At first, I didn’t think Chris would be up to making the trip to Lompoc after all that we had to do prior to Brett’s wedding and then having the wedding the weekend before the ride, but she was all for it. And of course, I’m not about to say "No" to a motorcycle ride!

So I made our reservations at the Holiday Inn Express and continued working around the house getting ready for our own "Hampton Inn" to happen! First to arrive here, was Dereck & Lexie with their two kids. Then Aaron and Michelle with their five kids, with Justin & Barb to follow on Saturday morning, for a grand total of 13 plus Chris and I for 15 in this house. .

We also had the Rehearsal dinner here, so we had quite the showing the week before the ride. And then, after they were all gone, I had Byron come by to put some new tires on the 2010 on Wednesday and we left for Lompoc on Thursday.

I wasn’t in a real big hurry to get out of here, I was thinking around noon. But a few things got in the way and we didn’t get away from the house until about 2pm. The drive up wasn’t too bad. Most of the traffic we saw was going through Santa Barbara at rush hour. We arrived at the campground (to find out what would be going on the next day) around 7:15pm, so just over 5 hours to make the trip up in the truck, pulling the trailer with the bike in it.

Jeff planned a trip to Parkfield for Friday. Chris chose to stay at the Hotel for the day and maybe go help Cindy with the food for Friday night.

I meet up with Jeff and two other bikes, Jim & Ken Zook with his wife riding pillion, at the campground around 9:30am or so. I wasn’t real sure where Parkfield was, but Jeff had a route picked out and didn’t stick with it, instead he made a couple of changes to make the road a bit more exciting. We made a brief stop at a rest stop on 41 or 46 (maybe both), and then took the "road" into Parkfield.

As we were following Jeff, we were riding on a narrow road with livestock fences on both sides. At one point, we came across a small herd of pigs, but they didn’t look like the boars I’ve heard about in the region, so we were pretty sure they were some farmer’s pigs. We rolled into Parkfield around noon.

The Parkfield Café was an interesting place. Parkfield is located about 500 feet on the eastside of the San Andres fault. The Café looked to be made out of squared off logs and in the rafters, they had old branding irons, that when they would have a quake, they would all rattle. As luck would have it, there was no shaking while we were there!

After lunch, we took off towards Lompoc, but Jeff took the better roads back towards 101. Ken and the Mrs said they were going to be stopping to look at some of the antiques, so we lost them some where’s along the way back. Once we hit the 101, it was time to head south, stopping at a little town so Jeff could fill his GW and off we went again.

Jim dropped off as we cleared Santa Maria and I stayed on Hwy1 to our Hotel, while Jeff rode back to the campground. As I stopped where our room was, Chris was just coming out. The maid had chased her out and she was going to take off, but when she saw me, we just sat in the truck and waited for the maid to finish.

We then got ready and went to Mike & Cindy’s for dinner. We got there just as Mac and Carol&Carol with BobD arrived. Mac made the comment that he didn’t know how to get into their house since the garage was closed. So I went, knocked on the door and told Cindy what Mac said, so she went and opened the door, making Mac happy!

It was a great dinner, Cindy always out does herself!

Earlier Chris and I had talked about riding up Hwy1 to see the elephant seals, so towards the end of dinner, just before everyone took off, I was asking if anyone wanted to go up with us. A guy Chris said that he would like to go, so we arranged to meet the next morning at the camp ground.

He showed up not long after we did and we took off up to Hwy1. The traffic was okay, considering it was mostly a two lane highway, with one lane for each direction. We eventually found Hwy 101 in Santa Maria and jumped on it heading north. As you take 101 from Santa Maria, you go through the Pismo Beach area and then back inland to San Luis Obispo, where Hwy1 heads off to the west.

Once out of SLB, it becomes quit rural and a couple times we could see dear in the grazing areas. Thank goodness they were quite a distance away and no threat to us.

It took us a couple of hours to get up to where the elephant seals were. As we were still heading north, passing the area just south of Hearst Castle, were could see a herd of Zebras. These had been imported years ago by the Hearst Family and had now, grown in numbers, there must have been twenty of them.

This particular area, where the elephant seals are, has been fenced off, but set up so you could see the seals, but not disturb them. And there were a lot of elephant seals. We watched them for a little bit, then headed south. We stopped in the town of Cambria for lunch and then headed back to Lompoc.

I had hoped to stop at Morro Bay, but it was getting late and the temps had got cooler due to the fog coming in. So we just kept going south. Again we hooked up to Hwy101 in San Luis Obispo and headed south on it. As we were just approaching Santa Maria, we saw dust flying on the freeway ahead of us and then I could see a car sideways.

As we approached the car, both Chris and I jumped off our bikes to assist. Chris was able to help pull the guy out of the car while some other guy started spraying the front of the car with a fire extinguisher. I’m not convinced the car was on fire, I think it was just steam from the radiator.

Soon after that, the Fire Trucks came and we got back on our bikes and headed back to Lompoc. Chris left us as we were going through Orcutt (where he lived) and Chris and I went back to our hotel room so we could freshen up before the BBQ at the campground.

By the time we got to the campground, we found that we were a bit late, but there was still plenty of food. As we were sitting around, we heard that Cindy was burned from some freak accident when George was trying to get the camp fire going.

After we left the campground, Chris and I stopped at WalMart and were picking up a few items for the drive back the next day, when Chris grabbed some flowers to take to Cindy. So we stopped at Mike and Cindy’s to drop off the flowers and we’re able to see them for a few minutes. Cindy’s legs had been burned pretty badly.

The next morning Chris and I took off and decided to stop in Santa Ynez for breakfast, where we stopped a few years back. Very nice place and good food. The rest of the trip was uneventful and we got home around 3 or 4pm.