Santa Maria

Sunday, November 14th, 2010. We’re parked in the Santa Maria Elks lot. Its about 10 or so minutes away from Debbie’s folks house.

Here is our site for the next two weeks. Its at the end of the row so we have a nice view and no neighbors on one side. The weather has been typical California Indian summer. Mostly sunny but with a few raining days.

Here are our chairs that Debbie embroidered my old badge number ‘82’ on my chair and a  quilt symbol on hers. This way we don’t get them mixed up.

I was excited about the fact that we were only a few blocks from a bike trail the runs on and along the Santa Maris River Levee on the north edge of Santa Maria. All the way to the coast.  I loaded my bike on the car a drove east to start at one to the trail access points.  Darn it’s closed for construction, the gate was padlocked.

I ended up riding on some rural roads in the immediate vicinity. Mostly bordering cultivated farm land. A nice ride even if I didn’t make it to the ocean.

The two weeks went by quickly. Thanksgiving was highlighted by Blake’s brined turkey he brought down with him. We had a great visit with everyone.

One must do that we all ways do when we’re down there is stop at Alex’s BBQ restaurant in Shell Beach. We’ve been stopping there for maybe the past 20 years. The last few times its been disappointing and the last time was the worst. It appears they are going through rough times, cutting back on everything. Our waiter, said they are turning it around. We worried when the two elderly sisters sold the restaurant but it continued along fine until the the last few years when it started being disappointing. We preferred Alex’s to the famous McLintoacks which is on the other side of the freeway.  One night we tried Jocko,s Steak House but at 6:30 there was already and hour and a half wait, oh well, there was no wait at the Chinese restaurant around the corner.