Further in up the Road

With Chet's ordeal behind us, we headed back to Los Osos for round two of van work at Go Westy. On Monday they replaced the canvas in the pop-top and replaced the sky light. (Is it a sky light in a vehicle, or would that be a sun roof? It seems like a sky light to me.) The boys at Go Westy let us use one of their loaner vehicles while ours was being worked on: a 7 passenger vanagon named the Average White Van.

Chet really needed a bath after being in the vet cage for 2 days. If we could have found a hose we'd have done it ourselves, but being the vagabonds that we are we opted for a PetsMart. We let them know we just wanted to suds her up and didn't even need to have her dried. She's a water dog, remember, and she dries pretty quickly.

When we picked her up they had dried her after all and she looked like she had a bad perm from the 70's. Remember those? Super-frizzy. Think Chia Pet. She seemed embarassed. This picture doesn't capture the full effect, but maybe you get the idea.

Then we headed back up the coast to the elephant seal beach we had stopped at on our way to the fateful camping spot. These seals were great fun to watch. The males arrive in November and establish dominance. They belly-butt and make loud growling noises. The females arrive shortly after the males and they mostly lounge in the sun using their flippers to occasionally flick sand on their backs to help keep them cool.

Eventually the females give birth, they mate again (the males can have harems of 30-40 females) and then they head out to sea. They travel all the way to Alaska for the summer and return again in November. Way cool and hours of entertainment.

Though we liked the Los Osos area, we were ready to leave when the van was finished. We were starting to feel like locals as we began to recognize people around town. On Wednesday we headed south and stayed just south of Santa Barbara in Carpenteria.

We stayed in a state campground right on the ocean that had been recommended to us by some fellow travellers. We still don't know what they found so special about the place. The beach was nice, but, well, we just didn't feel the love for the town nor the campground.

Thursday we made the mad drive south through LA. Mike did a great job negotiating the traffic and we arrived at our destination by about 3:30. Again, we stayed at a state campground this time in Encinitas called San Elijo. Encinitas was a hip town, though bigger than I like. Great shops, great restaurants.

The campground was right on the ocean and full of surfers setting up for the long holiday week. 

Both Carpenteria and Encinitas were Urban Camping experiences. Backed by the freeway and with commuter trains passing just beyond the campgrounds, it was like nothing we've ever experienced and clearly a different vibe than the desert of Utah or even the woodsy campground in Los Osos. Other than surfing, we don't know why you'd stay there. Oh, except when heading south as we are.

No, I didn't surf as we were still checking things off of our to-do list and I think Mike would have left me there if I said I was going surfing.

Yesterday, we headed south again and stayed in La Mesa, about a half hour north of the Tecate border crossing with plans to cross into Baja today. Finally!

Thanks to all for the kind words about Chet's illness and recovery. She's doing great and is back to her usual playful self. Though we'll never know exactally what happened, we are keeping the ocean swims to short bouts and making sure she drinks lots of water afterwards.

Happy Thanksgiving to all,

Trish