15th October 2009
The sun has reappeared and we’re finally having to use our sunglasses again. We headed down to the wharf at Pismo Beach and spent a pleasant half hour in the sun watching the surfers catching the big waves rolling into the shore.
Then we re-joined highway 101 and headed south, making a detour across a lot of agricultural land to the Guardalupe Nipomo Dunes. These are the largest coastal dunes in the United States. Lots and lots of sand with pounding surf crashing onto the beach. We also saw these long billed, long legged birds, which we think were long billed curlews (after some Googling).
We continued on to Santa Barbara in search of some lunch. We wandered along another wharf before going back into Santa Barbara and enjoying lunch in a Mexican restaurant along Santa Barbara’s main street which had Birds of Paradise growing along it, which Gramps grows in the porch at home and we had just helped him to split before we left :). It was strange to see them just growing on the street.
After lunch we followed the coast-hugging highway straight onto Santa Clarita which is our base for our trip to Six Flags Magic Mountain.