Santa Paula, March 2011

I'm late in updating this blog, partly out of laziness and partly out of lack of time.  This will be a quickie, but I felt that I needed to get up to date on our most recent trip - at least before we take another one!  Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to share.  Sandy took quite a few, but I seem to have not kept them on my computer.  So, please use your imagination to see the beautiful peacocks as they stood on the hood and in the bed of our truck, pooping all over the place and squawking.

The first weekend in March found us at the Ventura Ranch KOA.  The name implies that it is in Ventura, CA, but it is actually north of Santa Paula on the road to Ojai.  It is nestled down on the east side of Santa Paula creek, opposite the highway in an absolutely beautiful setting.  This is an old, well established park that was recently turned into a KOA.  We were really looking for an alternative for a quick weekend getaway.  Our 'normal' place to go for a quickie is Buellton, but this place cuts 85 miles off of the drive.  Very nice for a short 2 day weekend.  I must mention though - something that is NOT evident when making online reservations - this KOA does NOT have cable television.  Now having lived in that part of the world at one time, I can tell you that you don't get ANY tv unless you have cable.  Although there are ports for cable at the sites, they are inactive.  After returning home, I emailed the staff at the park and asked if this was going to be fixed at some point.  They responded that it was not going to change, that installing cable or satellite would be too expensive.  Oh well.  We would still recommend this park, but make sure that you take plenty of DVDs with you!

The Santa Clara valley has changed a lot since I lived there in the mid to late '70's.  The demographic has changed from middle class working folks to what seems to be a majority of migrant farm workers.  The effect on the neighborhoods is unmistakable, an effect that is definitely NOT good.  Fortunately, the KOA is several miles north of town and seems to be unaffected by the deteriorating town.

Now before I go any further, I must give some of the circumstances of the previous few weeks.  On Thursday evening, February 17th, Sandy was suffering severe abdominal pains.  She is usually pretty stoic about pain, so when she started complaining about the pain, I knew it was time to take her to the emergency room.  To make a long story a bit shorter, she had an emergency appendectomy early Friday morning, the 18th.  That evening, my son and his fiance had their wedding rehearsal.  The following day, the 19th, they were married.  Sandy had to miss all of it because of this untimely illness.  On the other hand, is there ever a good time to have appendicitis?  :-)  So this weekend getaway was during Sandy's recovery.  We did our best to make it a very nice relaxing weekend.

On Saturday, we headed up to Ojai for a little antiquing.  Now if you've been following these blogs, you'll know that we are avid antiquers.  Yeah, that's probably not a real word - antiquers.  But at least I spelled it rite. :-)  We found a couple of places that were interesting, but let me tell you that the antique dealers in Ojai are REALLY, REALLY PROUD of their stuff.  So we settled for a nice lunch at a Mexican food place.  By the way, why is it so hard to find a Mexican food restaurant in Ojai?  Sheesh!

Then off to Fillmore, the town that I actually lived in back in the 70's.  It's still a sleepy little burg and a lot of fun to wander around in.  We spent quite a bit of time in the various shops along Central avenue, what used to be the main drag in town.  Some of the shops are historic, for instance the hardware store that has been open and run by the same family since 1919.  I used to know some of the Patterson clan, having done business with them way back when.  Fillmore also now has an historic train station and even offers rides on their old steam driven trains.  Although we did not avail ourselves of that particular service, it is something that we have put on our list of fun things to do.

Other than that, our weekend was pretty much standard faire.  Steaks on the barbecue for supper and a lot of relaxing around the fire.  Next, we're off to do some fishing in the eastern Sierra and then off to Pismo beach for a long weekend.  Stay tuned!!