Oct 17, 2019
We finally left Sacramento, Monday, Oct 14. After three weeks living in the streets of Sacramento, we were on our way! Everything sold, no job, no house, nothing left but to start our long, long drive. Of course, even though we got up at 6 in the morning and had packed everything the night before there was a rush of last minute things to do so we really did not get out of Sacramento until almost noon. This was a problem since we had reservations at a campground in Pismo Beach that night and we planned to drive the Pacific Coast Highway to get there, which would add significantly to our travel time.
Two hours down the road, we had a quick stop in Gilroy to visit my Aunt and Grandmother. It was good to have one last visit with family and my Aunt introduced us to her horse. Unfortunately, we could not stay long as we had a long way to go. From Gilroy, we drove to Monterey then we started down the Highway 1. It was not until we had passed Gilroy that it felt like we had really left. Until we left the San Francisco Bay Area, we were still “home” since we were familiar with all those places. However, once we passed south of Gilroy we were no longer in familiar territory. I had purchased a Gypsy Guide app for our phone; it uses your phone GPS to provide commentary, recommended stopping points and tips as you drive. We had used the Gypsy Guide in Maui and found it very useful, entertaining and informative and the Big Sur guide was very good.
Unfortunately, since we were running late we were unable to stop at many of the recommended spots. We did stop at Bixby Bridge, Pfeiffer Park and Nepenthe Restaurant and the views at all three were as spectacular as expected. I was sad that we had to rush through Big Sur, as it deserved more time. As it was, we enjoyed the exceptional views of the sun setting along the rugged cliffs along the ocean and it was dark by the time we passed Hearst Castle. We had been to Hearst Castle before so we did not mind so much.
We got to the Olive Garden in San Luis Obispo around 8:30 pm where we took advantage of our Olive Garden Pasta Pass, which provided us with unlimited free pasta for 9 weeks. We finally got to the North Beach Campground at 10:30 pm and I was so happy that we were in an RV where we could just park and go to bed without having to deal with putting up a tent.