Surprise, surprise!

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7:46 am - PDST - Wednesday - 51º F, 89% humidity, wind 7 mph out of the east.....pretty much the norm here in Lompoc.  Partly cloudy skies with a forecast high of 72º F.....Wednesday is getaway day.....heading to the Elks Lodge in Oceano, CA (next to Pismo Beach) for 5 days, which means more beach time!

We hadn't really taken a long walk since we arrived in Lompoc so TLE suggested we walk down Ocean Avenue to check out a thrift store we had missed the other day, so we set out walking around 10 am when I began to notice art work on the sides of many buildings along Ocean.....I began taking one picture after another......

......I call this 'building art', but there may be a more technical name for it.....it is apparently encouraged in Lompoc.  Over the course of the next 2+ hours we took dozens of pictures, and I am sure we missed some by staying mostly on Ocean.....we did stop in and browse through the thrift store we set out to see, but our walk became about seeing and photographing as much 'building art' as we could......

.....some covered the sides of entire large buildings, while others occupied smaller spaces.....

 Painted on the side of the local fire station

 Celebrating the Chumash Indians from the 17th century

.....we could have spent the rest of the day walking from one piece of art to another....our final destination of the morning was the local Grocery Outlet, which also boasted it's own building art and some car art as well.....

.....we picked up a few essentials (milk, pool noodles, avacado oil, etc.) and were home before 1 pm.  In all we covered just over 3 miles, but the morning became more about the 'building art' than the walk.  Had we not taken this walk we might have missed this cool side to Lompoc.

Around 3, once again, we decided to take a drive out to the 'Surf' beach with another bottle of wine....Zin this time.....

.....the weather was decidedly different from Monday....no fog shrouded beaches.....lots of sun and great visibility up and down the coast.....

.....eventually we took a walk from one fence to the other....

.....mostly to see what the sign said......apparently this beach is only restricted from March 1st to September 30th each year and that is the time of year in which we find ourselves at the moment.....I guess these fences and signs come down after September 30th.....

We were home just after 5 pm at which time we parked the car and walked two blocks over to a local Mexican restaurant named 'El Palmar', which, according to Yelp, has wonderful Ceviché and Shrimp Cocktail.....they get 4 stars on 51 reviews.  It is rare that I am disappointed in a restaurant, especially when Yelp gives them such high praise.  I am a pretty patient guy when it comes to service, and I rarely complain about slow service, but when the Shrimp Cocktail fell a little short of the reviews I became more aware of how painfully slow our service was......there were only 6 customers in the restaurant.  For the record, TLE loved her Ceviché, so this is really just my rant.....I would be somewhere in the 2-3 star range on the Shrimp Cocktail.  

We were home by 7 pm and settled in for the evening to watch the NCIS's, and were in bed by 11 pm.  Of course I went to sleep thinking about the things needing to be done Wednesday morning before we roll our wheels.

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