SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

SOLVANG - Feb. 5 & 6
After "roughing" it at San Simeon State Park, we started heading south and pulled into an RV park that had full hook-ups as well as a laundromat.  The park was 4 miles from Solvang, that cute little tourist town in the St. Inez mountain area, where all the buildings have Scandinavian style architecture.  The constant and welcomed rain kept us from strolling around the town and browsing in the shops, but we did find a bakery with a parking spot right out front.  A cup a coffee and a couple of delicious pastries later, we headed back to the park.

VENTURING TO VENTURA
Thursday we drove down to Ventura, while Sandy and Bryan Brown drove up from Beverly Hills to meet us for lunch.  It was wonderful seeing those two; catching up with Sandy and what she's been up to since leaving her position as President of Transamerica Financial Advisors, and hearing Bryan recount his recent 2,400 mile solo kayak trip down the entire length of the Colorado River.  He's writing a book about the adventure and we're looking forward to reading it as soon as it's published.

DANA POINT - Feb. 7 - 11
Driving the RV while towing the Jeep through Los Angeles, and road construction on the 405, in NON-rush hour traffic gave us both tension headaches and a mighty thirst for a cold beer. I can't begin to imagine driving through there during rush hour.  Lucky us, we were able to get a campsite at Doheny State Beach in  Dana Point.  Again, this state park had no RV hook-ups, but roughing it was worth having a campsite practically on the beautiful beach next to the Dana Point Harbor.  We spent the weekend sightseeing and reconnecting with our southern California friends and family.

Dana Point is also known as the Surf Capital of southern California.

We were just a row back from having our campsite right on the beach.  After the weekend camping crowd left, we could see the beach from our site.  

Long time friend, Tony Goodrum, gave us a tour of Newport Beach, Balboa Island and peninsula.

Gary and Kaye Van Nevel joined us for a Mexican dinner at the Dana Point Harbor.

CHEERS! What's a Mexican dinner with out some Margaritas?  "Mucho bad-o" I'd say. 

Sunday we were invited to my cousin Sue McKenzie's home in San Pedro for brunch.  

After eating delicious gourmet lemon and blueberry pancakes, Mark and Sue took us to the Trump National Golf Course where we walked along the bluff over looking the Pacific. 

 This is Mark's in-home studio where is composing the music for at the next Dragonheart movie. 

Beautiful sunsets every night in Dana Point.

We had planned to leave for Palm Springs on Tuesday, but Gary and Kaye invited us to dinner at their home in Vista, so Tuesday we moved the rig to San Diego County's Guajome Park (pronounced GWA-oh-me).  The park was beautiful and Tuesday evening with the Van Nevel's a real treat.

CENTRAL COAST, CA February 2 - 4

SUPER SUNDAY
Super Bowl Sunday we left Bakersfield and drove to the west coast.  As we left the desert and entered the coastal range, it started to rain.  After getting set up at Hearst San Simeon State Park where we would be roughing it for the next few days with no electric, water, or sewer hook-ups, we headed into Cambria in search of a bar with a TV to watch the Super Bowl.

"Raindrops keep falling on my head."  Three inches of rain fell by Monday morning.

YEAH!  Seattle won!

A MAN'S HOME IS HIS CASTLE
Monday we toured part of the amazing Hearst Castle.  Casa Grande is the main house with a whopping 68,500 square feet containing 115 rooms including 38 bedrooms, a library, movie theater, kitchen and living quarters for the household staff.  We saw a very small portion of the house on our 1 hour tour.  William Randolph Hearst was a movie, newspaper and magazine mogul (aka media mogul) and inherited this land from his wealthy parents.  In 1919 he hired a woman architect, Julia Morgan, (which was very rare for the times) to design a little ranch house on the hilltop where Hearst often camped in tents.  With Hearst's dreams and blank check, and Morgan's talent and eye for detail, they collaborated on building the massive estate on the hilltop with expansive views of the coastal mountains and Pacific Ocean. The property is furnished with many priceless museum quality pieces of art obtained by Hearst between 1919 and 1947.  When doctors told him he was no longer able to go the the "ranch" at San Simeon, Hearst gifted items to family members, as well as selling and donating other art pieces to museums.

The little ranch house at the top of the hill.

The ceiling in the living room was recycled from a "tear down" castle in Europe.
The antique tapestries hanging on the walls are priceless.

The Neptune pool is losing water because of a leak.  It isn't being refilled because of the severe drought .

Standing in front of Casa Grande. 

Admiring more art work.

The indoor Roman pool.

THE NATURE CHANNEL - LIVE!
The beach along Highway 1, just north of our campground, is the Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery.  We stopped at the viewing area above the beach where thousands of these huge mammals arrive every January and February to give birth and breed.  We walked along the walkway, just feet from the sights, sounds, and smells of these unusual creatures doing what they do.  The adult males were bellowing and getting into bloody fights with each other over dominance for part of the beach where the harem of females nursed their babies and squawked their annoyance when a male picked her out as his next love interest.  The males are massive and look unusual because they have a proboscis (long nose that looks kind of like an elephant's trunk).  An adult male will weigh as much as 5,000 pounds;  and the females can grow to 1,800 pounds.  At birth the pups weigh 60 - 80 pounds and can weigh 250 to 350 pounds when they are weaned just 28 days after being born.

Front right of the photo are 2 adult males fighting it out for the ladies.  One of them ended up with a bloody neck.

LAND OF FRUITS AND NUTS

BAKERSFIELD, CA - Oct. 23 - Nov. 1, 2013
October 23rd we left the Sequoia National Park and headed south through central California and the San Joaquin Valley to Bakersfield, which is also home to Jim's cousin, Irene. About 20 miles out of town Irene's son David and daughter-in-law Audrey live on a ranch.  After a week visiting and exploring we drove the RV to David and Audrey's place, closed it up and parked it and the Jeep for the next few months.  

Audrey, David and Murphy at the ranch.

Jim, Irene and Rosie

Cesar Chavez National Monument.  In the 1970's, Cesar Chavez led a non-violent farm labor strike and
table grape boycott which resulted in improved working and living conditions for migrant farm workers.

Buttoning up the RV until we get back to California.

Nov. 1 we boarded a plane and flew home to spend Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's with family and friends.

PICKING UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF - Jan. 28 - Feb. 2, 2014
As soon as Christmas was over we began planning our escape from the freezing death grip  the Polar Vortex had on Wisconsin.  On January 28th we woke up to a typical Wisconsin morning with the outside thermometer hovering at -30 degrees.  

Although it was ungodly cold, we had a smile on our faces because we could shed our long under-ware, wool sweaters, boots, and layers and layers of clothes; by the end of the day we would be in sunny California.  There was over a hundred degree difference in temperature from when we woke up to when we stepped off the plane in Bakersfield that evening; our bodies thanked us and immediately started to thaw out.  Irene met us at the airport, fed us, put us up for the night, and the next morning drove us to David and Audrey's to pick up the RV and Jeep.

LAND OF FRUIT AND NUTS
While driving around the San Joaquin Valley it's easy to see why this area is know as "The Food Basket of the World".  Hundreds of thousands of acres are planted with almond and pistachio trees, citrus orchards, as well as vineyards of table grapes thrive in this irrigated desert valley.  This part of California is also the State's primary oil producing region; hundreds of wells clustered together in oil fields, as well as scattered in and among the fields of grapes and orchards, pump liquid gold day and night.

Bakersfield oil field.

Winter in California is supposed to be the rainy season, but most of California is experiencing a severe drought and is desperate for rain.  It sprinkled 1/16th of an inch on Thursday, which is the only moisture that has fallen from the sky this month.  Agriculture production is being severely threatened by a state-wide water shortage.

GRAPES OF WRATH
Friday we took a drive with Irene to the migrant camp made famous by John Steinbeck's book "The Grapes of Wrath".  The camp is still in operation, but has been improved with modern housing units available for migrant workers and their families.  Three of the original buildings from the 1930's are still standing and are in the process of being restored for historical preservation.

Original building at the Sunset Migration Labor Camp, Arvin, CA

Housing at the Sunset migrant labor camp.

We also stopped at the Bakersfield Museum of Art to view an exhibit of photographs documenting the plight of migratory farm life during the Great Depression.  This exhibition is in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of Steinbeck's Pulitzer Prize winning novel.  While Steinbeck interviewed farm workers, Horace Bristol photographed the workers and  living conditions in the labor camps.  The exhibit features 37 prints by Bristol which exemplify the central characters in "The Grapes of Wrath".