Oceano, CA
This was a short 2 week stay and a bit of an emotional roller coaster. Scylla, my cat, had not been doing well for a few months but the past few weeks had been particularly difficult. When we were in Marina, she had some x-rays done that confirmed the progression of her chronic diseases. I made the decision to put her down on 7/3/25. It feels weird to put more details about her here and then follow it up with what I did on the weekend and mundane life events, there will be a separate post dedicated to her. Click here to read it.
With everything going on with Scylla and emotions running high, I was not up for a lot of adventuress. We did have one date night where were went to a diner we had passed on the way into town and thought looked cool. It was an old train that had been converted into a 50’s style diner. It was a pretty neat spot and the food was good. After dinner, we drove over to Pismo Beach and walked on the shore for a little before heading back home.
We also had our first mouse in the trailer. There were a ton of mice running around this campground and while I initially thought they were super cute, I did not think about the impact of having so many mice around. A few days into our stay I started to see mice droppings around the trailer. At one point while I was working I turned around and notice some movement out of the corner of my eye. There was a mouse inside of Cazic’s food. The container was still closed and when I fed him breakfast that morning, there was no mouse in his food. I am still not sure how it got in his food container.
Dan caught the little guy and took it out to the dunes to release it, but when he got there there was no mouse in the towel. There was still no mouse in the dog food so it either escaped in route to its release point or teleported to someone else’s dog food container.
Anyway, after a new bag of dog food, a new more airtight dog food container, and some mouse bait traps we did not have any more critters bunk with us during this stay. It seemed just to be the one mouse that had decided to move in and once evicted we did not find any more evidence of mice.
Morro Bay, CA
We only had one weekend in this area so we decided to drive an hour north to Morro Bay and enjoy some small town vibes. It felt a lot like a PNW coastal town and not your average CA town.
There was a very small maritime museum that we started our day at and then walked along the bay to check out some stores. We ate at The Gallery Seafood Bar & Grill for lunch where I had a poke bowl.
I think my favorite part of this day trip was the super cute and curated garden store. It was huge and had some amazing indoor and outdoor plants. Thank goodness I am not in the market for new plants right now, otherwise I could see myself spending far too much money here. I did not think to take any photos while I was there but check out the website for The Garden Gallery to see what it looked like.
On our way out of town we stopped at the jerky store and got a fruit tart to take home from the Parisian bakery. It was delicious.
Learning to Crochet
I had been wanting to learn to crochet for a long time. I have always wanted to try and make the micro crochet stuffed animals that are the size of a fingernail but everything I have read says to start with normal size yarn and work your way down. I tried to learn to crochet before but gave up in frustration every time because I was learning from written directions. There are crochet kits out there that now have video tutorials in addition to the written patterns so I decided to try one. I had seen the Woobles kits and heard good things about them but they are fairly expensive for the size item you make. I also wanted something with a little more stich variety so I could learn multiple types of stiches.
I decided to go with the brand Cookie Box and made Jenny the Jellyfish! It took me a few days of working on her for a couple hours at a time but I was really happy with my first project. I would definitely recommend this brand to anyone who has no crochet experience but wants to learn. The video tutorials that accompanied the pattern were a game changer for understanding how to crochet. Not only do they have a video for making the project itself but a library of other videos teaching you foundational skills like how to make specific stiches, read patterns, and count rows.
There are a lot of kits on amazon that have video tutorials but not all of them are written in English but instead translated into English. The translations can be a little confusing if you do not have a base understanding of how to crochet. Different countries also use different terminology for describing stitches.
The Cookie Box kit I picked out gave me the confidence to try a less beginner friendly kit. This one was also marketed to beginners and has videos but they are translated from another language into English. The video script is also read by AI, so I was really glad I started with Cookie Box before attempting the second kit.
For my second project I made a cute little bat. I really liked the pattern but I think it would have been much harder without the foundational skills I learned from the first kit. I also messed this one up a little and accidently did the wrong stich, elongating the pattern more that it should have been. Oh well, lesson learned!
Now that I had a couple projects under my belt I decided to scale down and work with crochet thread instead of yarn. I remade the bat pattern since I was familiar with it and I did not want to try a new pattern the first time I tried working with crochet thread. It was definitely much harder on a smaller scale but I was happy with how the mini bat came out.
Here is a size comparison of the same pattern but made with different thickness for the yarn. The small purple one was made with a 1.5mm crochet hook and the grey one was made with a 3mm hook. I am glad I stayed with a pattern I was familiar with because it was much harder to see what I was doing. I was consistently skipping stiches or crocheting into the same stitch twice.
Eventually I want to get down to under a 0.75mm hook, but not until I master the 1.5mm.
Maintenance Completed
The black tank flush stopped working and was no longer sending water into the tank to flush it out. If you are not familiar with how this functions it allows you to send fresh water directly into the black tank to clean out any addition debris that was not evacuated from dumping. This is critical for preventing the elusive poop pyramid.
Black tank issues are never a good time but on the bright side nothing seemed to be leaking, it just seemed to be stopped up somewhere. After a little research one of the first and ‘easiest’ things to check was the black tank vacuum breaker. This allows for one way flow of fresh water into the black tank. It ensures there is no backflow from the black tank into the hose and water source.
First things first, locate the black tank flush valve. Easy enough, right?
As I continue on this adventure and do more maintenance it becomes more clear (and frustrating) how non-standard everything is. There is no one standard for how everything is built, it depends on the size and manufacturer of your rig. Within manufacturers depending on the year and model can also alter how things are constructed. I learned there are supposedly two primary locations where the valve is located, under the bathroom sink or behind the shower. I was not able to locate mine from either source. Cool, cool, cool.
After more research online and following the exterior flush valve hose into the subfloor with the rest of the bathroom plumbing, it definitely seemed to be in the bathroom somewhere. I also now knew it needed to be 6 inches higher than the toilet bowl to function correctly. The next thing was to check and make sure it did not fall behind the shower somewhere. The access panel to the back of the shower is inside the bathroom cabinet. It is deep but narrow and really difficult to get both arms into since it is not wide enough for my shoulders.
I was not able to see anything. I finally used a flashlight and my phone to take a photo of the back corner and I was able to see it had in fact fallen behind the corner of the shower. The space was not wide enough for me to reach my arm in so I sacrificed a hanger. After a lot of pulling, wiggling, frustration, and scraped knuckles, I was able to pull it back up to the access panel. It took hours and multiple days of searching to get to this point.
Once the valve was up and accessible, it was a 5 minute job. Super easy to twist off the old one and put on the new one, no tools needed just a little hand tightening. I suppose this is what everyone was talking about online when they said it was a super easy fix. I put some zip ties around it to hopefully prevent it from falling back down. We tested it that night and voila it was working.
I also installed a horizontal bar on the screen door. This was an easy task and a nice improvement. When the door is open all the way, you need to go outside to get to the handle to close it. Now you can just grab the handle and close the door no matter how far it’s open.
Overall Rating ⭐⭐⭐
Stay Duration: 2 weeks – June 21, 2025 – July 5, 2025
Weather: Sunny and windy – Temperature Range: 55-73 – Average Temp: 65
- Site 158 ⭐⭐⭐
- Full Hookup, 15/30/50 amp, pull-thru. Sites were small and parking the truck was tight but we made it work. Being able to pull through always makes parking fairly easy.
- There was a picnic table but because the sites were narrow it was more of something to just walk around instead of something to sit on and enjoy. It also had to be right next to the neighbors sewer hookup so it was not a place I wanted to hang out. No fires permitted.
- Campground ⭐⭐⭐
- The campground itself was not the worst but also did not stand out in any way. The day before we left was July 4th so the park was packed. I think almost every site was full.
- There was no ocean access but there was access to the dunes. There are also stables across the street that are affiliated with the park.
- No charge for mail. I think it is really underrated when a park allows you to receive packaged without an additional charge. It can be very expensive, frustrating, and difficult to coordinate mail pickup when you full time. Amazon lockers are great but they have size restrictions and only receive amazon packages.
- I was going to give the campground 4 stars because of the mail pick-up but then I remembered the mouse situation. There were a lot of mice, which are cute, but I don’t like them in my home.
- Other People/Pets ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- We were in a good spot for a holiday weekend. We seemed to be close to a lot of the people who lived in the park which meant we were further away from the sections that had large groups out on the holiday weekend. Since we were traveling the day after July 4th we were still able to get a good night sleep.
- Internet Connection ⭐⭐⭐⭐
- We were able to use T-Mobile, but we did have to put the antenna up. There were a few times it would connect to bad tower but after rebooting the router it would connect to a better tower. Satellite would have also worked if needed.
- Vibes ⭐⭐⭐
- It was fine. I think in general the vibes were off because of everything that was going on with Scylla.
Scrapbook Pages
Next Stop
Acton, CA
Midlife Millennial Adventures 