees, it was nice to be in the mountains and be able to eat outside.

After a little over a week, we said goodbye to everyone and headed southwest to Santa Barbara. We had discovered that our daughter had a week off, so she drove up to meet us and we spent a couple of days exploring.

Our day in Santa Barbara started at the wharf. 

From there we did a couple of wine tastings as we walked around town, and ended up back at the wharf, where we had dinner reservations. 

There were so many wine rooms it was hard to choose which ones to try, but we narrowed it down to two. It was a huge perk to us that we had Jess’s car, so we didn’t have to park the dually, and a huge perk for her that dad doesn't drink wine, and didn't mind being DD.

The following day we walked around Solvang, “the Danish capital of America”.  We had been here once before, but Jess never had been, so we made sure she tried Aebleskivers, a Danish dessert that is similar to doughnuts.

She seemed to enjoy them, just as she enjoyed meandering through all the stores.

Leaving Jess, we braved the L.A. traffic to make our way south towards Oceanside.  It was a bonus that because our visit was delayed, Paul’s brother was back in town, so we got to see them, as well as Paul’s niece and nephew. I didn’t manage to take a single picture!

This summer did not at all go as we had originally planned, and we had to be flexible and quick on our feet so to speak to keep up with the changes.

Now, instead of heading north, we needed to  head back to El Paso to handle some things for Paul’s mom.  Even that plan changed a bit.  We once again stopped at the house, this time so that Paul could replace the brakes on the trailer- doing it at the house was more comfortable than trying to do it in an RV park.

While we were in California, Paul's mom celebrated her 91st birthday.