Camping World - Valencia, CA

Whew - after 3 days hanging out in their waiting room or at a local Starbucks that’s down the street, it’s nice to be done with all the items on our long list of annual checks/repairs/improvements. Moving forward, we have decided to do repairs and improvements when we leave FOR our tours and do the annual checks/repairs AFTER the tour. That way we can spread the waiting time out over 2 times in the year (Spring and Fall). This will probably up the costs a bit but the agony of being without our home during the day, day after day, wait will be worth it.

Karma and the Dunes - Oceano, CA

As we pack up to leave the Central Coast, Karma got her last run on the Dunes. She has gone out almost every day we have been here (94). Ruthi has worked with Karma on her recall (returning when called). This has never been a good behavior for Karma. The only sure way to get her to “come” was to have her tennis ball in one hand and a treat (really just a piece of her regular kibble) in the other. For the last week, Ruthi has let Karma off leash and running free on the Dunes. Again this is still a fairly well controlled environment, but Karma came back every time and even once did an abrupt u-turn on Ruthi’s whistle. So, progress is being made.

More RV Park neighbors - Oceano, CA

On the front side of our rig, lives a family of 4 (Mom, Dad, girl 14yo and boy 13yo). The father has just gotten off disability and also works at the Solar Farm in Lompoc. Their rig is a 39’ 6” trailer (regulations say that 40’ or longer is a mobile home; less is a trailer). With a couple of slide outs their space comes out to about 400 sq ft. That’s 100 sq ft more than we have. They do use the outside picnic table for the kids to do their homework on and occasionally dinner.
With both of our histories of teaching junior/senior high students, we have a good sensitivity to the challenges of living with teenagers anywhere let alone within a 400 sq ft space. The kids like Karma and enjoy walking her after they get home from school and finish their homework. They are chatty and interesting young people, seem very respectful of the parents. It could be that they are just entering their teenage years and the storms will come later.

Besides the 4 of them, they have 2 cats who have discovered the perfect way to irritate Karma. While she seems able to deal with cats in other people’s houses, she doesn’t have any patience for cats (rabbits, squirrels, or armadillos for that matter) who are outside our rig - it’s her ‘hall-monitor role’. Anyway, back to these clever cats. One at a time, they will push back the curtain and sun themselves so that Karma can see them through the side window of her crate. They first make sure they have her attention – identified by loud shrill barking (Karma’s, that is, not the cats) – then proceed to clean each paw, side, ear, eye, etc, etc, etc.

We are working very hard with Karma to assure her that she can growl or “woof” to let us know a cat is again in the window but no horribly painful (to us) barking. By the time we leave, we hope to have made some progress on that behavior.

RV Park Neighbors - Oceano, CA

While this park is not tightly pack as some, the rigs are close to each other. We have interesting neighbors on both sides. On our back side lives a young couple here because their newborn was in the local hospital due to poor treatment at a doctor’s office in their hometown. So, they are only here for a couple of weeks. The dad, like a lot of park residents, works at the huge Solar Farm being constructed in the Lompoc area.

The reason I mention this young couple is because of an offensive tattoo the young man has on his upper arm. It appears that he might be trying to remove it as it looks like it has been rubbed out with a dark smudge. He has Iron Crosses on his chest surrounding his nipples – OK Ruthi noticed because he goes by the rear of our rig to get to the park public bathrooms. But one evening after the baby was back at the trailer, we both were talking with the husband and wife (or boy/girl friends – we aren’t sure) and adoring the baby when Ruthi saw the Swastika on his upper arm. Again, it looked like he is trying to “erase” the tat.

Honestly with all of our travels across America in various neighborhoods with no idea of the people who live there, this is the first time we have felt in danger for ourselves. It was clear that during our discussion with the young couple that he didn’t get that we were a lesbian couple. His questions indicated that he just wasn’t thinking about us as a couple. They were friendly and did nothing more overt to threaten us than have that particular tattoo.

Boots’ Eye Infection Recovery - Oceano, CA

Finally, Boots can move on. The infection is completely healed, not repaired but healed. Boots has had her lower left eye lid corrected to prevent the “rolling in” and irritation of the eye ball. She will need to get a new prescription check and possibly new lens for the left. While vision is expected to improve it will never be corrected to 20:20 in the left.

It has been a hard 5 months for Boots to have limited vision, pain, discomfort and needing only time to heal. Both of the ophthalmologists (regular cornea exams and plastic surgeon for the repair) were very good and provided good health care.

Tail Light Out – Oceano, CA

Someone pointed out to us that our right rear taillight was burned out. So, we made an appointment to have that fixed and scheduled an oil change too. So, we dropped the truck off for a half-day at the local Ford dealer. Well, 4 hours later, they called to tell us that there had been a slight accident. While pulling our truck into the bay to work on it, they hit the wall and damaged the passenger side of the truck bed.

They said they would need the rest of the week to do the body work and would provide us with a rental until the truck was fixed. We were not very angry about it – a small car meant we could go to the city (San Luis Obispo) and have no problem finding parking. I think they were surprised by our calm response. Also, we are staying here in Oceano until the end of October so we weren’t negatively impacted by the schedule.

So, we got a Mazda and were off. We have found renting cars a fun way to check out the different manufacturers/models. The only thing we liked about this Mazda was the emergency brake mechanism. You push down to engage the emergency brake and then you push down again to disengage – very clever and easy to work. Otherwise the model was very poorly designed – mirrors didn’t really show enough to be helpful backing up, the seats did not lower so you hit your head upon entering the car and have to stretch out to reach the ground when exiting, gas mileage was worse than the truck’s (12 MPG), etc.

Nature’s Pumice – Oceano, CA

Walking Karma at least twice a day on the dunes has really smoothed out Ruthi’s feet. The sand is so deep and soft that she rarely wears her flip flops out on the dunes. The very fine particles have rubbed her calluses off. What a much easier remedy than sitting in the shower/tub rubbing away.