I must admit I am happy to be away from the fog and cold of Port Hueneme. Half way to Vandenberg we came out of the fog and into the sunshine. It was so nice.
The Famcamp here at Vandenberg isn't really anything to write home about either. they are concrete pads with another pad with a picnic table. The spots are pretty close together and the internet only works if you are close to the office. There is also no cable TV.
We got into our spot and set up with no problem. Everything worked as it was supposed to. We ate a little lunch and then Rob fiddled with the external antenna and the hook ups. He actually picked up the 3 major networks. We off loaded the bikes and attached Bella's new basket to my mountain bike and went on a 10-mile seek and find ride. Bella did alright in her new little basket. She was a bit cold though I think. Perhaps a blanket would be a good addition.
After our bike ride we went to the Dinning Hall. On Air Force bases everyone, active and retired, can eat at the dinning hall. It was OK food. Very inexpensive. We watched TV and went to bed.
Oh; the shelf liners in the refrigerator and the new bars worked really well. Nothing fell out on my head after we arrived and I opened the door.
Saturday, 14 May; Vandenberg AFB; 59 and sunny. Yippee, sunshine!
Bella and I went for our morning stroll, then coffee and work on SEIS and the blog. After that Rob, Bella & I went for a 5 miler. We headed down toward the beach. We saw the ocean, but it was still a little ways away on foot. We did see some of the launch sites.
We had a fun day. After showering we drove out toward the Beach. We stopped in at the Rod and Gun club. Rob had never been on one before. I used to go to the one in Germany when I lived on the base there. This one wasn't really anything to write home about, but they do have a couple ranges that might be fun. We went down to the beach to check it out. Its called Wall beach. They have some kind of nesting bird this time of year so half the beach was closed. It also had a sign posted warning of sharks. Being both scuba divers and abalone divers signs like this always make the hair on the back of the neck stand up. The beach was beautiful, ad the dunes awesome.
We headed off base and further into the sunshine. I found a cool app called Roadtrippers. It tells you about cool places and events that are happening around your location. When I brought up our location it gave me a trip called Sideways Road Trip Through Santa Barbara. It tells about various places in Lompoc (where we are) Solvang, Buellton, Santa Maria, Santa Ynez, Los Olivos, and Goleta. Very cool. Right off the bat, driving through Lompoc we found The Days Inn Windmill - Buellton and AJ Spurs in Buellton. We did not stop at either one, but we did make note of them.
We are also, however on a Mission mission. Just on the outer edge of Solvang is the mission Santa Ynez. We drove through Solvang and toured the mission. It was a nice mission. They had a very cool statue of St Frances, the protector of Animals and a wolf. It had a ledge, so we set Bella on it and took a picture of her and St Francis.
We toured the grounds, the church and the gift shop. it was nice.
From the Mission we drove to the edge of Solvang and found a place to park so we could wander around. In 1995/96 I was based at Vandenberg AFB while going through CAS3 which is the Army's school for promotion to Major. Command and Staff Service School. while there a group of us went to Solvang, the famous Danish town for the day. Today it is totally different from what I remember it being back then. It is a cute town, a very touristy town, and a huge wine tasting town. here are some pics:
We read about Aebleskivers and decided we needed to try one, so we stopped at Arne's because he's famous for them:
They were pretty yummy and Bella really liked them.
From Solvang we continued on the Sideways trail and went to Los Olives. We stopped in at Epiphany's for some wine tasting. It was pretty yummy. they have a wonderful outdoors area with comfy couches and tables for enjoying your tasting. Then, as a final for the Sideways day we went to The Wine Merchant Cafe for dinner and a little more wine. It was fun
Sunday, 15 May; Vandenberg AFB. Overcast and dreary!
What's with the weather? I thought we left this behind in Hueneme. Same morning routine, Bella for a walk and pee, coffee, email, face book, and this morning I started reading a cute book. We decided to jog over to the gym where they have a Fit Trail. It was a mile over to the course, and then the course is 1.5 miles with 20 exercise stations. It was a good workout. Bella liked it because she could be off the leash. She wasn't to crazy about the workout stations tho. She really is a scaredy cat in a doggy costume.We ran back so it was a total of 3.5 miles with the 20 stations.
It is Sunday which means golf tournaments on TV. Personally, I prefer football Sundays, but on a cold dreary day watching a golf tournament is ok.
I worked on School stuff; SEIS, correspondence to the team, etc. I also worked on the blog, but since it is Sunday and everyone is around the internet was really slow.
To break the monotony we decided to go out and play the golf pitching game. We both did a little bit better, but we both continue to be pretty bad at it.
At 5:30 we decided to go to the dinning hall because they are supposed to have taco salad for dinner. We got there, but the T salad looked terrible so we both had Mongolian grill. It was pretty good. As we were leaving there was a young Airman standing outside, freezing, looking like he was looking for a ride. We offered and took him to his billets. He is at Vandenberg attending Missile Maintenance School. He said it is 79 days long and he is graduating on the 2nd of June. He is from Virginia Beach, VA.
After dropping him off we took a drive out to the beach. It was a real pretty drive and while we were out there we spotted two whales that were swimming along the shore line. We followed them for a little bit. It was very cool.
On the way back we found a a sign for a Ronald Regan Memorial. It is the Ronald Regan Missile Defense Site dedicated in 23 March 1983.
We came back and watched 60 minute's special on Morley Safer. It was really good
Monday, 16 May, 2016; Vandenberg AFB,
It started out overcast and dreary. Bella & I went out for our morning walk and I was not happy about the fog. But, as we were drinking our coffee the sun started breaking through.
I had an IEP on my schedule for 8:30, but apparently the time was never confirmed by the parent. I worked on other School stuff until 9 am.
We had a T-time at 10:00 and by that time the sun was out. Unfortunately it was windy, and it was a coastal wind and it was cold. We took Bella with us and even though we put a sweater on her she was shivering by the end. I decided at hole 15, that I am finished playing golf on the coast. It is just to darn cold. I told Rob that if it is cold and foggy in Monterey when we go there next week I am not going to play golf. I will go inland, into the sunshine, and go shopping or wine tasting and he can freeze playing golf. The course wasn't in very good shape either. It may have been due to the drought we have had over the past several years. The Teeing grounds and greens were pretty and green, but the fairways were all dead grass. It was difficult finding the white balls among the golden dead grass.
As a reward for our endurance we decided to go to town. We drove on out toward Solvang, but we went to the Mission that we missed the other day. It was La Purisima Mission State Historic Park. They have a nice inside museum in the Visitor Center and then you can go out and tour the gardens, corals, the church and some of the shops. Visitors can step back in time to the world of 1820 through furnished and restored buildings, representative breeds of livestock, and 1860 acres. It was interesting.
We decided to jump back on the Sideways tour and found ourselves out in the middle of nowhere (I have no idea how anyone would find it if you didn't plug it into you GPS) anyway. if was a lovely winery called Sanford Winery. Beautiful place and the wines were not bad. Not so great that we were compelled to join or even buy a bottle, but not a bad place to enjoy a glass or two.
From there we decided to get something to eat, so we went Buellton, to the Hitching Post. It was also in Sideways. The thing that makes the Hitching Post so awesome on a Monday night is that they take all their unsold steaks from the weekend and grind them up and make their burgers out of them. They are quite delicious. Sorry, no pictures.
From there we came back to the cold and gloomy base and our home on wheels.
Tuesday, 17 May; still foggy, but not quite so cold as Bella and I went out for our "first thing walk."
I had 3 IEPs scheduled this morning from 9 - 1, so I was quite tied up. Rob took the opportunity to ride his road bike. He rode out to the ocean again, to the spot where we say the Whales on Sunday. He really enjoyed the ride. It had been since February that he had gone on a long ride. It was 32 miles round trip.
He got back around 12:30, showered and waited for me to finish up. We decided to drive out to Santa Maria. It is a nice town. We found a really cool park at the far end of town that had a stream running through part of it and a nice 18-hold Frisbee golf course. We were bummed that we did not have our disks with us. Bella really enjoyed it, as we let her run around as we walked. She was a little disappointed that there wasn't a single squirrel in the entire park. I wonder how they are able to control the little varmints. Really, there were none in the trees, on the ground, or any holes of any kind. Its actually pretty nice, although she would prefer to have the little critters to sneak up on and then chase up the tree and have them yak at her.
Back to the Rig for dinner and the Season finale of NCIS, I cannot believe DiNozzo is going to be leaving. It was terrible when Kate was killed, and I was not sure I was going to survive without Ziva, but how can the show possibly be the same with out Dinohzzo? Well, I am looking forward to watching both NCIS s tonight
Wow! didn't see that coming. Im glad it ended that way. Sweet that they have a child! Speaking of child:
Bella loves her Dad!
Wednesday; 18 May; Cold and dreary. Coastal fog again
We had a fun day. I had two IEPs this morning. Actually only one, because he parent was a no-show for the second, but the team met without her. It was dreary here at Vandenberg, but supposed to be sunny and 80 degrees in Solvang, so we climbed back onto the Sideways trail and went to the River Course at Alisal to play golf. It was a beautiful course. Really pretty and green. It was nice and warm, but windy. It was a warm wind though, unlike the freezing wind at Hueneme. There were no houses on the course which was actually nice. Bella liked it as well.
We even played fairly well. I was really looking forward to a glass of wine at the grill afterward, but it was closed. When we arrived on one of the Tee Boxes there was a turtle right in the middle of it. There is a pond next to the fairway. I picked the critter up and took in down next to the water. It seemed happy when I left.
So, we went into Solvang to find a place that had PuPu's and wine. As it turned out it was wine Trail Wednesday. It was late and we didn't want to visit the 8 stops so we continued our search and we found a place (Cecco Ristorante) that was featuring 5 wines and all kinds of yummy appetizers as well. We thoroughly enjoyed a couple hours of tasting and sampling.
Thursday, 19 May; really foggy, drippy, wet. We are leaving Vandenberg!
Really fun day today.
I had an IEP meeting at 9:00 that went really well. While I was working on school stuff Rob was outside packing things up and getting ready for us to move. After my meeting and I finished my Pivot work I finished packing things up on the inside. We hooked up and hit the road.
Our immediate destination is the Elks at San Louis Obispo. We have two vehicles; my car (which I am driving) and the Dodge Monster Ram which is pulling the RV. We baked the truck with the RV in the parking lot of the Elks Lodge in San Louis Obispo and then drove to Morrow Bay. Neither of us have been there for years. It was fun. First we drove through the marina area from one end to the other, then we parked and walked from one end to the other. It was foggy and chili, but it didn't seem to matter as much because it was at the ocean.
The "rock" was awesome.
We stopped at the Blue Sky Bistro, which was recommended by someone we met while walking, for lunch. It was nice. Right on the marina, the food was decent. As we walked we watched a crab boat unload its load of crab, sea lions begging for food, harbor seal and most fun of all, sea otters.
The Sea Otters are so cute. Some were actually sleeping in the water on top of small patch of sea grass.
It was cool. We also watched a class of students who were laying on the dock reaching under and scraping sea life off the underside. They were pretty thrilled by their findings.
We drove back to SLO and picked up the rig and continued our Journey to Monterey. Our final destination for the day is Monterey Pines RV Park on NSA Monterey. It's main activity is Naval Post Graduate School. It was difficult to find because it is on the Golf Course. You literally have to drive into the golf course and check in for the RV Park at the Pro Shop. Who'd a Thunk!!!
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