S to T: Joshua Tree, CA to San Luis Obispo, CA

We woke up at dawn, as we had finally perfected the winter travel sleep schedule - arrive at the campsite before dark, write in our trip journals, maybe write postcards, eat some food and then get tired and go to sleep around 9pm, getting enough sleep to wake up early and get as much done during daylight hours as possible.We arrived at the visitor center for Joshua Tree National Park before they opened at 8am, and waited around in order to purchase our yearly National Parks pass as we hope to visit more public lands in the upcoming year. We drove through the main section of the park, walked through a Teddy Bear Jumping Cacti garden - they sound harmless but apparently have very painful barbs - and took lots of pictures of Joshua Trees. At the northern visitor center, another early Sportsmobile pulled into the parking lot after us. Max couldn't resist talking to the owners (and taking pictures of our vans next to each other). He was a nature photographer and he and his wife had driven over 200,000 miles in the past eight years in their Sportsmobile. Made our 10,000 mile trip seem pretty short.We decided that it would be far more enjoyable to drive up Highway 101 and Highway 1 instead of I-5, so we bypassed visiting Los Angeles and started up the coast. Boondocking is hard to do along the Pacific Coast in California, so we stayed at El Chorro Regional Park in San Luis Obispo. There was a sign near the bathrooms warning against interacting with rodents in the area because cases of the plague had been reported. Although we were finally at a coyote-free campground, we still couldn't let Buzz out of the van for long walks for fear of plague. We wondered if we had traveled back through time to the Middle Ages.

Links: El Chorro Regional Park

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