Tuna
Thursday 02 May 2024
Pismo Beach is a cute little town about half an hour north of where we are in Santa Maria. We decided to go the ‘scenic route’ on highway 1. Well, I thought it would be scenic and better than belting up the freeway. We drove out of town through the fruit and vegetable growing region. There were field upon fields of different crops at different stages. I think we saw strawberry, broccoli, lettuce, cabbage and other stuff that I couldn’t identify, and possibly misidentifying everything I saw. There was a gentle wind that was stirring up the top soil and giving earthing a gentle hazy appearance. The road was single lane, windy in places and lots of stop signs and traffic lights. Shoulda taken the 101.
We didn’t turn left at Albuquerque (we didn’t actually go there), but we did get to Pismo Beach and it wasn’t in a cave. (Yes, I had to look that one up!)
Pismo Beach isn’t a big place, but had a nice jetty to go for a wander along and long and wide beaches. Again, there were people surfing (badly). Don’t these people have daytime jobs to go to!? We were glad we were visiting in off-season as I am sure this place would be a heaving nightmare in peak summer holidays and weekends. There were rows and rows of apartments and hotels.
Driving a little bit further up the coast (about 5 mins) the beach turned in to cliffs, which were lovely.
Stopping at one place we overheard a bloke mentioning a SpaceX launch. I think we just missed a launch from Vanderburg Space Force Base as there was a smoke trail still visible in the sky. The SFB is only 20miles south of Santa Maria. The Albatross saw some shiny glinty thing in the sky and then I saw a very bright orange light over the headland where the base is. Looking it up when we got home, it was indeed a SpaceX launch that was hurtling into space on a Falcon 9 a Maxar Satellite. What we believe we saw was the first stage booster returning and landing.
Cool, really cool. Just wished we had got to that spot 10 mins earlier.
We had a late lunch in a really nice café/restaurant which had only been opened for a couple of months. It was off the main road, had a lovely outdoor patio with shade and served an excellent tri-tip wrap and beer.