Oceano and Pismo Beach

Yesterday we changed "camping" locations and moved north yet again to Oceano, CA where we will stay a week.  The park is situated at the edge of dunes and a wide sandy beach where you are permitted to drive a car similar to Daytona Beach, FL or Port Aransas, TX.  The town is your typical beachside village with the usual array of tee shirt shops.  What is unique here is the ability to walk right out onto the dunes or to rent horses from their stables and go horseback riding along the beach.

It was windy when we arrived here with swirls of dust blowing across the spaces in the park.  We are not going to be enticed to open the windows to hear the ocean.  It is colder here overnight and we continue to use the heater.  Today will be a work day.  Luckily the Internet is good here even if we do have to pay per computer to use it.  It is not usual that we have to pay though, so we can't really complain.

Driving here yesterday we passed a substantial number of vineyards in the valley that fronts the road with the continuing backdrop of softly rolling granite hills covered with the same yellow swatches of color swirled within the varying shades of green.  We were able to identify one type of grape they are growing here by a small white sign identifying the vines as Pinot Grigio.  The production of raspberries, lettuce, cabbage and strawberries was also evident (at least those were the ones I could identify.)  I suspect there are other produce items grown here.  Just east of the park are large farms of just planted fields.

We saw the staff feeding the horses at dusk.  Ground squirrels actually sat on the rails of the corral watching us (look carefully and you may see one on the fence and another in the lower right corner of the photo) and the horses.  It seems they have a large population of these and we noted a hawk making good use of their abundance.  And so we have gone from a town park to a rural park.  The variety is lovely and the view is never boring.