Rincon Parkway, Ventura, CA

One of our favorite fall/winter long weekend destinations is Rincon Parkway located just a few miles north of Ventura, CA (HWY 101 at Seacliff exit). Rincon Parkway is a 6 mile stretch of the old Pacific Coast Highway that now provides access to several beach colonies, 3 Ventura County parks, and Emma Wood State Beach. Rincon Parkway is one of the County parks. The county has desginated approximately 125 RV only sites marked end to end. Each site is approximately 50' long. Only self contained RV's may park here. No tent, or car camping allowed. All sites are on a "first come, first served" basis. We do not even attempt to stay there from Memorial Day until Labor Day as the sites are continually taken, and the only way to get a site is to arrive Sunday afternoon as the weekenders are leaving. During the fall/winter time you can arrive on Thursday, or even Friday and usually get a spot.

We decided to head for Rincon this past Thursday, October 9th, and spend 4 days enjoying the soothing sound of breaking waves, gentle breezes, spell binding views. We left home around 10am, and arrived, non-stop, at site #41 on Rincon Parkway around 12:30pm. There were no less than 2 dozen sites open, so we had our pick. After setting up we both settled down to do some work. This was the view I enjoyed as I worked on my computer the rest of the afternoon. In the following picture you can get a sense of how the sites stretch north, end to end, along the ocean. This section is almost 1 mile long. It is the only place on Rincon Parkway where ovenight parking is allowed. All other areas allow parking from 7am to 10pm. If you are caught parking overnight the fine is around $170. The daily rate for the designated RV parking where we stayed is $25 per day. A day is 24 hours from your time of arrival. So, for example, we arrived at around 12:30pm, so our 24 hours was up at 12:30pm the next day.

Later that afternoon after it became "apparent" to me that the Dodgers would lose game 2 to the Cardinals, Elaine and I left on a walk south along the beach to Faria Park and back. On the way back I got an instant message from my oldest son simply stating "Can you believe it?!" I messaged back "Believe what?".....he then messaged back that the Dodgers had "come from behind" to win the game by scoring 3 runs with 2 outs in the bottom of the 9th inning. What a great start to the weekend. The Dodgers would go on to win game 3 in St. Louis and sweep the Cardinals, which NO ONE expected, least of all me. Upon our return to the coach I got out the Sea-B-Que barbeque and started to warm up to cook 4 filets from Costco. After dinner we built a fire and enjoyed the setting sun, and then watched as stars began to appear.

Friday dawned very overcast, and did not clear up all day. We worked for a while, and took a walk, then worked some more, and then took another long walk. This was basically a repeat of Thursday ending with another enjoyable evening camp fire.

On Saturday we decided to take a bicycle ride around Ventura. Elaine mapped out an ambitious route taking us down the coast about 13 miles, then looped inland to Old Town Ventura where we stopped for lunch at Anacapa Brewing Company, a local brewpub with great local beer, and a scrumptuous menu. We split a personal pizza, and share sweet potato fries with a sweet/sour dip. We each had a pint of their draft dark beer...don't remember the name right now. On our ride back to Rincon we stopped at the Von's supermarket and picked up some groceries. We arrived back at our coach around 3pm. We decided to forego our last evening fire, and save the wood for the morning, which proved to be a great choice!

On Sunday we awoke to an even thicker marine layer, but the temperature remained steady at around 65 degrees by mid morning. We decided to use the last of our wood for a fire, and sat outside reading by the fire for a couple of hours. Around 1pm we packed up our chairs, and awning mats and headed back to Ontario. What a great, relaxing weekend!