Hitched and Rolling

We woke up at vinyl vineyards and did a sweep to ensure that everything was orderly (the campsite rule: leave it better than you found it) before getting back on the road.

We went into downtown Paso Robles where Bre and Grant grabbed some coffee and pastries and we walked around. Paso has some cool art galleries and it was fun to admire the various mediums of expression. I stayed in the car because I had a phone call to make and I missed their muffins.

We headed back to the coast to a little town called Cambria where we had an Indian-inspired lunch in a little garden restaurant. Today it was my turn to be a little cranky, having missed the snack, as I wanted to go to lunch instead of popping into what felt like every store. As is almost always the case – nothing a little lunch couldn’t fix.

I had some work to do in the van and Grant and Bre took a stroll on the coast and after a few minutes of problem solving I walked out to join them. The views were spectacular. After admiring the coast for some time we got back in the van and continued south.

We stopped at a beach for another sunset stroll and spoke with a nice couple on a park bench while the last of the daylight drained beautifully. After that we went to St Luis Obispo for dinner and we found accomodations in Avila Beach for the evening – Grant at the Avila Inn Hotel and Bre and I taking the van to Avila Hotsprings which had a simple RV park in the back.

In the morning Bre and I took a dip in the hot springs, an activity that was “included” with our night of camping. Very luxurious. The pool was very shallow and somewhat smelly but quite pleasantly warm.

We picked up Grant and played fetch on Avila beach. I accidentally sailed Duke’s soft orange ball into the parking lot above the beach. I searched but could not find it, but my wife put me to shame by finding it in less than 2 minutes.

We headed to Santa Barbara where we stopped at an awesome dog friendly brewery. Finally we pulled into Santa Monica. We dropped Grant with his friends and found a residential street that allowed overnight parking. A no nonsense post about a normal-amount-of-nonsense set of days.