October 4-10: SLO For A Change

October 10, 2012

Elks Lodge, San Luis Obispo, California

In this case, “SLO” is San Luis Obispo.  It’s an interesting little college town roughly halfway between LA and San Francisco right on US-101.  We’ve driven through here numerous times from the late-70s on, but never stopped.  Well, we corrected that on this visit.

It wasn’t a stop involving a lot of activities, just a nice layover on the way south.  We spent a week at the SLO Elks Lodge, a nice enough place and a pretty active Lodge (having a large swimming pool will attract a younger crowd, good for membership), with the only downside being that the designated RV parking spots backed up too close to the US-101.  It was like being parked in a highway Rest Area to an extent, with noisy traffic 24x7.  But, it was convenient and we managed.

So, what did we do?  Well, the first order of business was to check out the Lodge, where we had lunch and a brew.  Thursday evening, we headed to the “famous” SLO Farmer’s Market.  I’ll say this, it’s one of the largest we’ve visited.  Of course, like most “Farmer’s Markets” these days, there are a lot of vendors selling all sorts of “non-farm” things.  There were even several interesting musical acts performing.  But, there was also an abundance of harvest goodies and we managed to pick up a few items.

One interesting aspect of the SLO event is that it’s downtown, right on Higuera Street, one of the main upscale shopping thoroughfares.  They close off a section about 6 blocks long and the vendors set up on both sides of the street.  An advantage of this is that businesses in this area can set up right outside their front door, which a lot of restaurants do to their advantage.  Unfortunately for us, we’d had a big, late lunch at the Lodge, so we weren’t particularly hungry.  Next time, we’ll pass on lunch and graze the Market.

Beyond that, our time here was pleasantly uneventful.  We did some shopping, finding a new-to-us store, New Frontiers Natural Marketplace, kind of like Market of Choice up in Oregon.  We took the pups to the beach near Morro Bay.  Geri got her hair done.  And, I was able to get out for several good walks in the 3.5-5.5 mile range.

All in all, it was a good visit and we’ll definitely stop here again...