I’m exhausted. 🙃
I’m a little less than a mile northwest of the tiny little townlet of Ragged Point, parked on the side of the Pacific Coast Highway with my starlink connected fairly briefly, long enough to send some messages and hopefully upload this post.
Being night time, my level of sickness is much worse, and getting worse by the minute it seems.
Even my teeth hurt right now.
I’m trying not to sniff too much, so I don’t end up with another massive headache, though I don’t know if the massive headache was caused from sniffing.
Just trying to reduce the likelihood of a repeat of the nightmare that was last night.
Literally, for hours, I would go into bouts of just moaning because it hurt so much.
Gotta love it. 🙃
Gosh, I hope tonight isn’t a repeat of last night. I’m going to try and preempt the worst of it by taking some migraine pills before I go to bed. I can feel a headache coming on as I write this.
😅
And the nose wants to drip.
On the bright side, it’s kind of fun to have a voice low enough to sing Hoist the Colors with that super deep bass quartet. 🙃
So. I was so grateful to wake up at like 6:00 in the morning this morning with the headache gone! The migraine medicine did its thing. I would say that the nasal decongestant did its thing as well, except for my sister Heather let me know that the particular nasal decongestant that I’ve used has been proven to be no better at reducing congestion than a sugar pill.
😶
So…
Apparently, everything must have come from my migraine meds. I’m not going to complain. That was one of the worst nights I’ve had in a very very very long time. Doesn’t quite beat the kidney stone, but oh man.
Anyway, so I woke up about 6 ish, took a little while to get my bearings, and then headed over to the Walmart Supercenter to do my customary move-and-then-sleep-some-more procedure. 🙃
I think I started back to bed maybe somewhere around 7:00 and slept until around 10ish. By the time I got up, it was starting to cook pretty good inside Rover, and the air outside wasn’t As cool as I expected it to be.
Man, I’m tired, and just… wasted.
Anyway, from there I decided to go ahead and head on up the road, thinking I would stop off at Jalama Beach county County Park.
I had picked that one out because it was way out in the middle of nowhere at the end of a long road, so I figured that maybe, just maybe, I might be the only person there.
I also happens to start down that road with my gas gauge dangerously close to empty.
But I decided to give it a go anyway. 😅
It was a 14-mile drive from the main Pacific Coast highway Road to the beach, a beautiful drive that reminded me a lot of New Zealand, except for the colors weren’t nearly as vibrant.
The New Zealand hills are a brilliant green color, and the ocean is often a gorgeous turquoise blue.
But still, there were some pretty significant similarities. It’s definitely beautiful in this part of California.
When I finally arrived at the beach, I was unpleasantly surprised.
It was jam-packed. 😶
Not to mention there was a fee to get in. Had I been the only one there, I might have gone ahead and paid the fee, but I don’t want to pay a fee to go me under through crowds of people.
I mean it wasn’t like South Beach on spring break, but still, there were RVs and cars everywhere, people all over the beach, and surfers in the water.
Oh well.
So I turned around and headed back out, keeping a hawkeye on the fuel gauge, not that there was anything that I would have been able to do about it.
On the way back, the road actually splits off north, so you don’t have to drive all the way back to highway 1. You can actually cut across North to get to the little town of Lompoc.
Just a tad more than 4 miles from Lompoc, there was a loud Bang! from the back, and I looked in the rear view mirror to see the tread of my passenger side rear tire come to a stop on the road. I quickly pulled over, and then I backed up on the shoulder back to the spot where the tread was.
For those who’ve been long time readers, you might remember that last fall, as we drove across Kansas, we had the same thing happen.
Gratefully, just like last time, the tire remained completely inflated, despite the dread having blown off of it. 😆
So I grabbed the two pieces of tire that were in the road that I saw, tossed them in Rover’s side doors, and then continued on my way to the little town of Lompoc, going a little slower than I would normally go.
Having had the same experience last year, I knew that I was likely going to be able to drive all the way to lawn Park without any issues, as last time, I think we drove something like 30 or 40 miles before the tire blew out on a dirt road.
Anyway, so between the tire and the gas that was almost out, I was grateful to make it to Lompoc, where I was able to get $4 gas. So I felt my tank, and then I drove over to the Super Center, expecting to be able to have my tire replaced with one of the spares that I had With me, but there was no tire center at that particular Supercenter.
😶
Darn it.
Gratefully, there was a tire center only a few blocks away, and I called them and made an appointment for about an hour or so later.
I caught up on a couple of journal entries while I waited, and then $32 and change later, I was back on the road with one of my spare tires having done a good job at replacing the blown out tire.
So now I’m down to three spares, two inside Rover, and one underneath in the back.
I’m grateful to have the extra tires. I’m grateful to be prepared for at least some of the possible issues that could come up.
So from Lompoc, I headed up PCH just to sightsee. The views were really all that interesting for the first while, not until the road actually begins hugging the coast, and once you’re out of the towns. Then it starts getting beautiful.
I stopped at a little dirt parking lot overlook and took some pictures and ate lunch and hung out for a little while, see ing a part of very large dolphins at one point heading north of the coast. I tried to take some pictures of the dolphins jumping as they went through the part of the water that was reflecting the sunset, but I don’t think I got any. I’ll go back through my pictures and see, as I probably took 50 in rapid succession hoping to catch a dolphin jumping while in the sunny reflection, but I don’t think I got any.
It was fun to watch the big dolphins Ride the waves like the Hector Dolphins did in New Zealand.
So cool.
Going up the road a little ways further, there was a little lookout park thing to see a colony of elephant seals. It was nice that I was there during a time where the elephant seals were actually hanging out in big clusters.
From what I could gather, it was female molting season. I don’t think I saw even a single male, which was mildly disappointing because apparently the females are like 12 to 1600 lb, and the males are like 5,000 lbs.
😶
That’s a really big animal. 😶
I took some videos and some pictures and what not and then I headed north, knowing that I had seen a sign not too far back letting me know that PCH was closed 43 miles ahead.
Apparently, there was a landslide that took out the road, so supposedly there’s a road that I can take across the hills from the coast to highway 101, but my Google maps seems to disagree with the AI Gemini personal system, so… I guess I’ll find out. 🙃
In the meantime, it’s just coming up on 9:30, and I pulled over on the side of the PCH probably about a mile south of a sign that I noticed while going north that said no camping on the road next 62 miles, or something like that, which says to me that camping on the road is legal where I am.
At least, that’s the hope. 🤞
So I’m about to crash and hopefully catch up on some sleep. Going to take some pills here shortly. Cross your fingers for me come please. 😊
Gratitude:
- Boy am I grateful that I woke up to a lack of headache! 🙏🙏🙏 Last night was an absolute killer, moaning and groaning…
- I’m grateful that I noticed the dolphins! 🐬🥰
- Grateful to have been able to see the elephant seals. Both the dolphins and the seals were completely unexpected nice surprises. 😊
- I’m grateful to been able to find a place on the side of the road that looks like we will be good for me tonight. Crossing the fingers. With a closed road a couple of dozen miles ahead of me, and not many options to go inland, I’m guessing there’s not going to be much traffic going by. 🙃
- I’m grateful to have starlink. My power station can’t recharge right now, but it has a little over 60% left, so at least I can use it to upload this post. 🎉
- I’m grateful to be in such a better place this road trips than I was last road trip. Last road trip I was in a really rough place, angry, discouraged, frustrated so frequently. I miss having my mom with me. It’s much more fun traveling with someone to share the wonders with.
Success:
- Though I was pretty bad at staying away from my phone while driving, I did stop myself multiple times, so that’s something, at least.
Improvement:
- Distracted driving is definitely the big one right now. Definitely definitely definitely.
Love and hugs. 😊
Lift the world.
Bring it on!
~ stephen
Lift the World 