05/27/14 Ventura, CA

Weather here has been pretty nice most of the time.  Right here on the ocean we get a pretty cool breeze.  The evenings get pretty cold, especially since the wind seems to pick up at that time. 

Norm and I work two days a week at the kiosk/gate house, Sundays and Mondays.  I am scheduled to work mornings from 8:00-1:00 and Norm 1:00 to 6:00 but we like to work together.  That makes 2 long 10 hour days back to back.  There are 2 kiosk’s here, one is very close, right out our door.   The other is almost 1 ½ miles or so by bike.  Most of the time we ride our bikes.  We like that kiosk because it is right on the ocean with an amazing view.  Things get very busy at the kiosk, especially holidays (Mothers day, Memorial weekend).  I don’t know how 1 person could handle those very busy times.  Even with both of us working we have RV’s and cars lined up at times.

On our days off we love to ride our bikes down to the Ventura Pier.  It’s 2 ½ miles there on a nice bike trail. 

Once there we lock our bikes up and walk the beach or sit/lay on the beach awhile taking in the sights, smells and tranquility of it all. 

The beach festival was fun

We love the Pier/Promenade area.

Wind surfers

05/01/14 Ventura, CA

We arrived at our summer camp host job on April 13^th and started training with one of the hosts that have worked here the last 2 winters.  This last week we have worked by ourselves in both of the kiosk locations here at Emma Wood State Park.  There is more to it than you would think and a lot of paperwork to be completed at the end of each shift.  I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of things.  We haven’t done much touring of the area yet. 

Our camp is located on the North edge of Ventura near the historical part of town.  We enjoy riding our bicycles into town and also the promenade and pier 2 ½ miles away.   Since we’ve been here we have gone through days when we love it here, then days when we’re ready to leave.  With all the pros, there are just as many cons. All the research I did before we came here did not mention the homeless population.  I guess if your homeless this is an ideal place with good weather most of the time. 

We have volunteered to work the Beach Festival this Saturday.  It should be fun, live music, vendors and who knows what else.  We’ll work 10-1:30 then enjoy the rest of the day at the festival.    

In the last month we have had several phone calls and emails asking if we are available to workcamp.  That’s good to know the jobs are out there.  One is a host job at Cape Blanco Lighthouse for the month of May.  That was where I really wanted to work, but with only 9 lighthouses that use camp host it’s a slim chance of getting one.  Other camp host jobs in Northern California and some in Oregon.

Kiosk/gatehouse that we work at.  

04/26/2014 Travel to CA

We stayed one night at Hoho Kam RV Park in Coolidge, AZ where I got to see a couple old high school friends.  Penny has a pecan farm that she took over after her dad passed away.  We got a tour of the pecan harvest operation which was very interesting.  Then we went over to another friends house, Brenda who lives in Coolidge and spent a couple hours catching up on the last 35 years or so.  So good to see these old friends and reminisce about old times and learn about their current lives. 

Because the weather was so hot and we saw the two people we wanted we only stayed in Coolidge one night.  Our next stop was Temecula, CA to see my cousin who had moved there from Coolidge/Tucson a couple of years ago.  It took 2 days to make it to Temecula.  We stayed just across the California/Arizona border at Mayflower County Park in Blythe, CA.  $30 for Electric and water, a pretty nice place on the Colorado River, especially since there were not many campers there.  The next day we continued on to Temecula and set up camp at Skinner Lake, a county park.  Nice park but got extremely crowded on the weekend. Since the sites are close together we had tentes right up close to us.  We were given a site in loop A which turned out to be a mixture of RV’s and tent camping.  Next time I would request to stay in Look B or C.  They seemed to be all RV’s.  A lot more civilized camping there.  I spent two days with my cousin Sharon and met her 4 grandchildren.  She took us on a tour of Historic Temecula and with beautiful weather we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.  After spending several hours at over old photos at Sharon’s house we said our goodbyes and headed back to camp.  The next day we drove less that 200 miles to Ventura, CA where we have our summer workamping volunteer jobs.  I had a lot of anxiety about driving through the Los Angeles area with our rig.  We decided to go a little out of our way to go around LA and it turned out not to be too bad.  The East side of LA was heavy traffic but once we got on the North side it wasn’t so bad.  After getting set up in our host site at Emma Wood State Beach the head Ranger came by to meet with us. 

My cousin Sharon

                                                       Sharon's Mastiff, Sadie

Our camp site has a view of the ocean; we are set back from the ocean roughly 250 feet.  Instead of sandy beach front, it is covered with river rock.  Down the beach a ways is sandy beach.  Our site is sandwiched between highway 101 and an Amtrak railroad track with many trains running throughout the day.  Ventura is a bike friendly city so we bought bikes.  The hike and bike trail runs from San Diego all the way up the coast to San Francisco.  The promenade and Ventura Pier is 2 ½ miles from us, an easy bike ride.  A very pretty place with palm trees and plenty of beach for barefoot walking.  The weather is nice most days, around 70 degrees.  But when the wind blows it get pretty chilly.  We have been training with the winter camp host this week; Sandy is a real sweet lady that has a 5^th wheel.  She heads out next week to her summer job in Colorado.  Norm and I worked the Kiosk here by ourselves 2 days this week.  There is another kiosk at North Beach about 1.5 miles up the beach that we will also work.  It is a much busier campground with 90 RV sites, dry camping only.  They also have a day use area.  It’s real close to the beach, very nice views, dolphins swimming by, surfers and if we’re lucky we may see a whale traveling North.  The migrate January thru mid April.  Norm and I walk down to the beach in front of our site most evenings and we saw an Orca whale that was very close to shore.  It was amazing.