Scuba Diving club,
Southern California
Sea Sabres
Camping
at San Simeon
Memorial Day Weekend 2003
By Jeff Shipley
I am a part time teacher and my semester ended just before this Memorial Day weekend. So I had to get papers graded, setup the grades and turn them all in before I could leave on this mini-vacation. However, I did manage to turn my grades in and be ready to leave on Thursday morning. This allowed us, (Shirley, friend Margaret Bouch and myself), to arrive at Nancy and Garry Johnson’s place in Morro Bay in time for us all to go into San Luis Obispo and have dinner at McClintocks and take in the street fair. If you ever get a chance to do this on a summer Thursday night, it is well worth the visit.
Then we came back to the Johnson’s and played our “Mexican Train” domino game. We quit at about 1 AM and went to bed; only to wake up the next morning, go out for breakfast and return to finish our domino game. At 11 AM we headed out toward San Simeon. It is a very short trip and we would be early to check in, so we detoured to Cambria for a shopping trip. Although we had been to Cambria several times before, this time I had the trailer in tow and there were no places to park a truck and trailer. So I continued to go west thinking I could find parking place further on in town. Much to our surprise, there is another side of this town called West Cambria. Here I was able to find a parking space and the gals were delighted to shop in a whole new area.
After shopping and a lunch we headed out to San Simeon. We were in the “Washburn campground, located 4/10 of a mile inland on the top of a hill. It is a primitive campground, similar to Montana De Oro. No hookups and pit toilets. The sites are large, easy to get into and long enough to have truck and trailer into the spot. The other lower sites have flush toilets but no hookups. We liked the upper sites much better. Just as soon as we were parked, Carol and Rick Gold arrived with their tent trailer.
|
|
|
San Simeon Point |
San Simeon has a lot of interesting things to see. Of course there is the mansion to visit, but also there is a pier to fish from, Elephant Seal rookery not too far up highway1 and as I mentioned before, shopping in Cambria and other places. Just a trip to the visitor center for Hearst castle was extremely interesting. They even have a five-story I-Max theater currently showing how the castle was built and how all the treasures were collected. The Washburn campground is a great place to hike, as there are well-marked trails and they provide us with a nice map to follow the trails.
Probably the best thing that took place on this trip was to meet the “San Joaquin Valley Divers. Phil Darling belongs to this club since he is in the Bakersfield area and of course when I told the ranger at the gate to save spots for our dive club, he sent them to be with us. It was great to have them join us as we had three of our campers that could not make the trip at the last minute. For our Saturday night potluck dinner we had both clubs joining and they even had a wind break line of tarps between two motor homes to protect us. This worked out real well and they even provided a couple of fires to keep us warm. (More about this club in the future, as they have
a wonderful, affordable Fiji trip planned for next year. I will have a video to
show at a future meeting).
This group has there own inflatable and they did go out diving on Saturday along the shoreline. Conditions were poor and Phil Darling reported it to be quite barren. On Sunday, they went down to Morro Bay, only to find poor condition there also. They did not even bother to launch their boat.
Morro Bay and the surrounding area has some of the most spectacular diving along our coast, but quite often the visibility is poor and it is hard to enjoy. We have had some better luck diving around Labor Day weekend, due to clearer water at this time. However, it is potluck and sometimes good sometimes too rough to even go out. Maybe this September we will have the calm conditions.
We continued to see more of this remarkable area, finally picking up Sunday and heading out for home. Being off for the summer, I get to lollygag on the trip home. (That means stopping overnight in Buellton to take in a nice restaurant and going home with less traffic).
We were represented by 13 of the Sea Sabres; they were the Gold’s, the Howell’s, the Darling’s and the Shipley’s.
Camping Page
(Home) (Boat Dives) (Buddy List) (Campouts) (Diving Links) (Dive Spots & Dive Boats) (Diving Time Line) (Email) (Meetings) (Membership) (Recipes) (Safety & Education) (News Letters AKA Snorkel Talk) (Non Sequitur) (Updates)
Posted July 20, 2003