It rained pretty hard throughout the night and we were not hopeful about traveling south on Highway 1 this morning.  When we checked the DOT website, it said the road south of us was closed due to multiple rock slides.  We had to decide to wait and see if they will reopen or take an alternate route.  We decided on the alternative route.  So after a pancake breakfast and a quick stop in the Fernwood convenience store to use their wifi to download a map, we headed back the way we came on Highway 1.

The good news was it only added about an hour to our trip and we would pass a Starbucks and a Walmart.  I had my first chai latte in 6 days and it made me forget about the road closure.  The bad news was that the road reopened about 20 minutes after we took the detour and we missed some things I wanted to see and do along Highway 1.  Oh well.

We had a small list of needs for Walmart including more socks.  We have reached the point where we either needed to find a laundromat or buy some socks and we decided on the latter.  We still may do a load of laundry before we head home but the sock shortage was partially due to none of us owning more than 10 pairs of socks to bring along so buying more socks seemed like a sensible idea either way.   I swear, socks are the only thing you absolutely cannot wear for more than one day and some of us can’t even make it a whole day without changing their socks! 

The kids sat together at the table today as we drove.  They really don’t complain about long days of driving although Asa admitted that getting there is the worst part of traveling for him.  We are all happy that we are spending 2 nights in our next destination, Morro Bay State Park.  Besides spending a lot of time on the road, we have been spending a lot of time in the RV the last couple of days, even when stopped.  With the close quarters, patience is wearing thin and it will be nice to spread out and split the group up a bit with little activities like walks around the campground, bike rides, etc. 

We saw another rainbow on our drive!

No rain since we woke up this morning though.  The sun is shining!  And we can’t really hate the rain since California is in a drought.  Also, they had a rare occurrence of Christmas snow in some parts of the state yesterday!  I’ve seen some reports that snow is complicating post-holiday travel for some people in California but not where we are heading.

We got to our campsite which is a lovely site with a paved area for the camper.  There are giant birds in the trees here.  Condors?  We will find out more at the nature museum tomorrow.  Yes there is a nature museum on site!  And a marina–it looks more like a beach to me but the map says it’s a marina.  There is a monarch butterfly resting place here too.  I’m sure we will find out more for our post tomorrow about all of these things.

We met the camp host and got firewood.  The boys rode bikes and Asa carried our firewood back to our site by balancing it on the back of bike. 

Asa set up a nice looking fire and the boys ate their dinner in front of it.  We had tacos tonight and I made a pizza (after burning the first one) in the motorhome’s tiny oven for the girls to eat. 

We have no hookups here so we will need to run the generator for a bit but the site was only $35/night which is very reasonable for this area.  They also have a pay waste station on site which we will need to visit tomorrow.  Nova wants to help empty our holding tanks.  She says it will be interesting and funny. 

In a final bit of news, a news report just popped up on my phone letting me know that Highway 1 experienced another rock slide in an area we would have been driving through. Probably for the best that we took our alternative route!