What do you do for Labor Day Weekend when Bay Area temperatures are set to hit record highs and into triple digits? (hint: your answer will likely match that of 12 million other Bay Area residents) That’s right! You go to the coast! Or pick a whole lot of movies you wouldn’t mind seeing multiple times. In our case, we lucked out because I made these reservations a while ago and I don’t think it would have occurred to me to get a site with electric hookups on the coast. That was a happy coincidence, as AC was definitely needed. Temperatures hit the 90s even right by the ocean and I can’t recall a time I’ve ever seen that happen.
We got ready to leave Saturday morning so I could drop Richard in Pacifica with his bike. It was pretty hazy out there with all the smoke from fires raging to the south. I made my traditional stop at the Pescadero grocery/deli and got some nice stuff to grill. Plus olallieberry pie! Then I headed to the campground and got set up.
This campground is very tightly spaced. It’s definitely a party and/or family destination. But for these situations, it is extremely helpful to have the Caravan Mover and the awning. This allows me to turn Dory so that I can have at least one view that is not too exposed. Then I can lower the side flaps on the awning and maintain the illusion of privacy. We didn’t really care too much anyway and our neighbors were nice and friendly. Mostly all we cared about was having the AC running continuously. I continue to enjoy the screen enhanced awning and took even more pictures to prove it. Saturday night we enjoyed a Ribeye steak with salad and a half baked roll finished off on the grill. Oh yeah, plus two margaritas. Happy camper was I.
Sunday Richard went out riding and I got to write my first report of the school year. But first, I had to run back to the KOA campground store and buy 3 boxes of Luci solar lights. I decided the mini candle lanterns are more trouble than they’re worth and the store just happened to have sets of these priced at about half what they go for online. I can set them all to shine blue, combine with liberal helpings of ice cold margaritas, and again, happy camping is happening.
In the afternoon, we took a walk to the beach. It was cooler there, especially with our feet in the ocean. There was kind of a Hitchcock-ian bird migration happening over the ocean, enough to make us Google it. It turns out we were witnessing a bonafide phenomenon in the form of Sooty Shearwater flocks, apparently heading south. If you told me there were a million birds out there, I would say that sounded about right. I couldn’t really get them in pictures, but to see them moving en masse across the water was truly impressive. There were also Pelicans, Red Wing Blackbirds, Quail, and your requisite Seagulls out in droves. Flocks. Whatever. For dinner, we had grilled sausages, peppers, and mushrooms, over french bread. There was a live band playing in the campground rec area and lots of obviously happy people whooping it up on a Sunday night.
Monday we gave a tour to some Airstream owners who talked about the Alto longingly, saying they would have gotten that in a heartbeat but for the lack of US dealers. Heading home we hit predictable traffic, coupled with a bad accident on 92 that had us stopped for a while. We were’t in any hurry to get home, but made it back around 4 anyway. Perfect weekend and we’re ready to move into a (hopefully) cooler Fall.
Total miles: 81.7, 14.8 mpg (traffic), 3 hours 41 min (again, traffic). Site C54. You can’t reserve specific sites at this place, but the ones around the ends of the loops sure are nicer. I had no service for ATT but Verizon had decent LTE.
