Working our way north from Santa Barbara and continuing with our little “Elk’s” tour, a short return visit to the Santa Maria Elk’s Lodge was next. Chad & Crissy (our son & daughter-in-law) wanted to provide us a little Christmas cheer, so they treated us to a family overnight stay at the Cambria Pines Lodge in Cambria. The lodge does a yearly MASSIVE display of Christmas lights that we enjoyed with granddaughters Hailey, Ellie, Chad & Crissy.
Another really huge (NOT!) travel day moved us up to another return visit to the Oceano/5 Cities Elk’s Lodge. This lodge is right at the entrance to the Oceano Dunes State Beach (commonly referred to as Pismo Dunes). We spent a few quality days taking walkabouts down the beach, gawking at some of the spectacular left coast sunsets, stumbling all over the many live, washed-ashore Pismo clams, strolling the Pismo Beach pier and surrounding area, and otherwise enjoying the sunny December weather of the Central Coast of California.
Having to burn a couple of days before we were due back at the Atascadero Elk’s Lodge, we returned to the San Luis Obispo Elk’s Lodge to fill that gap. Then it was on into A-Town Elk’s for a few days prep work before we road tripped with Chad’s family south for a Christmas stay in Big Bear, CA.
Christmas Eve required a family drive to check out the various Christmas lights on neighborhood homes. It might be just me, but there was a sad lack of participation in the Griswold Christmas Vacation tradition of exterior home illumination. We did find a “crown jewel” which had a walk path through and among the various lighted decorations, that homeowner had the right attitude!
Christmas Day, after Hailey & Ellie plowed through their family (and Santa) presents, the whole clan loaded up and drove to Big Bear Lake for a 4-day stay at a local cabin and some snow time fun. Oh boy were we surprised…absolutely NO snow on the mountains except for the limited resorts’ man-made variety! It was certainly cold enough, just missing the requisite storm activity to completely blanket the area.
Still, we were able to take the family skiing at Bear Mountain Resort; it had a couple of their ski trails open. Hailey & Ellie got their first timer ski lessons and had a blast, Chad & Crissy did their snow board thing on the growed up slopes.
Another day found us watching Hailey & Ellie do some tubing at the Snowplay park. They had a blast rippin’ down the hill. Hailey was hilarious at the end of the day. Worn out, she came off the hill carping angrily about “having to drag Ellie around” while sitting in her tube and not helping with dragging the tubes back to the lines. Just thinking back on that brings on a little chuckle…
One night we did a walkabout in the area of Big Bear Lake called The Village. They definitely embraced the Griswold tradition of exterior lighting and even without any snow it was very nice scenery.
All good things must come to an end and it was time to head back to Atascadero, just in time to enjoy the New Year’s celebration. Jeanne found California Coast Brewery that had a “Noon Balloon Drop” on NYE, so it sounded like a good idea for lunch and a couple of cold ones. In all the years of coming to the area, we were unaware of this little gem of a brewery (it had been there for 4 years). The place was packed, the Juicy IPA was good, the smoked brisket sando was outstanding, the band was pretty good, and the balloon drop was fun.
We followed that up with a NYE “Bonfire Concert in the Park” in downtown Paso Robles. Also packed, the Fire Dept. put on a huge bonfire of flaming pallets amid all the Griswold decorated trees while the Lucky Devil’s Band played their sort of Chicago, Earth Wind & Fire-ish style of music (guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, trombone, trumpet, sax). Local food and drink outfits had vendor tents to quench that hunger and thirst throughout the night.
So welcome to 2024. We hope you all have a healthy & prosperous year. I’ll leave you with a photo that perfectly sums up what happens when a body has more fun than is humanly possible. Until next post…
