San Luis Obispo to Oceanside

Tuesday, February 8, 2000

One of the many driving forces for us taking this trip is Volkswalking. That is a system of walks that are set up around the country by various clubs. There are two kinds of events that are generally available. Hosted walks are events that occur on a specific day or days (usually weekends) and the walks are marked and manned by club members. Year Round Events are those that can be taken anytime (within reason and certain limits). For these events there are maps and instructions located in community areas (McDonalds, hotel lobbies, public buildings, etc.). Most often, the walks are 10 km (6.2 miles) long and meander through interesting areas. Generally, if you are a “non-credit” walker, there is little or no fee involved. When you get compulsive about it, you can become a “credit” walker and pay (usually) $2 fee to get the assigned event number stamped in a book. With this you accumulate distance and events, and get awards at various milestone numbers.

Today we finally got a Volkswalk in. We went to San Luis Obispo, and walked around the business district, some of the old Craftsman and Victorian residential areas, and a loop through Cal Poly. It was a very nice walk, and we enjoyed the scenery. Most of the opportunities for photos were of some of the picturesque old houses, but I had a setting wrong on the camera, so none of them came out.

We are now camping at Gaviota State Park, at the west end of the Santa Barbara Channel. Tomorrow we will go back up to Solvang and do another Volkswalk. We are continually re- affirmed on what a good way to see an area Volkswalking is.

Wednesday, February 9, 2000

This morning we went back up 101 about 10 miles and over to Solvang. That is a delightful community, built around the old Santa Ynez mission, but was settled in the early 20th century by Danes. As a result there is an interesting mixture of mission and old Danish influences, including the architecture and street names (an intersection of Fjord and Alta Vista, for example). We did another Volkswalk here. Because the town itself is very small, most of the walk was an out-and-back section along a couple of golf courses, then a loop through the tourist/commercial section.

We had intended to mess around in the Santa Barbara area, but by the time we had done the volkswalk and some shopping, we were ready to head on further south. We headed on through L.A. at rush hour. That was an interesting experience, but not too bad. The fact that they have HOV lanes that only require two people meant that we could get through a lot of the traffic with a minimum problem. The overwhelming majority of cars were not in the HOV lanes, and that implies that almost all the cars are single occupancy. It seems like something should be done about that, but I guess that Californians (in general) are married to their cars. In any event, we went on through to San Clemente and got a hotel room for the night.

The one issue that we are having with the trip deals with how to spend the evenings. When we find a camping spot in the middle of the afternoon (like 3 or 4 PM), we have to deal with what to do. So far, the temperatures have been in the low 50’s in the evening, and that is a little too cool for Linda to enjoy being outside. As a result, we spend a lot of time reading, and I spend some time working on this journal, but we need to come up with some additional schemes for keeping ourselves busy in those evenings.

In any event, we went back up to San Juan Capistrano in the morning to look at the mission there. It was an interesting little excursion, and the displays were informative and tastefully done. After that, and Linda fixing some lunch at San Clemente State Park, we went down to Oceanside. The weather continued to be pretty cold and windy, even though the rain had stopped temporarily. Linda took a short nap while I walked out on the pier. Then, after I also took a short nap, we went down to Carlsbad and looked at some of the antique shops.

The highlight of our day came when we went up to Fallbrook to see our friends the Warrs. We have known them from our church, and they moved down here a little more than a year ago. After a very wet and dark trip to find their house, we spent the evening getting caught up with everything.

Our original plans were to have bypassed most of California and gone straight to Arizona. We altered them to let spring have a little more of a chance to catch up in the Southeast. Now, the weather is so cold and wet here, we have decided to cut short the two or three days that we were going to spend in San Diego. Now we have decided to just spend one day to do a Volkswalk in Coronado (weather permitting) and then head over to the desert country. We are hopeful that that will give us an opportunity to see some of the sunny, warm weather we have been looking for.