Bolsa Chica State Beach, here we come!

OK!  How y'all been?  Hoping well.  We're getting back into the swing of things in the moho again.  We had been feeling that it was odd not going to work everyday since we've been doing it since the end of April of last year.  So we were kinda lost at times in the last couple of weeks in that we just didn't quite know what to do with ourselves.  It's starting to pass though.  Whew!  I got some nifty wood working stuff for Christmas, and have started to use some of it, and doing some other things, hopefully this blog as well.  Gotta get some more pix still.  Darn the bad luck!

Wilderness Lakes was nice, not just for the hot tub and the water fowl that like to talk politics at weird hours, but there were a lot of good folks there, and we'd see them everyday when we'd walk around the park, which was about 1.2 miles.  We've decided to take part in a 5k or two, maybe more, later this year, and it was great way to start training.  For those of you who've done a 5k already, if you've got some hints or something along those lines on how to train an old man who hasn't run any distance for 30 years, please send them.  Thanks.

The campers and staff at Wilderness Lakes seemed quite nice for the most part.  Got to talk to our neighbors a little, and found out that one of them was gonna be a camp host at Harris Beach State Park in Oregon during the time that we're gonna be there.  So we'll connect up with them as well while we're there.  The other neighbor we didn't get to talk with much, but they had very friendly dogs and came to greet me when I was outside one time. 

As I said last week, we were backed up next to the a canal where there were ducks, geese, and other water fowl that I wasn't able to identify (not that I know those birds well anyway!).  One of those unidentified birds acted like he owned our campsite and the new neighbors.  In the picture below, it's the bird on the power pedestal, and from what I can tell it's a night heron.  This bird seemed to like to perch on the power pedestal, the neighbors picnic table, our picnic table, the neighbors tent, etc..., it was always in the area.  Sorry the picture is so bad, didn't quite have the nack for getting the good picture at that time.  Darn the bad luck!

After we dropped Jeff off at Teen Challenge Benedict Castle in Riverside the previous Saturday, we picked him up a week later to spend the day with him.  It was good to talk to him and find out about his first week of work, which he feels pretty good about.  We went to the Creation Museum in Santee, Ca., spending more than a couple hours there, then went to see my nephew, David, in San Diego spending several hours with him and having a great meal before traveling back to Riverside to drop Jeff off again.

Although the hot tub at Wilderness Lakes was hard to leave, we did so Sunday morning first to go to worship with Jeff at Benedict Castle, and then to travel the 75 miles to Bolsa Chica State Beach on the coast of California, getting here around 4 PM.  The drive wasn't as hairy as we've taken part in on other freeways of southern California, although there was more than enough traffic for us, as we prefer the back country roads with little traffic.  Upon getting here, we were able to pull into our spot and get set up with a minimal amount of trouble which was in the form of a puddle in the back of the space we pulled into.  This puddle precluded me from hooking up the water hose as I just didn't feel like stepping into the puddle and getting my feet wet.  Yes, you can color me a wimp as I'm at the beach now and should be ok with getting my feet wet, right?  Nope!  The puddle was from a storm that had gone through earlier Saturday, but was gone later Sunday night.  Not to worry, I connected the water hose Monday morning, although we had plenty of fresh water in our tank still the same.  

For those of you who haven't been to Bolsa Chica, it's basically an asphalt parking lot for RVs as you can see in the picture below.  The hookups are for water and electric only, but the dump station is in another parking lot on the way out.

The view of the ocean out our front window looks like below.  Although we're about 100 yards away from the water, it's still a great place to be near to it, and Katie wanted to come here for that very reason.

If you look closely at the above picture, you should notice a wanna-be barricade pylon in the fence opening allowing you to get to a walkway, or to get to the beach.  When we got up Monday morning, we found road de-constructing machinery all over the place, and they took out the pavement of the walkway which the pylon is keeping folks from getting to.  Currently, it looks like the below picture.  I'm thinking they'll be putting asphalt down tomorrow and the walkway will be opened for public usage on Thursday (two days from today).  Not all of the 3.9 mile walkway is torn up right now, just the part in front of the campground and a couple of other parking lots south of where we're at right now.

Katie is spending time with her sister, Karen, today doing some shopping for our upcoming cruise starting on Sunday.  Having cruised in the Navy, I'm looking forward to all the things that my ship, the USS Wabash, didn't have.  I'm thinking it won't be hard to find many improvements in shipboard life from what I had in the Navy 30 years ago when it was a luxury to have the middle bunk of three bunks!

Not a whole lot else is happening right now, with the exception of folks waling by, or driving their rigs into the campground (parking lot, really, ok?).  Looks like our neighbor to the south is coming in and they're getting ready to park next to us.  I'm gonna watch.

Have a blessed day.