R-V There Yet?

A few Montanas pulled out this morning.  I guess those were the ones that had to go back to work.  One of the representatives for Montanas was supposed to show up sometime during the Rally.  He showed up today.  He went from rig to rig answering questions and problems each rig had.  We heard he had to leave by 2:00 PM and would not meet with us as a group.  So about 1:00 we left and went to tour 2 more towns, Los Olivos and Santa Ynez. 

We had several things planned to visit in these towns.  We did not pay attention to the days and times they would be open.  The places we had planned to tour were closed until closer to the weekend.  So we just drove through the towns and then out in the beautiful countryside looking at the vineyards, farms and homes.  As we were finished and ready to head back to Buellton and were just entering Highway 101 we saw a sign for Firestone Winery Adopt a Highway.  That name sounded familiar.  How and why do I know that name?  At the same time Rick saw the real sign for the Firestone Winery and made a comment about it.  Click-Click Click—my mind is working.  Every season I watch The Bachelor on TV.  Rick watched it the first season and now he only watches the last couple of shows of each season.  I know FIRESTONE Winery from Andrew Firestone who was advertised as the rich bachelor on season 2003.  The family used to own Firestone Tires.

Rick turned around and we drove out in the country to the winery.  It was open and they had a beautiful tasting room.  We went in and sampled 3 white and 3 red wines. Through a big picture window we could see a big, old white house across some vineyards while we were enjoying the wines.  We asked if the family lived on their land and the girl pointed to the house we had been looking at during the wine tasting.  As we were finishing up, Rick went to take some pictures.  When he returned he told me to go check out a room with some photographs of the older generation of Firestones with Presidents and other dignitaries.  While I was in there I heard Rick laughing and talking to someone.  I came out and he introduces me to Kate Firestone who we figured was Andrew’s mother.  As we were leaving we pulled over and let a dirty white Volvo pass us. It was the same lady we had talked to in the winery. We followed the car down to the main road and watched her turn into the Firestone’s driveway.  It really was his mother. For a botched up planned day, it ended up being an unexpected entertaining experience.

Firestone Vineyard Entrance

Vinyard and Wine Tasting Room from Road

Firestone Home   Room of Famous People

Happy Birthday Justin!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Hope you have a great day.

The Montana Rally had a pot luck scramble.  This is the same thing as Breakfast in a Bag.  You put your eggs (crack them first) in a small plastic bag and squish them up and then  put whatever you want in your omelet such as cheese, green peppers, bacon and etc.  Squish that up again, squeeze the air out and put in boiling water for about 12 minutes. You have an omelet. We did this one summer when we had a large family gathering.  It is lots of fun and easy to cook and serve breakfast for a large crowd. One gal had an ostrich egg which is the size of 24 eggs. (pictured below)

Next on the schedule was Show and Tell.  You remember that from elementary school, don’t you?  As a teacher this was not one of my favorite activities.  Students brought silly things and pretty soon you lost the crowd’s (class’s) attention.  BUT, a grown up Show and Tell is fun.  What did we show and tell?  Our MONTANAS, of course.!!!!  Everyone held open house for all the other owners to come through their 5^th wheel and see the modification, floor plans and how we decorated it differently from other Montanas. It is amazing how people can change them to be so individualized.

When that was over we drove over to another town called Lompoc.  This town’s personality is murals.  There are about 40 murals painted on buildings and big signs.  The landscape is gorgeous. (Click on picture for full size)

Then we drove back to Buellton and ate at Pea Soup Anderson’s.  Guess what Buellton and that restaurant is famous for around here?  Split Pea Soup.  It was delicious!!!!!

We didn’t have to be anywhere with the Montana group until 5:00 PM.   Good time to do our touristy thing!  We are in the Saint Ynez Valley.  There are 7 towns that are just a few miles from each other.  Each town is different and has its own personality.  We chose to go to Solvang today.  It is only 2 miles from Buellton.  Its personality is that it is a Danish town. This is wine country also.  There are wine tasting shops and farms all over the valley.  We passed several as we drove to Solvang.  You can definitely tell the Danish influence by looking at the pictures.  There were a lot of Danish bakeries and chocolate candy stores.  We had a great lunch at Café Angelica. On our way to a wine tasting place we stopped at a chocolate candy store and bought a few little morsels of chocolate.  I don’t believe they are on our diet.  Oh, well, who cares?

Then we returned back to Buellton to our get together.  We had a social hour, catered dinner and a white elephant exchange.  It was great getting to know all the Montana owners.  Then a few of us stayed in the clubhouse and played Mexican Train.

Tomorrow is Show and Tell.  We will explain tomorrow.

We didn’t rush to get up as we were in Pomona, CA.  No sense getting up early and get into the LA freeway rush hour.  We got on the road about 10 AM.  The wind was still blowing but not gusts of wind.  The lanes of the freeway looked just like Dallas or Houston freeway lanes, narrow.  They are narrow because they had 4 lanes once upon a time and changed them to 5 lanes without using any more land.  Even though Rick is used to driving our rig through Dallas we know which lane to be in to change freeways.  In LA we had to really pay attention to the signs plus pay attention to all the traffic and the wind. 

We drove down the San Bernardino, Ventura Freeway and the Pacific Coast Freeway.  We saw the Pacific Ocean.  We didn’t take a picture because our eyes were glued to the road.  Once we got above Santa Barbara the traffic eased up.  We went down some 6% and 7% grades.  We know what that means (straight down!!!!) and now we look to see the signs for how many miles we will be driving that grade.  We are relieved when we see only 1 or 2 miles rather than 12 miles.

We arrived in Buellton around 2:30 PM.  We came here to attend a Montana (the make of our 5^th wheel) Rally.  2/3rds of the people attending the rally were already in the RV park.  They were all standing around just watching all the Montanas drive in and park.

It is a very impressive sight to see 35 5^th wheels parked together that look almost alike.  There were rows of them.  See if you can locate us.

A low pressure system came in from the Pacific Ocean bringing 40 to 60 mile per hour winds, which brought a lot of swirling sand to all of southern California.  Rick white knuckled it down the mountain road that had signs everywhere reminding drivers of strong wind currents.  Yes, we could feel those strong wind currents as we made our way down to sea level.

Rather than going from San Diego to LA towing the 5^th wheel on a crowded freeway with the winds blowing we opted to drive back to El Centro, through Palm Springs and then we spent the night in Pomoma near LA… 

What did we see on our trip?  Lots and lots of sand blowing in the air.  Reminded me of west Texas sandstorms.  The visibility in Palm Springs was about a quarter mile, and for brief moments, zero.  I am sure there was not any golf being played in Palm Springs the last 2 days.

The mountains near Pomona could only be seen through a haze of sand.

A few days ago we did a blog on windmills.  On the other side of Palm Springs we came across millions of them.  Okay, Okay, I exaggerate!!!!!  But there were thousands.

Then we came down the mountains into the LA area.  There was a steep grade of mountains but nothing like we had been through in the morning.

Tomorrow we are heading to the coast.  We will be in Buellton, CA, about 40 miles up the coast from Santa Barbara.  We hope the wind and sand has died down by then.