We were able to escape to Avila Beach for part of the kids spring break this April. This was another AMAZING experience. Our favorite place to camp is on Babe Lane with the San Luis Harbor RV spots. There has been a lot of improvements just since our trip in November. The highway leading to the harbor has been resurfaced and there has been considerable work done to make sure the maximum number of RVs have the best area to park in along the edge of the bay.

We like to stay up on Babe Lane which overlooks the Highway and the bay, we stayed here last April and didn’t have a problem getting in this April. It is a first come, first serve RV area and we’ve heard from others in the area it is nearly impossible to get in over the summer. What we really like about the Babe Lane location is that there are 1. full hookups, 2. a place for the kids to ride their bikes and explore and 3. very little traffic. We took in a lot of favorites and enjoyed some great weather.

Ben and Star the starfish

The first day we spent entirely at Avila Beach. We got there early and we stayed through the Farmers Market which happens on Fridays. While we’ve experience a lot of wonderful sand castle and kite flying days here, this day brought something even more memorable and will cement us to continue our visits to Avila Beach. While playing in the morning surf and all that an earlier in the week storm stirred up, Ben pulled on a long segment of seaweed and came up with a gorgeous ochre starfish clinging to relatively small stones. The starfish was very much alive and seemed to be really healthy. We noticed that a lot of children were going in to the new Avila Beach Sea Life Center and decided to take the starfish over there to see if they could help us with where we should put the starfish.

We found out that the Sea Life Center was still pending their grand opening which is happening on April 24, 2010. We got a great sneak peak and the director of the Sea Life Center took in our found starfish right into their new aquariums. She asked Ben what he’d like to name his starfish and he said…Star. So now we have a permanent place to visit Star every time we come to Avila Beach.

Sammy enjoying the pool

On Saturday we checked the weather and saw that it was going to be a mid 70s day which is wonderful in the area and perfect for swimming at the Avila Hot Springs Resort which has two water slides that my kids would be happy to go down even in low 60s temps. There is also a sulphur hot springs pool where adults and kids 8 and up can warm up! We were pleasantly surprised by the cafe that is now at the resort and they took our orders and brought our food poolside. We stayed from 11 am to 4 pm.

We visited the Fisherman’s Beach which is directly below Babe Lane and the kids helped a friend they met dig a huge sand bunker while the tide came in. In their digging they uncovered a sea slug. These enormous slugs of the sea usually are trollers of the deep and a retired fisherman said we should drop it back out in the ocean as far as we could take it. There was a kayaker there who did the job. I wasn’t able to get a picture of the Sea Slug because I didn’t have a camera but I did find some pictures on line which sort of resembled it.

Sea Slug

After the beach we realized we didn’t have anything to BBQ so we decided to treat ourselves and try out The Custom House restaurant. There was a live band playing at the adjoining Rick’s bar and we enjoyed a great dinner of shrimp and scallops. The kids then enjoyed winding down the evening by flying kites on the beach.

Though our time at Avila Beach was considerably shorter than we would have liked, it is one of the trips we’ll likely be talking about for years!