December 21st to December 24th, 2006
A gorgeous California sunset, a glass of white zinfandel (ok, it was a plastic REI cup), some chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, and a campsite right on the beach, tucked away behind a sand dune – does it get any better than this? Great Internet and cell phone signal, shops just a few blocks away – ahhh…what a great kick start to the next phase of our trip. Kathy and Gary and Kevin dropped us off at the beach near sunset, after a quick stop for supplies at Trader Joes in Santa Barbara. We quickly set up camp, dragged a tarp out to the beach and ate a still-warm baked potato we’d brought from the Whalen’s, with the cookies as dessert, and finished off with the wine. We were quite cold and this was our first night out camping in a while, so we crawled into bed and were asleep by 9 p.m.
True to life on the road, we were awakened out of a sound sleep at 11 p.m. by something getting into our things. Sure enough, it was a raccoon, and a feisty one at that. We climbed out of the tent and went after it, but we were totally disheartened, as we still don’t have our bear canisters, and we really had no way to protect our food from a determined raccoon. We were doing what pathetically little we could, when our new next-door neighbor, just setting up his tent (at 11 p.m.!) asked if we needed help. We explained our dilemma and he immediately offered to put our food in his car for the night. We agreed on the spot.
After a beautiful hour or so sitting on the sand on the beach the next morning, we properly introduced ourselves to our new neighbor, Paul – a 5th grade teacher from Oceanside, rescued our food from his car, and had a great chat with him. He took off for his day’s activities and we realized that we should take a day to start reorganizing our supplies.
We put all our food in our Ziploc hard containers, re-packed the trailers, and generally got ready to start traveling. (Check out our photo gallery for a picture of our current food system.) Meanwhile, the weather had turned much colder and a wind had come up, and we were quickly becoming uncomfortable. My derailleur had started doing a bit of ghost shifting, which is just a simple adjustment, but Chelsea didn’t want to fool with it. We thought, “no problema”! We’ll hop on over to the bike store!
What started out with great intentions quickly turned tedious. We found the bike shop with no problem, but an hour and a half later, even hungrier and colder and more tired than before, we left the bike store with the adjustment still not made – we did get a new derailleur cable though! Quickly approaching miserable, freezing cold and tired, and not wanting to go back to a cold dark campsite, we chose a an unassuming Mexican restaurant and splurged on rice and beans. We stayed in that restaurant until the last possible minute, dreading going back. We finally had to move though, or risk getting kicked out.
We rode carefully through the dark streets back “home”, and guess what greeted our eyes! Not only was Paul back for the evening, so we could put our food in his car again, but he had a fire going! We shamelessly invited ourselves over, and had a really great time chatting with him for quite awhile. He’s a super-nice guy, very quiet, but very talented and very bright, and a great conversationalist. We covered a lot of ground that night.
Sunday dawned a lot warmer, and that was when I realized that we had better stay put in Carpinteria again since the eBay auction for my bike was up that night. I figured I’d rather stay and know what happened so I could make plans, than be out on the road and get stuck in a place with no Internet. We hung out with Paul again for a while, and in one of those “it’s a small world” stories, discovered that he’d met my brother-in-law Fred up in another campground in California the previous spring. What are the chances that we would then meet Paul!
Meanwhile, we had to get water and cash for another night’s camping fees, and lo and behold, when I checked my messages, my sister Maureen had called, thinking we were still in Santa Ynez, and wanting to take us out to lunch. Turns out since she hadn’t heard from me, she and Fred were on their way to Ventura, and they were only 10 minutes away! They came over, and we all had a chance to talk. We had an awesome afternoon, and capped it off with an incredible dinner in Ventura. Sure enough, when we got back, Paul had another fire going. Life was feeling pretty good, and then the capper of all was that my eBay auction ended, and my bike sold! Talk about a happy camper!
During the prior several days, we had a set of campers across the way from us, a guy and a girl, who kept watching us. They seemed friendly enough, but they never spoke to us, and just stayed in their own site, watching. While talking around the fire with Paul on Sunday night, the “girl” came over to borrow a can opener. She, Katy, stayed talking to us, and we found out that it was a brother-sister, and it was her brother’s first time camping. They had been happily drinking steadily for two days, and were feeling no pain by that time. Katy returned in a few minutes with Dave, and what had been a very quiet evening turned into an instant party. We just loved Katy and Dave and the short story is that we got to bed at 4 a.m.
Getting to bed at 4 a.m. was not conducive to getting up early and riding 40 miles, so Dave and Katy offered to take us down to Leo Carrillo State Beach, just above Malibu. We had a leisurely morning (slow after the lack of sleep the night before!) and we had a ball sitting quietly in the truck winding our way down Pacific Coast Highway.
Paul had slipped quietly away before any of us were awake, but he left us a Christmas card with his name and contact information on it, and had invited us to stay with him when we get to Oceanside. We sure hope he means it! Dave also invited us to stay with him when we get to Laguna Beach, and we’ll take him up on that, too.
We can’t finish with Carpinteria without mentioning a few highlights. One was the trains. The tracks ran right through the campground, and I mean, right through. Our site, right on the ocean, couldn’t have been more than about 150 feet from the tracks. And we aren’t talking one or two trains every few days – we’re talking 8-10 trains a DAY! Most of them were Amtrak passenger trains, but there were a few of the familiar rolling rumbles of the freight trains we know so well from Florida. There was one train that came through every morning at 4 a.m. and that driver would just lay on the horn as he went through. I gotta say, it’s pretty hard to sleep though a train whistle blasting through the air only 150 feet from your head!
Another point to mention is how charming Carpinteria has become. We lived right near there for many years – Chelsea’s first 3 years in school were in Carpinteria, and we loved it even then. It’s managed to keep all the charm of a very small town, while having awesome restaurants, a good number of services, and very nice people. The downtown is well kept, and is very inviting. We wish in retrospect that we had stayed another few days.
Signing off from Carpinteria CA…