Returning To A Long-time Memory -- Pismo Beach State Park

I'll never forget the night nearly 32 years ago in the fall of 1983.

I was a 21-year-old pedaling fool, biking across the country and down the coast of California when my weary legs pushed a piece-of-shit Schwinn LeTour into Pismo Beach State Park.

I didn't even have a tent. I had a crappy old K-Mart sleeping bag, which I rolled out near a bush and fell asleep around 10 p.m.

But I awoke around 2:30 p.m. from rain pelting me and I realized I wasn't going to get any more sleep.

So, I packed the sleeping bag, bungie corded it on my LeTour rear rack and off I went in the rainy darkness.

I biked through the gloomy darkness all the way to Lompoc, some 43 miles to the south on the coastal highway one.

It was sunny by the morning, and my legs had new life.

But I never forgot about Pismo Beach State Park, which I walked through tonight. It's still a sprawling piece of land with dozens of camping spots, where everyone from dome tent users to mega-Winnebago owners called home for a night.

 
Pismo Beach State Park was a place where Bugs Bunny showed up in a cartoon -- which, for a kid who grew up in the New York City suburbs, was all I knew about the geography of California.

It's still there and waves of emotion washed over me as I strolled the park's grounds. Still there after all those years.