Neither one of us had ever been to Lompoc, CA, before despite driving by on US-101 numerous times in the past. I learned in school that Lompoc was home to the world’s largest deposits of diatomaceous earth and maybe that’s why I had never gone that way. In any event, we decided to pop on over that way just to see what was there.
We started by driving back to CA-154 northbound until we reached a roundabout where we could go west on CA-246 through Santa Ynez and Solvang where we picked up some cheap diesel fuel before continuing across US-101 and toward the coast, Vandenburg (the town) and Vandenburg (the military facility). Probably due to recent rains, the countryside along the highway was just gorgeous with large expanses of emerald green pastures and hills. It reminded me of Ireland which is strange because I have never been to the British Isles but it did look like I speculate Ireland may look.
We drove through Lompoc which is a nice little community with dreadful traffic management caused primarily by traffic signals which seemed to be permanently red in all directions. The traffic is not quite as horrible as Solvang but there is not much to see in Lompoc and maybe that’s why cursing from motorists is not as prevalent.
After spending an inordinate amount of time in Lompoc at a dead stop, we turned south on CA-1 which is bordered by spectacular scenery. We were obliged to pull over a few times to allow those less appreciative of the surroundings pass us. CA-1 wanders around the south side of Point Conception for a ways before intersecting US-101 at Gaviota, north of Santa Barbara. On the way south, we tried a route called Refugio Road but the road started out crummy and went downhill as we progressed. If we had a four wheel drive or motorcycles we may have been able to use Refugio but we didn’t so after about 3 miles, we chickened out and turned around headed back to 101. We turned south on 101 until we could again turn north on CA-154 and return to our campground in the Santa Ynez Valley. It was a very nice drive today.
There are some pix if you click here

Not much on the agenda today. We did some insurance research about the benefits of moving our vehicle registration to South Dakota where we have a legal residence, i.e. a mail box. We had heard from numerous RVers that South Dakota had no state income tax and vehicle registrations and insurance were supposed to be cheap there. Last year we acquired a mailing address in South Dakota while passing through as a preamble to moving our legal residence there.
Peggy has been doing most of the research about insurance and registration and today she got it all onto a spreadsheet where we could get some comparisons. As it turns out, we would need to purchase real estate in South Dakota to get Obamacare (highly subsidized)insurance there. That was not going to happen primarily because we get such a great deal from Covered California. As it turns out, auto and trailer insurance was not cheaper in South Dakota than the current policies we have in California. The state tax issue also went away since the low taxes in California for folks with lousy retirement incomes are offset by the cheap medical insurance to an extent greater than moving to South Dakota and paying substantially more for medical insurance. Apparently, we are just a couple of hicks with a nifty mailing address in South Dakota but a primary residence in California.
I spent part of the day cleaning out a K&N air filter for Charlotte and, once I finish all the preparation, will replace the air filter we installed last year in New Berlin, Pennsylvania. Gotta keep Charlotte breathing easily if I want to continue to enjoy her wonderful horsepower.

Exploration was the task for today and we were delighted, especially after doing some miserable but necessary maintenance yesterday. We had some great home-cooked versions of Egg McMuffins for breakfast and I can unequivocally state that ours are better than Mickey Dee’s. Ours had the benefit of non-transparent ham steak pieces, bacon, an egg with the proper amount of yolk, Tillamook extra sharp cheddar and pan-fried English Muffins. I’m quite sure they were bad for me but tasty nonetheless.
After chow, we piled into Charlotte and drove the 5 miles back to CA-154 and headed south up to San Marcos Pass. There we turned east Camino Cielo, which turned out to be a very curvy and quite steep series of roads bordered on both sides with absolutely stunning scenery. Peggy was the original driver but she elected to turn the driving chores over to me once she had driven up the road a bit. Peggy ain’t real skookum on driving on narrow, serpentine roads with dropoffs alongside that would surely mean death if the driver were to accidentally veer from the straight-and-narrow. The road has very sharp curves and sightlines around the corners are so short that almost a complete stop is required before creeping slowly around the bends. Almost unfortunately, we did encounter a couple small cars coming too fast the other way and got to enjoy their horror-filled faces as they realized they were going to run into the grill of a 3/4 ton pickup without terrifying correction alongside the tops of very unforgiving cliffs. Nobody wrecked but I’ll wager they got to clean out their trousers when they got home.
Camino Cielo does have a redeeming feature, however. The road runs directly on top or right next to the ridge separating Santa Barbara and the coast from the inland Santa Ynez Valley. Views to each side are magnificent. On the south side, the cities of Santa Barbara, Goleta and Isla Vista border the Pacific and right offshore the Channel Islands are plainly evident. On the north side, the entire Santa Ynez Valley and surrounding mountains are the treat. In the distance, looking east, we could see some snow-capped peaks that appeared to be about 25 or 30 miles distant. Our campground is at an elevation a bit below 1000 feet but by the time we were driving on the ridge we were approaching 4000 foot elevation. The skies were clear. We probably could not have selected a better day for this little spin.
At the far end of the ridge, we descended into Summerland after stopping by the house my grandparents lived in on Hot Springs Road in Montecito. We returned back to our temporary home via US-101 and CA-154 to Rancho Oso.
Two pictures are available if you click here

Today was a maintenance day for the Barbarian Invader. We have had a slide-out room gasket loose and fouled up since right after we bought the trailer and the time had finally come to fix it with some very effective but extremely messy sealant we bought in Ohio last year.
If the bean counters at the manufacturing facility had let the builders use proper sealants when they built the trailer, this repair effort would not have been necessary. Instead, during manufacture the builders elected to use no sealant whatsoever and gaskets suspended from above using only friction to keep them in place soon were overwhelmed by simple gravity and fell from their perches.
One of the reasons why the builders did not use sealants is they are extremely difficult to apply in-place unless you are less than 5″ in height, have more than the usual issue of elbows and wrists and/or were a previous circus contortionist. After clearing all our stuff out of the way, we collapsed the slide-outs to a position where we could work on them and we started. Considerable grunting and cursing ensued, followed by hurried clean-ups of sealant accidentally ejected from a large tube while application to the nearly invisible target was attempted. After some time, we believed we had finished but found some problems when we attempted to return the slide-outs to their extended position.
Again the slide-outs were retracted and after some additional applications, spills, cursing, finger-crossing and application of pure will, the slide-outs were again returned to their extended positions without apparent issue. I just hope I have not sealed the slide-outs in their extended position permanently. I’ll let you know when we need to move on February 5.

It is wonderful to be back on the road. Little, bitty things can become whole-day activities and we don’t feel even a slight amount of remorse over possibly getting nothing done on any particular day. It is joyous.
Today we drove up Stagecoach Road near our campground and continued under the Cold Springs Bridge, what was the longest steel girder span in the state when it was finished in 1964. CA-154 is carried on that span. Also up Stagecoach Road is the Cold Springs Tavern where, according to their ads, “Dusty stagecoaches stopped here 120 years ago.” It looks like they might be right as there are some tiny, rustic buildings with crummy foundations lodged in a sliver of a ravine. Parking here is at a premium if you are the fifth car to arrive.
We continued onto CA-154 back down the hill to the Santa Barbara area where we connected with US-101 to a Costco in Goleta. After some strategic grocery shopping, we sat down outside the store for Polish dogs and Caesar Salads before continuing with our drive. Unfortunately for me, almost as soon as I stuffed the Polish dog down my grocery hole, I was seized by an unpleasant and powerful gastric distress so we pulled over at a diesel stop where I was able to reach the john with only moments to spare. I’m glad it wasn’t one of those service stations w/o restrooms.
Explosion averted, we headed back over the pass to Rancho Oso with our loot, taking the Stagecoach Road detour a second time. It is a very nice albeit extremely narrow road but the scenery is spectacular for the passenger. The driver should mind his task because driving even a little off the road here would be fatal and there are no guardrails. On the last bit of Paradise Road near our campground we did get to see a group of about 7 big wild turkeys and they were all colored up in their best plumage. Seems pretty plain why Benjamin Franklin thought these birds should be our national emblem. They are gorgeous.
A couple pix are available if you click here

Our adventure for 2016 is gearing up. Today we gathered up all our stuff and departed Thousand Trails Wilderness Lakes in Menifee, CA, headed northwest. We feel like this is a good thing since we are no longer close to home and we get back to travelling. Wilderness Lakes is a good campground for amenities but there is little to suggest wilderness there. It is located in some farmland at the edge of rampant housing development and has few qualities that would be confused with the concept of wilderness.
We drove through that traffic catastrophe called “Los Angeles” while on our way to the Thousand Trails Rancho Oso campground near Solvang, north of Santa Barbara. We noted in the L.A. basin that there are numerous drivers that either talk or type into their phones while meandering from lane to lane, some folks that refuse to look in their driver’s side mirror while merging until it is too late to avoid blood-curdling and tire squealing idiocy, many motorists who prefer to drive shitty little Japanese cars with cheesy aftermarket additions making them low and noisy but no faster and the always-popular #2 lane residents moseying along while maintaining a speed substantially lower than all the other traffic. It is madness, particularly if unaccustomed to the inconsiderate, reckless and terminally stupid. One might think that rear view mirrors, turn signals and side windows are merely expensive, extraneous extras provided to local drivers that appear to be completely unfamiliar with their use.
After passing through L.A. and the San Fernando Valley, traffic lightened up some and we drove onto US-101 headed through Santa Barbara where we turned north on CA-154, a steep climb over the San Marcos Pass into the Santa Ynez Valley. We left CA-154 at Paradise Road, drove the 5 miles up to the TT Rancho Oso driveway and the remaining mile into the campground. We were able to find a gorgeous slot in the highest tier on the hill which is the RV section of the site.
Our new Verizon-connected phone works here, a welcome change from our old Virgin/Sprint phone we had the last time we were here and that provided no phone nor data connection whatsoever. The last time we were here, California was within the grips of a terrible drought and all the surrounding vegetation was brown, except the oak trees. Now that there has been some recent rainfall, the place is changed and quite green. I have a very flimsy policy of not going to the same place more than once but that policy is in serious jeopardy of being revised because it was definitely worth coming here again.

When we originally booked into our camping spot at Wilderness Lakes here in Menifee, we were scheduled to depart on 1/25/16. We have decided to ignore that and depart for our next Thousand Trails RV park north of Santa Barbara. It is called Rancho Oso and we have been there a couple times before. The last time we were there, in October 2014, their internet capabilities were terrible so this may be the last post for a bit.
Peggy performed some snazzy re-upholstery work on her chair and I puttered around with stabilizers and cargo repositioning in preparation for departure tomorrow, a day earlier than we were scheduled to leave. A couple weeks ago we went to see my sister in Pasadena on a Sunday and noted the traffic was smooth. We’ll try Sunday again, right during the football playoffs, in the hopes of having a trip through the metropolitan L.A. area without the usual weekday hellish traffic.
It has been okay here in Menifee for the last few weeks. The park is nice, particularly if it has not rained recently. They do have some drainage issues but the utilities worked well (except for the water which was shut down for a few hours one day) and the park does have nice amenities. There is abundant waterfowl hanging out in the park and they were quite interesting. The swans jealously guarded the mud puddle near our trailer and made considerable honking and squawking sounds when protecting us from small dogs, geese and truck tires. Shopping is close. We found a few good local restaurants.
However, the locale is just not that inspiring. The drives we took to Dana Point and Idyllwild were very nice but those are about the only places to go other than Hemet, home to the highest average population age of 71. I give the place a C+.
A couple bird pix are available; click here

We arose and prepared to take off for an excursion to Home Depot and a Trader Joe’s in Temecula without our usual coffee and Irish Cream because the circuit we use for brewing coffee remains stone dead from yesterday’s suspected defective breaker.
Since we were early birds at Home Depot, we were in and out in record time. We popped over to T. Joe’s where we were also early arrivals and we whizzed through there, too. Folks around here must do their shopping later in the day.
Once back at the Barbarian Invader, I installed our newly acquired breaker into the panel and damned if that didn’t cure our problem. All the 120 volt receptacles in our traveling home are now functional and just raring to have something stuffed into them. Peggy did more fun insurance stuff and took care of our satellite provider for another month. I’m quite proud of her for doing this because the wi-fi here, despite being costly, is very slow and any attempts at doing anything on the internet is fraught with failures, slowdowns and outright stops.

It is fortunate that we don’t often set agendas for our activities. We closely followed today’s lack of agenda by engaging in some loafing and related activities. However, some cumbersome tasks did rear their ugly heads.
First, our new and noisy new phone made a noise and Peggy was able to find out that some boots ordered from Oddball in Portland had arrived at the Wilderness Lakes Ranger station and we wandered over and grabbed them.
We took out the trash. I did some computer work remaining from considerable procrastinating in the far and recent past. Peggy queried insurance companies about how much money we can give them based on where we live. It was all mundane.
Right about time we needed to turn on our heater, the 120 volt circuit it was plugged into made a muted tripped breaker noise and all the outlets on the passenger side of the Invader went dead. The creators of this trailer have cleverly placed the main electrical panel down at floor level which is miserable for fat, elderly persons like me. I flopped down to panel level and began speculating on the electrical issue.
After some unsightly squirming and tortured grunting, I came to the conclusion that the breaker itself was junk. Peggy and I will make another trip to Home Depot tomorrow to attempt to buy a 15 amp breaker. It seems strange that in the last week I have been in more home improvement stores than I used to visit when I lived in a house.

Peg and I woke up at an almost normal time of 7:30 and drank some coffee mixed with our non-dairy creamer, Irish Cream, and ate a Peggy-created egg, pork and spud dish. We both got in quick showers and then departed for our second assault of the road to Idyllwild. It is a pretty steep and very twisty road and there was roadside snow but the surfaces were good. We arrived in Mountain Center and turned north on CA-242 and continued on to Idyllwild, elevation 5300′. We drove around on the back streets a bit before going further up 242 to Pine Cove, elevation 6200′, where we checked out the Thousand Trails Idyllwild campground, one of the member parks where we get to stay without cost.
The park is located in a gorgeous setting but very recent snows seemed to present problems because quite a few of the trailers or motor homes were snowed in on the roads that were open. A large segment of the campground was closed and the dump station access road had a couple feet of snow blocking any attempts to dump tanks in a campground with very few sewer hookups. Perhaps I will brave the serpentine, steep roads to get to this campground but I believe I will wait until any season but winter.
CA-242 becomes the Banning – Idyllwild Panoramic Highway north of Pine Cove and the steep, winding road down the mountain is pretty spectacular. Vistas of the San Jacinto Mountains area on one side of the road and the San Gorgonio Mountain wilderness ahead make for a delightful treat as long as you are not driving. I rode shotgun today so I got some great views of the surroundings but Peggy was driving and kept her eyes glued to the tricky highway conditions so we ultimately closed the loop west on I-10 and south on CA-79 back to Wilderness Lakes.
Unfortunately, although one of our dogs, Jezebel, gave us a health scare yesterday but turned out to be fine, our other dog, Jack, got to go to the vet today. We suspected Jack had some problems but we sort of rescued him from a crummy place 4 years ago and have been spoiling him since. Today the cancer in him presented itself in a horrible fashion by filling his stomach with blood. Jack was euthanized about 7:00 PM.
All of the family is bummed. Jack was our wonderful friend and protector, a great example of a big, shiny Dobie and he will be missed.
For a few pix, click here