Daily Archives: October 12, 2014

October 12, 2014 Ventura Beach, California

Hello from beautiful Ventura Beach!  We thought we would do a quick blog update to fill you in on what we have been doing since leaving Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park.

We headed first to Santa Maria, California, a farming community about twelve miles from the ocean.  We planned on hanging out there for a few days until the beginning of the Winnebago rally we had signed up to attend.  While in Santa Maria we stayed at their nice fairgrounds with full hookup sites.  Even though the fairgrounds was right across the street from the Santa Maria High School, it was very quiet and peaceful and we certainly enjoyed our stay there.

Craving the beach, we spent a few days at the state park in Pismo Beach enjoying the ocean views and incredible sunsets.  IMG_20140928_184428~2

Next we headed to Paso Robles, in the wine country of central California.  We attended a California state Winnebago rally there.  We were a bit like fish out of water because everyone else was from California and knew and traveled with each other on a regular basis.  We were the strangers from Florida, but everyone was very welcoming and friendly.  Each night at dinner we were able to sit at a table with new people so we got to meet a lot of people and learn about their beautiful state.  California was having record breaking temperatures while we were there and daytime highs were near 100 each day.  The saving grace was it would cool down to the 50’s at night.  Even so, we longed to get near the ocean.

Our next stop was Ventura Beach.  Bill read where Ventura County had several county parks right on the beach with full hookups.  The tricky part was they are first come first serve and you take whatever site is free when you get there.  We decided to take a chance since we had a back up plan in case the park was full.  As it turned out the first night we had to take a less desirable site but the next morning someone left and we were able to grab a site facing the ocean with full hookups.  We fell in love with our site where we could see the ocean all day and  go to sleep at time to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore.  We loved it here so much we decided to cancel our reservation at an RV park in Malibu and stay in Ventura Beach for ten days instead of the scheduled three.  IMG_2562

On Sunday the waves were higher than usual and we watched surfers riding the waves from our front window. IMG_2595 Suddenly we saw several dolphins swimming along with the surfers, occasionally jumping high out of the water.  It was an amazing sight and it was as if the dolphins were showing the surfers how it really should be done.  Every time a dolphin would leap from the water the crowd of people standing nearby would cheer.  It was all very exciting but unfortunately it all happened too quickly to grab a camera as the dolphins quickly disappeared from sight and continued on their journey.

The beach here at Ventura is different than any we have been to thus far.  There are huge piles of rocks which form a barrier between the water and the land.  Normally there are steps at the campground which take you down to the beach.  But during high tide the waves crash on theIMG_2579 IMG_2560 rocks and block access to the beach since the bottom steps are covered with water.  Once the water subsides and you can access the beach, the sand is very hard and easy to walk on.  You are literally walking on the bottom of the ocean floor.  There is no loose sand to walk through to get to the water.  We loved it because it made for great beach walking.  On Sunday during high tide some campers were standing on the top of the steps fishing and watching the surfers.  Suddenly a huge wave came crashing in and splashed water over top of them.  It was the first time I had seen the waves that high and it was funny to see the startled looks on their faces.  Nobody was hurt but they were drenched and the first thing they all did was check their cell phones to see if they were damaged.  That was another one of those times when I wished I had gotten a picture of their startled faces.  This is the first beach we have been to that did not have 24 hour beach access, and we did have to plan our beach walks around low tide when the steps and beach were accessible.

We loved, loved, loved our time here at Ventura Beach.  We easily could have stayed a monthIMG_20141008_150819 IMG_20141008_151105-1-1-1 or longer, but they have a 14 day limit and we had reservations at other parks we didn’t want to change.  There have been many places in our sixteen months on the road that have been hard to leave, but leaving this beautiful area was downright painful!  IMG_2557