Beach Day at Montana de Oro

The day began cold and bright. The kids played a practical joke on us, pretending that Little Starlet had gone out to the toilet block and failed to return. In fact she was hidden on the over-cab bed behind Deep Thought. We fell for it totally.

We decided to head over to Montana de Oro (Mountain of Gold), which is about 45 minutes drive from Pismo Beach. All nice and easy, but when we got there the parking was murder. Turns out that a fun run was being held in the park today - the website said nothing about it - so we ended up parking along the side of the road in a space that was clearly too narrow for us; but Hubby did a fantastic job of squirreling us into the space. We had to get in and out of the van through the driver's door, but that was a small hardship.

We walked down to Skooner's Cove which has an attractive curve of coarse sandy beach, framed by sheer, crumbling cliffs. This was not a swimming beach, as the waves were very rough and there was clearly a rip tide at work; but the sea pooled in a small lagoon to one side, which allowed Little Starlet to run in and out of the waves and, eventually, to get wet from tip to toe. Of course, she made a couple of friends and was happy as larry for two hours. Deep Thought lay on a towel with her book, pretty much refusing to get up and certainly not to play with her sister (whose birthday was today).

While I assembled a picnic lunch back in the RV, the weather turned foggy and cold, so we took the hint and drove back to our campground. Hubby did a marvellous job negotiating the very narrow roads in the Montana park. He says that there's no need to find any more challenging drives for him, that will do.

Back at the Pismo Beach campground, we played around videoing ourselves for a project Deep Thought is doing for school (on the patriot hero Molly Pitcher - was she real or legend?); and then we took a walk down to the Oceana Dunes beach to see the sunset. We didn't manage to get run over by any trucks or ATVs on the beach, but we were still pretty offended by the way five miles of beautiful coast has been turned into a road.

Hubby and Deep Thought took many photos, which will be posted later.

Tomorrow, into the Central Valley.