The way to start your day at Pismo Beach.

We didn’t do much today. We went shopping for a coat for Carol – when you have spent the summer in Southern Arizona the Coos Bay weather will feel cold and she forgot the last one we bought. Trader Joe’s for a little dinner shopping. We did eat that cinnamon bun from Old West Cinnamon Rolls but at least we walked a three quarters of a mile each way to get it – and we split it. We’ll probably do it again too.

When we got back to the coach I cleaned up the battery connection to the starter. I don’t think I mentioned it earlier but, for the last couple of trips the old “hot starter” thing has been happening. I figured it was a bad connection but not too bad because it always went away with a second turn of the key. The last two times I shut the engine off getting here I didn’t think it would start again so whatever it is, it is getting worse. I didn’t crawl under the coach and work on the starter-end of the cable – that requires jacks, jack-stands, etc. and we are on dirt. If it keeps happening I’ll have to get more serious and the next few legs of the trip are pretty short so no big deal if it does fail.

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Vince and Jackie

We met Vince and Jackie at their new-to-them home on the hill near the Santa Barbara Mission. Had a fun breakfast catching up for a couple of hours before they had to leave to get to the Monterey Jazz Festival.

We headed back to pick up “Barbie”. Got the car all hooked up and ready to go and she wouldn’t start! Turned out one of the electrical connections to the distributor had some loose. It took a little while to figure that out – I thought it was a fuel system issue for a while – but finally got underway after about a half-hour or so. After that we had an uneventful trip to Pismo Beach.

After getting settled in we took a walk to the fisherman’s wharf and got some fresh sea air. When we were done with our walk we came back to the coach for an hour or so before having a late lunch or early dinner. We are not old but we have started eating earlier and earlier so something is up. Here are some photos from the day.

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It was a much shorter day today and a lot cooler. We left Palm Desert at about 8:45 and it was already 87 degrees but as soon as we drove about 20 miles west it started cooling off. By the time we got 50 miles away and closer to L.A. it was about 72 degrees and smoggy and foggy. I guess the colored air was mostly fog because it was whiter than the normal yellow air.

The coach ran great again and it was a lot happier with the low temperatures (I can tell by the temperature gauges). We are, as usual, using a lot of gas and, being California, it is $3.75 – $4.25 per gallon but who is counting?

We are actually in Goleta, CA which is about 20 miles north of Santa Barbara because RVs, particularly old RVs, are apparently not welcome in Santa Barbara. Carol found one RV park in Santa Barbara but anything older than 10 years is not welcome and the fees are a little high – $65 per night. We have been to Santa Barbara lots of times and really like it. This time we are visiting friends we originally met in Salinas – they recently bought a “weekend house” in SB. It is right near the old mission. I will try to get some photos when we go there for breakfast tomorrow morning.

We are spending the night at El Capitan State Beach in Goleta – not cheap either ($35/night) for a spot in the parking lot. Our camp site is a “dry” camping site on the bluff overlooking the ocean. There are no hookups of any kind but that is OK. We have new house batteries (I replaced the 7-year-old ones just before we left home) and all we need is our Verizon internet connection to stay entertained.

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I spent some time in the morning working on computer issues at our old business in Salinas, CA. Got that patched up for now (we will be there in a few days to say “Hi!” to the folks).

Our first stop was a visit to the Marriott Desert Springs Resort to have a Starbucks. We used to have a Marriott timeshare and, other than our home resort in Hawaii, this was our favorite.

With our pal Babe.

After that was done we had to do a little shopping but, fortunately, it was at Ross and being frugal is fun! It was early afternoon and we were really close to Babes Restaurant so, why not have a late lunch/early dinner? Babes is a favorite of ours and we can’t resist their ribs and baked sweet potatoes. We split a half-rack of ribs, some sweet potato fries, and a half of a baked one.

On the way “home” we stopped at Lowe’s and picked up some screws to repair a loose shelf in the refrigerator that I had forgotten about and the grocery store for some O’Douls and milk. Tomorrow, it is off to the Santa Barbara area – Goleta, actually – to visit some (young) old friends we have known for about 20 years.

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We left home this morning at about 10:00 a.m. It was already about 95 and long before we got to Gila Bend (pronounced hee-la for you furiners) it was 100.  Before we got to Yuma it was 110, we even saw 111 a couple of times. It stayed that way all the way to Palm Desert. The coach ran great! It stalled once getting off the highway but restarted easily and other than that not a bit of a problem.

We stopped twice for gas.  At the first stop in Gila Bend there was a lot of pressure in the gas tanks and it took a long couple of minutes to bleed it off. Yes, I know some people think that is a problem but I am not among them. If you want to know why take a look at another post on this site titled “My vapor lock problems are virtually gone.”  I attributed this to some “winter” gas left in the tanks. We filled up again in Yuma ( jew-ma in Spanish) and there again was pressure but lots lesss.

At the gas station in Yuma we fired up the Onan generator so we could run the roof air conditioners so we could have lunch. We left the Onan running along with one roof air unit the rest of the way to Palm Desert. It was much more comfortable.

We finally arrived at Emerald Desert RV Resort at about 5:30 p.m. and practically have the place to ourselves as you can tell from this video of the pool area. I shot this so you can see why we picked this place to stop.

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