DAYS 29 & 30

Wednesday and Thursday were not big sightseeing days. I had gotten in touch with a dear old friend from way back when who had moved to Santa Barbara about 30 years ago. She was able to get some time off for lunch on Wednesday so we left San Simeon and headed down to meet with Suellen. Also, when we had dinner with brother Henry in San Francisco, he told us that he and his party were renting a house in San Clemente for a few days and if we happened to get down that way by Thursday we should stop by for the night. With a little tweaking of our route, we planned both visits.

Although we tried to stay on the more scenic Route 1, a lot of the time was on the 101 which took us a little further inland. It was great to see Suellen again and we had a nice lunch and caught up with stories of old friends and families. After our visit we thought that we'd get a little closer to San Clemente before calling it a day. We made it to Camarillo which is just south of Oxnard.

We got to San Simeon around noon and we're glad we did. The house that Henry's group had rented can best be described as gorgeous! Three stories with decks at each level and a spectacular view of the Pacific and the San Clemente pier from each deck. Enough bedrooms to sleep about 15-16 people. A pool and hot tub with landscaping that put you in a paradise-like setting.

 This is the view from the upper deck. The pier is to the right. The walk down to the beach is rather steep but Faith walked it to get some of her sunset shots.

Since we got there early we had some time for a relaxing dip in the pool and a little hot tub time.
I have an uncle who lives in Mission Viejo which is about 40 minutes from San Clemente. I haven't seen Bob in probably 25 years or so. Henry got in touch with him and we planned to meet for dinner at a restaurant on the pier around 5.

 So around 3 we decided to take a beer run and Henry drove us into town. We also wanted to stop at Rite-Aid but as we walked to the door the employees were outside telling everyone that the power had gone out and the store was closed. While driving through town to get the beer, we noticed that all of the stores in town were dark and the street lights either out or blinking. We figured someone hit a pole and we might be without power for a short time. Little did we know that we were part of "The Great San Diego Power Outage Of 2011". It seems a worker at a station in Yuma, AZ made a small error that put everyone in the dark from north of San Clemente to Mexico and parts of southern Arizona.
Well, we weren't sure if Uncle Bob was affected so we went to the pier to meet him and he showed up a little late because he said traffic was horrible without the traffic lights working.

Of course the restaurant was closed so we stayed at the pier for a little while talking and hoping that we might get lucky enough to be there when the power was restored. No such luck!

 We invited Bob back to the house for a burger but he declined saying that he might as well go sit in traffic before it gets too dark.
So with not much else to do we went back and tried to get dinner in before the sun went down. We had no TV or radio and most of our cell phones wouldn't connect because the outage was affecting the towers. I guess you could say we were in the dark about why we were in the dark.
We finished our dinner just as the sun was setting so Faith ran out to do what she does best--sunset photos.
These are only 2 of the great shots that we got of a beautiful Pacific sunset. For more you can visit our Facebook pages.

So on Wednesday we clocked 201 miles and on Thursday only 120.
But we enjoyed both days tremendously because we spent some time with old friends and family that we don't get to see very often.