Last Friday we had a very relaxed start to our four month sojourn. We slept in until 7am and didn’t get moving from home until after 9am. At about 1pm we stopped for lunch in Carpinteria on the 101 at our fav restaurant, Cabo’s Baja Grill & Cantina on Carpinteria Ave. Munched down on fish tacos, beans, rice, chips and salsa with a Baja margarita to boot.....oh, don’t worry, we hung out long enough for the alcoholic affects to disappear!! The only downside was the extremely late arrival at the San Benito TT campground (just south of Paicines)......after 7pm. We were a bit tired and still had to set up. But we’ve got "set-up" down and so it went fast!
The next day was a beautiful one and our only one at San Benito so we made the most of it. Just had cereal and berries for breakfast before we took off on a hike around the campground. Thousand Trails parks almost always have pretty good trails in and around their campgrounds. This one took us through the campground first where Ed almost stepped on a snake. We spent a few minutes checking it out before it slithered away into the grass. Later at the clubhouse we looked at an animal wall chart to find out that it was a gopher snake. We didn’t think it was a "dangerous" snake when we were looking at it but it was nice to confirm that we were correct. Once the trail left the campground, our hike became more interesting. The trail led off into the trees and over a small creek across a bridge. We heard voices and around the next bend spotted a big cowboy spread with ranch buildings and an arena for rodeos. The voice was coming from a speaker and there were people on horses trotting them around the arena. Due to the barbed wire fence surrounding the ranch, we couldn’t get any closer and so never found out what exactly was going on but we watched for awhile. Dude was having a fantastic time sniffing around and wanting to chase the endless ground squirrels, quail and rabbits. We even smelled skunk a few times but never actually saw one....darn!! There were extremely tame deer feeding on grass right off the campground roads and many little quail families that wouldn’t dart off unless you got way too close. It was a very animal-friendly place! We really enjoyed watching the black and white red-headed Acorn Woodpeckers stick the acorns in the holes they made in the oak trees and the flashy black and white Yellow-billed Magpie dart here and there. We even saw one of the Magpies tearing at a road kill and learned from the TT ranger that they are scavenger birds and do eat from the carcasses!
Mothers Day was not a laid back day for this mother! It was a moving day for us. We packed up and left San Benito behind about 10:30am after a nice quiche breakfast fixed by Betsy and moved on to the San Francisco RV Park in Pacifica which is just a few miles south of Golden Gate Park. We arrived at SF about 2pm and set up quickly so we could have lunch.....starving....quiche didn’t last that long!! Worried about the weather but arrived to sunshine and some warmth. It’s a gorgeous day here, a bit windy but bearable. Weather site says that the sunshine will be around for the next few days so we’re happy. Tomorrow we do a drive to the south to see the beautiful ocean views and maybe a stop for cioppino (fishermans stew) for lunch.....yum!! One of the days we’re here we’ll go to the Exploratorium in Golden Gate Park. Great place to go with kids....but also without kids so the adults can play around a little. It’s a hands-on type museum with all kinds of stuff to see and do!!