Well, that was an interesting place. Really, we were just looking for an overnight with electric hookups for the AC, so the “resort” destination at Lake Piru lived up to all expectations there. And we knew it would be hot coming inland, so no surprises there (the dashboard temperature gauge read 110º, but I doubt it was quite that high). What we didn’t expect was the deserted, what-catastrophic-event-just-happened-here? kind of feel.
Monday morning we were rolling by 9, so Richard was online and “at work” in a very respectable time frame. Service was mostly pretty good for him, hot spotting off either his phone with Verizon, or mine with ATT. There were blind spots here and there, so we had to be strategic about timing. Like sometimes he has to be really present for group calls. Otherwise, he was able to work on offline things until we picked service back up.
We made a stop along the way for grocery shopping and to get a nice Doryable dinner since Monday was our anniversary. Sunday was Dory’s 2nd Altoversary and I must say, her day was the more romantic of the two, given sunsets and fine dining in Morro Bay.
The valley leading up to the lake is actually quite lovely. And when we got up to it, we could see indications of a place that could accommodate hundreds of people. There were massive parking lots with boat launches, lines and signs directing imagined traffic towards the boat launches, and a huge campground with two hundred sites. All of this was empty. The store and grill by the water – empty and closed, with newish looking barbecues just sitting outside. As though the whole place, recently swarming with people, had been rapidly abandoned due to some kind of massive radiation leak. 
Besides the large rigs occupied by “residents,” right on the other side of the fence from our site, I think we saw maybe two other campers. Even the bathrooms felt oddly creepy. Like instead of thinking, “My, what nice, clean bathrooms, with so many private shower stalls.” we both came away with an impression more like, “Wow, look how many places to hide bodies.”
We did ask someone who worked there and she assured us that just that very weekend, the place was packed and “crazy” with so many people. Good to hear. I guess we just got the “Disneyland post-evacuation” ghost town experience. All good. Our mission was to make our way south and that we did. Most of the driving was along the coast and that was obviously great.
Total miles from San Simeon: 214.8, 16.9 mpg, 5 hours 11 minutes. I think we had site 25F with full hookups. Didn’t take data on other sites, but we definitely could have had our pick. Strong LTE for ATT, no service for Verizon.
