My intent was to update this blog as much as possible during our trip - obviously I failed miserably at that. Internet connections, hell even cell connections, happened rarely and when we did get them I either was just not motivated or was spending my time attempting to finish up homework for that week. Needless to say, we are finally back home and now I can fill you all in!
Monday morning came and brought with it no sense of urgency to get on the road. All of us had errands to run and last minute preparations to make. A wonderful breakfast was had, and soon morning became early afternoon. The lack of urgency was a direct result of half our party realizing we were leaving that day, and the other half thinking we weren't leaving until the next morning. When we all agreed that yes, we would still leave that day, things kicked into high-gear in hopes of beating the LA traffic north. We left late afternoon, with our hopes of skipping LA rush hour dashed, replaced by just hoping to make it to our destination for the evening - Lake Santa Margarita. A brief history of area: The lake was created by the building of Salinas Dam on the southern end of the Salinas River in 1941, and provides San Luis Obispo with some of its drinking water.
Fortunately, yes we did make it there, under the cover of darkness. We became lucky once again in that they had some open campsites, and our reservation for Tuesday night was then switched to Monday. We didn't really get a good glimpse of the area until the next morning because when we pulled into camp we were swarmed by massive amounts of small bugs. I think both Josh and I started having flashbacks of Colorado. We each stayed in our own vans - Bob and Diane in their 89 Roadtrek, and Josh and I in our Tiger - made dinner, held conversations through windows, and went to bed.
Tuesday morning brought sunshine, no bugs, but lots of heat. This would give Josh another chance to deploy our solar set-up after we moved to a better camp location. We had a great view of the lake and were surrounded by huge families of Acorn Woodpeckers, along with squirrels.
We had planned to go for a hike and do some geocaching, but the parents decided to go swimming with the heat, so Josh and I hopped on the bikes and went down to grab the clue to a different geocache. We found the clue and the resulting coordinates in no time, but spent probably close to an hour digging around in dead weeds and sharp bushes to no avail. Defeated, we headed back to camp and had our first close encounter with a deer for this trip. We couldn't believe how warm it was, and decided a swim did indeed sound good. No swimming is allowed in the lake since it is a municipal water source, so they built a swimming pool right next to it! It was small and crowded, but worth the 10 minute dip.
Afternoon turned to evening and we were all too beat to go on our hike, so we just enjoyed the lake; watching boaters, reading, and chatting. I attempted another backpacker oven meal, this time cheese pizza with basil. I think both Josh and I were very leery of how this would turn out, but once again the oven performed flawlessly and for camp pizza it was damn good! I can't recommend this oven enough for anyone who likes to camp.
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