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!