Camping for Halloween - Pismo Coast Village and Lunch with the Cousins

    I know! I know! I have not done the second part of my post regarding the funeral for my brother in law Sean. I will, because it was one of the most amazing and special funerals I've ever attended. 

    Since his passing on August 4th, I have been spending the nights with my sister. She has never been alone, from living with our parents she went to live with her husband and I knew it was going to be difficult for her to be alone, especially in the beginning. 

    So my routine since then has been that I wake up at her home around 5:45 a.m. and get dressed and head to my house which is probably four blocks away. I do my normal morning routine and since I work from home and have since Covid began, I put in my eight hours of work. After work I spend a bit of time with my mom and then head over to Lisa's house where we have dinner, talk about the day, on Monday's we go to Grief Share, a grief therapy group that meets for two hours, then we start the routine all over again the next morning.

    Lisa and Sean LOVED camping! It was their greatest passion, after their children and grandchildren. They own a beautiful 5th Wheel motor home which they store at the coast and when they want to go camping, they make a reservation and the RV park picks up their RV and moves it to the campsite they will be in, they set it all up and hook up the water, sewer and electricity, they just come in and organize the inside and relax. 

    They had an annual tradition of coming the week of Halloween as all the RV's are decorated for the holiday. Because of the popularity of the event it books up fast so they had made and paid for their reservations months ago. Lisa wanted to go ahead and come, I was not so sure. I felt it was too soon, but if she wanted to do it, then I was coming with her.

    We left on Friday morning and her son Sean Jr came by to see us off, he's such a great young man and I'm so proud of him. You can see by the smile on their faces how much they still hurt for their dad and husband.

    We always stop at TJ Maxx in Paso Robles to shop. Lisa doesn't really enjoy shopping and even less now that she is grieving, but she made the effort. We didn't buy much, but Lisa did buy me a beautiful coffee mug with Nutcrackers on it, I'll share that when I put up my Christmas decorations sometime in December.

    We headed to Pismo where we had lunch at The Sidewalk Cafe where we each had the most amazing Asian Salad. It was huge too, we actually had it that night for dinner and I still ended up throwing about 1/4 of it away. 

    We got to the campsite soon after and I was so worried that Lisa was going to be devastated seeing the RV and walking inside for the first time without Sean, but the people that were supposed to set up the sewer, water and electricity had done nothing and all the hoses and pipes were strewn about in the back of the RV! Lisa was LIVID!  I think it was a blessing in disguise, she was so focused on getting everything fixed that she didn't remember to pay attention to the fact that this was the first time she was back in the RV without Sean. Death sucks so much, this is such a hard time for her.

    After all that drama we decided to walk to the clubhouse and then to the small store next door where Lisa bought two beers and some pretzels and we headed to a small table where she and Sean used to go when they came together. We said a toast to Sean and sat there drinking our beer. We then realized that we are Arizona girls and we don't do beach weather well (it was cold) and we headed back to the RV.

Beer in a can in a brown paper bag. Sean's favorite beer would have been Bud Light but they were out of that so we had Michelob Ultra. It was a beautiful spot but way to cold to stay long with the wind blowing.

    We set everything up and organized ourselves and decided where we each were going to sleep and then we watched some TV and played some cards and finally decided to get some sleep as we had plans to go to lunch the next day with two cousins that live close by.

    The next morning we slept in for a bit and woke up and had coffee, we planned our day because we knew we were meeting our cousins Diana and Vera at 1pm for lunch. We ran a few errands and cleaned up some more and then met them for lunch at this lovely place, Marisol at the Cliffs Restaurant. You can see the ocean in the background in the picture below.

Enjoying a Jalapeno Melon Margarita with the cousins. My sister Lisa in front taking the photo. Left to Right is our cousin Diana, daughter to my dad's sister Leonor and Elvira aka Vera daughter to my dads brother Manuel, then me.

    We had such a great time, there was a lot of laughter, a few tears and many shared memories. 

    For dinner I had the Thai Chicken Lettuce Wraps, which were fabulous!

    Lisa had the bacon and eggs, the bacon looked really good, but she didn't share! 

Cousin Vera I believe had fish tacos with potatoes.

Cousin Vera deep in conversation.

    Cousin Diana had the nachos which she shared with us all and still had enough to take home!

Cousin Diana enjoying her nachos.

    Afterwards they wanted to come and see Lisa's motor home, so here's a picture of the four of us. We had such a great time and can't wait to get together again!

Great shot of the four us and Lisa's motor home. Left to right: Vera, Diana, me in the front and Lisa behind me.

    There is nothing like family. We never spent a lot of time with my dad's side of the family, but my mom and dad both used to say to us all the time that "blood calls" and it does. Even though we seldom see these cousins there is a bond that we can't break, our ancestors blood runs through our veins and calls for us to be family even though we are literally strangers.

    I'm not going to lie and say that this has been a great trip, Lisa is here in body, but not in spirit or in mind or heart. Her spirit, mind and heart is with her husband and she is going through an agony that is unimaginable. Earlier that day we were driving through a busy part of town that has a lot of little shops and I had a memory while passing a bead store of my sister in law Connie and I bringing mom right before Covid to Pismo and taking her to several bead shops and there is one we particularly enjoyed with her and as we drove by I remembered that day and how happy my mom was and how special she felt and I also realized that someday my mom is going to be gone and my heart clenched in pain and it was brief, maybe a few seconds, but I then knew exactly how Lisa is feeling, it's an incapacitating pain and you feel as though your heart will explode  and there is nothing that you can do....except to be brave like my poor, dear sister is being brave. 

    More to come as I'm writing this several days later. Dinner with the cousins was Sunday afternoon. I'm writing this on Wednesday afternoon, October 26th and this morning they invited us to get together again with them for dinner and drinks tonight.

Camping Weekend - A Little Art, A Lot of Walking and a Sweet Puppy

Had a great time this past weekend camping with my sister. We left on Friday morning and I came back on Sunday afternoon and as I write this, she is still there with her husband and they are due to come back tomorrow. Lucky Duck!

We managed to have a great time even in the short time I was there. One of the reasons is that we had this cute little girl with us! My daughters dog Chorizo! In this picture she's stressing out because my sister had gotten out of the car. Chorizo has to have all "her people" with her at all times! She's a character!

But she made it so much fun for us and kept us active because we had to walk her so much. She loves her walks! She also loved how beautiful the grass was there. Anytime she had a chance she would sit or roll around in it! She was in paradise!

When we were at the campsite she even commandeered this chair as her very own, just napping and barking at any other dogs that dared to walk in front of our space!

She always scopes out the best places and makes them her own. Here was her spot inside the RV. She could look outside and see what was going on and still see everything that we were doing inside the RV.

But her favorites place to be had to be at the edge of the ocean or anywhere that she could smell the ocean and everything that came with it...seagull poop being one of her favorites smells!

She had the best time and we had a great time. Always a pleasure to hang out with my sister, she's the greatest!

Here's our campsite. It was super safe and comfortable and I wish I were there right now! Hey, I just realized Chorizo was in her chair looking back at me when I took this picture. Sorry to wake you Chorizo! 

I even had a chance to get some artwork done. Just a simple page with doodles of flowers and a random little bee. I found the "Enjoy the Moment" sticker in a beach magazine and it was perfect for this weekend. I did enjoy every single moment!

Til we meet again sweet ocean Paradise...we will always have the memory!

The Stone Soup Story and the Stone Soup Music Festival at Grover Beach, California

Last weekend my sister Lisa and our friend Lupe and I had a girls camping weekend at Pismo Beach. We had a blast and I'll post separately about that and what we did and share pictures.

While we were there, we attended the Stone Soup Music Festival in Grover Beach and we had such fun! I think it's going to become an annual thing for us!

We didn't give a thought to what a Stone Soup Music Festival even was, it just sounded like something really fun to do and there would be music, what else did we need to know? We forgot about the Story of Stone Soup. It wasn't until we were unable to find any Stone Soup that we remembered the story! Were our faces red!

In case you have never heard of the story, here you go!

Stone Soup
An Old Tale Retold
Text by Marcia Brown

Three soldiers trudged down a road in a strange country. They were on their way home from the wars. Besides being tired, they were hungry. In fact, they had eaten nothing for two days.

"How I would like a good dinner tonight," said the first.  "And a bed to sleep in," said the second. "But all that is impossible," said the third. "We must march on."

On they marched. Suddenly ahead of them they saw the lights of a village. "Maybe we'll find a bite to eat there," said the first. "And a loft to sleep in," said the second. "No harm in asking," said the third.

Now the peasants of that village feared strangers. When they heard that three soldiers were coming down the road, they talked amongst themselves.

"Here come three soldiers. Soldiers are always hungry. But we have little enough for ourselves." 

And they hurried to hide their food. They pushed the sacks of barley under the hay in the lofts. They lowered buckets of milk down the wells. They spread old quilts over the carrot bins. They hid their cabbages and potatoes under the beds. They hung their meat in the cellars. They hid all they had to eat. Then - they waited.

The soldiers stopped first at the house of Paul and Francoise. "Good evening to you," they said. "Could you spare a bit of food for three hungry soldiers?"

"We have had no food for ourselves for three days," said Paul. Francoise made a sad face. "It has been a poor harvest."

The three soldiers went on to the house of Albert and Louise.

"Could you spare a bit of food? And have you some corner where we could sleep for the night?"

"Oh no," said Albert. "We gave all we could spare to soldiers who came before you." "Our beds are full," said Louise.

At Vincent and Marie's the answer was the same. It had been a poor harvest and all the grain must be kept for seed. So it went all throughout the village. Not a peasant had any food to give away. They all had good reasons. One family had to use the grain for feed. Another had an old sick father to care for. All had too many mouths to fill.

The villagers stood in the street and sighed. They looked as hungry as they could. The three soldiers talked together. Then the first soldier called out, "Good People!" The peasants drew near.

"We are three hungry soldiers in a strange land. We have asked you for food and you have no food. Well then, we'll have to make stone soup." The peasants stared. Stone soup? That would be something to know about.

"First, we'll need a large iron pot," the soldiers said. The peasants brought them the largest pot they could find. How else to cook enough?

"That's none too large," said the soldiers. "But it will have to do. And now, water to fill it and a fire to heat it." It took many buckets of water to fill the pot. A fire was built on the village square and the pot was set to boil.

"And now, if you please, three round, smooth stones." Those were easy enough to find. The peasants' eyes grew round as they watched the soldiers drop the stones into the pot.

"Any soup needs salt and pepper," said the soldiers, as they began to stir. Children ran to fetch salt and pepper. 

"Stones like these generally make good soup, but oh, if there were carrots, it would be much better." "Why, I think I have a carrot or two," said Francoise, and off she ran. She came back with her apron full of carrots from the bin beneath the red quilt.

"A good stone soup should have cabbage, " said the soldiers as they sliced the carrots into the pot. "But no use asking for what you don't have." "I think I could find a cabbage somewhere," said Marie and she hurried home. She came back with three cabbages from the cupboard under the bed.

"If we only had a bit of beef and a few potatoes, this soup would be good enough for a rich man's table."

The peasants thought that over. They remembered their potatoes and the side of beef hanging in the cellars. They ran to fetch them. A rich man's soup - and all from a few stones! It seemed like magic!

"Ah," sighed the soldiers as they stirred in the beef and potatoes. "if we only had a little barley and a cup of milk! This would be fit for the King himself. Indeed he asked for just such a soup when last he dined with us."

The peasants looked at each other. These soldiers had entertained the king! Well!

"But - no use asking for what you don't have." the soldiers sighed. The peasants brought their barley from the lofts, they brought their milk from the wells. The soldiers stirred the barley and milk into the steaming broth while the peasants stared.

At last the soup was ready. "All of you shall taste," the soldiers said. "But first a table must be set." Great tables were placed in the square. And all around were lighted torches. Such a soup! How good it smelled! Truly fit for a king!

But then the peasants asked themselves, "Would not such a soup require bread and a roast - and cider?" Soon a banquet was spread and everyone sat down to eat. Never had there been such a feast. Never had the peasants tasted such soup. And fancy, made from stones!

They ate and drank and ate and drank. And after that they dance. They danced and sang far into the night. At last they were tired. Then the three soldiers asked, "Is there not a loft where we could sleep?" "Let three such wise and splendid gentlemen sleep in a loft? Indeed! they must have the best beds in the village!"

So the first soldier slept in the priest's house. The second soldier slept in the baker's house and the third soldier slept in the mayor's house.

In the morning, the whole village gathered in the square to give them a send-off. 

"Many thanks for what you have taught us," the peasants said to the soldiers. "We shall never go hungry, now that we know how to make soup from stones."

"Oh, it's all in knowing how," said the soldiers, and off they went down the road.

Great story right? And a good lesson. So although we didn't find any soup at this festival, we remembered a great story!

Camping in February? Only in Southern California! Oh Yeah!

My sister Lisa loves camping! She especially loves camping at the beach. It has always been her dream to own an RV and last year she was lucky enough to buy one. I say lucky, but really it's due to the hard work of her and her husband and her great juggling skills in how she handles their money. I was really happy to see her dream fulfilled but I also know that Lisa having her dream RV home could only mean one thing...that sooner or later she would want me to go camping with her.

See...I'm a hotel kinda girl. I like hot water and soft beds and room service and someone to come in and make the bed for me the next day and leave me clean towels. It's just all so civilized right? But Lisa said that I would have to go at least once with her because she just knew that I was going to LOVE it!

She set the date for February. Now while the rest of the country is in a deep freeze, here in Sunny Southern California we're in the mid 70's, but regardless it seemed crazy to me to contemplate going camping in February. I mean...it's winter!

But my sister does so much for me that I figured the least I could do is to go along with her plan and I have to tell you, I am so glad I did. Did I like camping? Yes! Do I love camping? No! Would I go camping again? Yes! Would I prefer to stay in a hotel? Yes...and No! Both have their strong points.

So I'm just going to post photos of what we did. We left home on Friday morning and stopped and did a bit of shopping along the way and finally got to the campsite which is a very fancy place. Not just a state campground with no amenities. We had amenities up the wazoo! Wifi included people! This is my kind of camping!

We took our friend Lupe with us and it was great to have a girls weekend! Here's Lupe and Lisa opening up the RV or as we kept calling it, the trailer.

Here's where we spent most of our time, the little kitchen and kitchen table.

Pretty nice right? That kitchen table there, it turns into a bed. the couch that you see on the bottom left that is blue and beige, another bed. And this trailer has it's own bathroom with a shower and a bedroom. I don't know why I didn't take pictures of that.

And this RV park was awesome. They had a heated swimming pool, a recreation room with games and books and ping pong and TV, an on site restaurant and bar and grocery store. Super nice!

So what all did we do? Well you have to know that the most important and fun thing had to do with food and drink!

We had our Margaritas! You can get this bottle already pre-mixed for just $10 at Costco! And it is delicious! It's huge too, we barely made a dent in it and I don't think we even finished half.

We had our Noshing food. Just a bit of this and a bit of that. We stopped at a fruit stand that my sister knows of and bought some Guacamole and Pico de Gallo and Chips. We also picked up a package of Cheese and Ham with Crackers. That was perfect for dinner our first night and then we had it again our second night.

We also had to have something sweet in the evening and made up a little plate of some Grapes and Strawberries we bought at the fruit stand and I just happened to have a Hershey's Chocolate Bar with Almonds. It all went perfectly together and soothed our sweet tooth. Is your mouth watering?

We had some yummy cupcakes that Lupe's daughter baked for our trip. We thought they were so cute because the bottom is red and the top is speckled! They went perfectly with our coffee. Lupe had bought me this lovely coffee cup and I noticed while we sat outside having coffee how the words were reflected in the coffee. Pretty cool huh?

The last day we ate at the Girls Restaurant and I splurged and had French Toast. Lupe had a Breakfast Burrito and Lisa had Chorizo and Egg and we all shared with each other so we got a little bit of everything. Is not your mouth watering again with this picture?

But we didn't just eat. We played games. We played Ping Pong in the Rec Room and had so much fun!

We had lunch at one of our favorite places when we go to Pismo. Zorro's Bar and Cantina. It's such a quaint little place and such nice people and the best part is it's pet friendly. If you go with your dog you can sit out on the patio with them. I had a Mimosa which is what I'm holding in the picture below. I also had half a Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwich and a bowl of Chicken Tortilla Soup, it was delicious!

Here's Lupe and Lisa. Lupe had a BBQ Chicken Sandwich with Onion Rings that were to die for and Lisa had a Burger that she devoured as we were all starving. We had only had coffee and a sweet roll before we headed to the Avila Valley Barn at Avila Beach.

At Avila Valley Barn we saw animals...

Children riding ponies...

And we bought several goodies at the Fruit Barn, including some Maple Bacon Salt Water Taffy...

On the last day we finally stopped alongside the beach and just let the sound of the waves sooth our soul.

We really packed a lot into that last day. Not only did we walk all over downtown San Luis Obispo, but we made a quick stop first at The Madonna Inn. Lupe had never been there and she loved it!

I have to say that I like Camping and I had a great time and I'm ready to go again. So Lisa...when's the next camping trip scheduled?

 

Beach Trip to Re-Charge!

Yesterday my sister and I decided since it was going to be over 100 degrees in Shafter that it was probably a good idea to head somewhere way, way cooler!

We gassed up the car and decided to head to the beach!

We weren't sure if we should head south to Santa Barbara or west to Pismo. We figured Santa Barbara was probably going to be pretty crowded, so Pismo it was. Little did we know that this weekend was the huge and very crowded Pismo Car Show. We had decided when we left home to have lunch at this cute little restaurant called Alphy's Broiler.

We'd been there before and had a really yummy Oriental Salad made with assorted cabbages, scallions, carrots, chicken breast, almonds, cilantro, crispy wonton strips and their own sesame ginger dressing. It is out of this world and we were really excited to have it again!

So it was sad to realize that due to all the crowds and the traffic jam on the freeway that we wouldn't be able to even get there unless we were willing to wait in huge lines of cars and even then we were pretty sure that it was going to be standing room only. So we opted to go to another really great place in Pismo, Zorro's Cafe and Cantina.

The cool thing about this restaurant is that you can eat outdoors and pets are allowed. So there is always someone there with a cute dog. I've eaten there before with my daughter and her puppy Chorizo. Here's Chorizo sitting tableside at Zorro's back in October of 2011. We've been coming here ever since. Isn't she adorable!

We were lucky and for once there wasn't a long wait. We got a table on the sidewalk outdoors. The weather was awesome, the sun was shining but there was a refreshing breeze coming off the ocean which was only a couple of blocks away. Unfortunately they didn't have an Oriental Salad, so I decided to have their Sombrero Burger, a half pound Angus beef patty on a sesame seed bun with grilled sliced japapeno, queso fresco cheese and guacamole and their spicy homemade chimi sauce. I asked for a sample of the chimi sauce and didn't care for it at all, so I requested the burger with no bread,  no chimi sauce and a salad instead of fries...very low carb and very delicious!

My sister Lisa had the California Burger, same kind of beef, on bread (and she did eat the bread), avocado, jack cheese and sprouts. She said it was great as well.

Then we headed down the street to the beach where we just sat and talked and read a little bit in our books and walked and took pictures and talked to people. We had a great time and the weather was perfect! This was our view as we sat in this small park.

Across the street from where we were sitting we noticed that there was a house for sale. Now this neighborhood has houses in every nook and cranny. People don't mind living in each other's living rooms in return for living ocean side. Here's the house. We peeked through the windows and it was just a cute little house, but we immediately started dreaming on buying this house and how we would fix it up and have coffee in the cute little breakfast nook in the morning and wine on the lanai at night.

The great thing about this house is the view! This is what we would see while we had our morning coffee and our evening glass of wine! We had a lot of fun just imagining what life would be like, the parties we would have, the people we would invite to visit.

Today my sister looked this house up on zillow.com. We figured it would probably be $1,000,000 or there abouts. If this same house were for sale in Bakersfield you probably wouldn't get more than $50,000, but guess how much this house is because it's ocean front property?

Yep, a cool $1.5 million!!! I guess Lisa and I had better start playing the lottery! But it was still fun to dream and we had a great day. Got a little sunburned, had some great food and got to spend sister time together. Definitely we have to do this more often!