SoCal Trip & San Diego Van Meetup

At the end of January, Meowmy and I took a lovely trip down to Southern California for a week.  We headed down Highway 101 towards Santa Barbara, stopping for the night at Arroyo Hondo Vista Point between Gaviota and Goleta.  It’s a perfect overnight spot on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, where we watched a beautiful sunset and met a local van dweller who stays there often.

After a nice stroll down to the beach, we continued South with quick stops in Santa Barbara and Emma Wood State Beach, just North of Ventura.  We saw a lot of beach front RV campgrounds between Carpinteria and Faria Beach too, something to note for future trips.  Then we headed to Aliso Creek Rest Area, a popular overnight stop a few miles after San Onofre State Beach and ten miles North of Oceanside.  Meowmy highly recommends getting there before 8pm because it’s fill up quickly, despite being a fairly large rest area with a lot of parking.  Meowmy took me for a long walk around the big park, I even climbed some trees and made some new human fans that took photos of me.  Due to it’s busy nature, this rest stop can be quite noisy at night with all the traffic coming through, especially the big rig trucks.

The next morning we headed to Fiesta Island for the San Diego Vanlife Connections Meetup.  We were one of the first ones there so we got a nice spot with a view of Mission Bay.  Over 100 vans and RV’s showed up that day for a fun and successful meetup!  Meowmy made a lot of new friends and many people liked our turn-key solution rig.  There were a lot of great van builds to see and the night ended with a bon fire.  A bunch of vanners decided to overnight outside the Fiesta Island gates, but it was pretty busy that night, so we didn’t stay there.  We heard that you could overnight at Ocean Beach Park as it’s only closed from 2-4am but Meowmy thought it looked a bit shady, so we headed to the San Diego Zoo, where we heard you can overnight in the parking lot without any trouble.  What a peaceful place to spend the night!

Our fourth day consisted of driving back North to Westlake Village where Meowmy visited with her best friend from college.  Lisa took us on her pontoon on Westlake Lake and I enjoyed watching all the ducks and birds.  We spent the night in Agoura Hills, then took off to visit Kyna, the lead singer of the band The Go Ahead that Meowmy manages.  They went out bar hopping in the historic Montrose downtown area where some movies have been filmed while I lounged in the RV.

We took off for Grover Beach the next morning to visit JC and Carly who just had a baby, then headed to Paso Robles where Meowmy went cider tasting with her friend Heather and we spent the night watching the amazing Super Blue Moon.  The next morning we headed home.  What a great week!

First Roadtrip To California’s Central Coast

Meowmy took me to a week long trip to the beautiful Central Coast of California in February!  I was a little afraid at first because this was the longest time I’ve ever been in a vehicle, but I got used to it and got comfortable in the RV, especially on Meowmy’s lap!

After a three hour trip down Highway 101, we ended up in Grover Beach and visited my human’s good friend JC who let me explore his house.  This is were I met my new cat friend Helena, who’s the cutest tuxedo girl cat with a mustache and racer stripe.  After the visit and a great dinner, we spent our first night in the Majestic near the Shell Beach area of Pismo Beach along a nice frontage street along the 101.  Meowmy was a bit restless at first as we cuddled together for our first overnight in the RV.  The next morning we took a walk on Avila Beach, followed by breakfast while enjoying the beautiful view.  We took a drive along Shell Beach, enjoyed another walk near the cliffs watching the crashing waves, then headed to Dinosaur Caves Park for some more exploring.  I haven’t been to so many places along the ocean before and enjoyed every moment of it!  After a nice nap in the RV, we headed to Montaña de Oro to watch the sunset and then found a lovely overnight spot in Los Osos.

We woke up to a rainy day, but that didn’t stop us from taking a morning walk in Morro Bay.  Meowmy took me on an enjoyable adventure around Morro Rock and let me explore the terrain.  From there we drove up to Cayucos, which is a lovely little town along the beach.  My human spent the rest of the day visiting her high school friend and family while I enjoyed a hilltop view of the beach in the RV.  The day ended up with fun walk at dusk, followed by movie time and falling asleep to the sound of waves.

Our last day was beautiful and sunny, so my human and I went for our usual morning walk to enjoy the great weather before the long drive home.  We found a nice beach between Morro Bay and Cayucos, which turned out to be a dog beach.  We stayed in the dunes and off the beaten path to avoid the dogs and in that process found an awesome human-made fort made out of driftwood!!   I had a blast exploring everything, climbing and sniffing around, finding all the ways in and out.

This is were our journey gets a bit crazy.  After an enjoyable 45 minutes on this beautiful beach having absolutely no issues, I had my first bad dog encounter.  We were about the walk back to the Majestic when a smaller dog decided to confront me.  I was really scared and since I was on a leash, I couldn’t run away as I hoped.  Instead I hissed and defended myself, but the dog wouldn’t leave me alone and kept trying to bite me!  Meowmy tried to pick me up to get me away from the dog, but I accidentally scratched her hand and arm.  The dog owner, who wasn’t doing anything to help the situation up until then, finally stepped in and got his dog to leave me alone.  I was really shook up from the experience, so my human and I waited until the path back to the vehicles was clear of people, and more importantly, free of dogs.  Meowmy picked me up and just as we got to the parking lot, a big truck drove in with a HUGE dog in the back.  I kind of freaked out and dug my claws into my human’s head until we got to the RV where I could finally relax.  Poor Meowmy had to clean out all the wounds and I felt so bad that I did that to her.  But she was so understanding and let me lay on her lap the whole drive home, enjoying some more ocean views along the way, including San Simeon and Ragged Point.

Despite the dog incident, I had a great time on my first roadtrip and look forward to the next one!