Christmas had come to an end and so did our stay in Lone Pine. We packed up and set out once again, continuing on our journey toward Northern California. We had originally planned on going directly north from Lone Pine, staying on the eastern side of the Sequoia mountain range, to make our way towards Lake Tahoe, but with the snowy weather and the lack of tire chains, we decided to change our route.
 

Instead, we decided to head toward the coast and drive north along the Pacific Coast Highway. Along our trip, we hadn’t spent a lot of time planning out specific routes or booking places to stay. We attempted to figure it out on the way a couple of days before we arrived to the destination.
 

This was the first time during our trip that we set out without having a clear idea of where we were headed. We called a few places to see if there were availability, but many campgrounds in CA were closed during this time because of Covid so we were having a hard time finding a place.
 

We continued on our trip with unwavering faith that everything would work out and, thankfully, it did.

I called Morro Dunes RV Park in Morro Bay to see if they had any availability. They initially turned me away, stating they were closed due to State regulations. I explained to them that we were traveling for work as I am a healthcare worker, relocating for an assignment and needed a place to stay as we made our way to my contract. With this information, they granted me permission to stay at their location.
 

At this time, they were only allowed to have on-site long-term residents who live there, or essential workers who needed a place to stay. Luckily, I fell into that category.

Because we were heading west to the coast, we had to backtrack slightly. We had to make our way south to travel around the Sequoia mountain range, heading towards Bakersfield. Along the route, we drove on a windy, narrow road through a valley along the river.

As we made our way through this area, we approached large areas of farmland with cattle and sheep in sight. At this point, we felt like we had seen a variety of settings throughout our trip, that we felt like we were driving along the game board of Catan.

It was fascinating to see the vastly different landscapes throughout our country, but even more so just in California. We obviously knew that California was a large state, but we never knew how different one portion of the state was from the next.

When we arrived at our next stop, we were pleasantly surprised by the beauty of the location.

We parked our camper in our designated site, once again, in an uncrowded campground due to the rules and regulations.

Once we were set up, we took the short walk across the street to the beach. It is a beautiful beach, quite possibly our favorite.

Because of the long day of travel, we arrived late in the day, making it to the beach well after sunset. It was dark and we could barely see the waves, but we could most certainly hear them. This was our very first time seeing the Pacific Ocean.

I don’t know if it was just the time of year, but the waves were definitely more powerful than the East Coast. We enjoyed just listening to the waves, but vowed to return the next day to get a better view of the area.

The next day, we set out to go shopping. We decided we had enough of our little camera that took decent pictures, often relying on our cellphones that seemed to take better quality photos.

We made the decision to spend a little extra to buy ourselves a new camera that would take amazing photos of all the wondrous places we were experiencing along our journey. If we are doing this adventure, then we want to do it right!

After purchasing the camera and playing around with the settings for a bit, we headed back out to the beach in attempt to capture some amazing photos of the breathtaking scene before us.

I can attempt to describe the setting, but there doesn’t seem to be the right combination of words to capture the glorious nature of the land and ocean with the mixture of the color changing sky and clouds creating this captivating glow.

We enjoyed taking photos of the sunset, and of the waves, the people walking along the shore and the birds wandering around in the sand looking for food.

We also spent some time running around on the shore playing in the shallow waves of the Pacific. The water was a bit chilly, but not as cold as the Atlantic in my opinion. We only went in up to our ankles because it was getting dark, a bit too chilly to go in, and because I’m scared of the ocean, but we had fun just goofy around in the shallow end.

Overall, we had an amazing day. We, once again, fell in love with a new location. This was the first destination we arrived at, that made us both think, “Hmmm, we should look for a contract here so we can stay for longer than a couple of days!”