What a wonderful thing a lake is to a kid; there are so many hills to climb, rocks to skip, places to run and be free. It’s also a wonderful thing to grownups; there so many hills for the kids to climb, rocks for them to skip, and places for them to run free—yards away from Mom and Dad. This dynamic works beautifully, unless it also involves a toddler, a motorhome, and a sewer hookup. But more on that later.
Now that spring has sprung, it’s a great time to get the motorhome ready and head to the lake for some camping and a chance to be at one with nature. Just 10 miles east of Arroyo Grande is one of the prettiest and family-friendliest lakes on the Central Coast. Lopez Lake offers 22 miles of shoreline on which to camp, boat, ski, fish, swim, windsurf, picnic, or ride horses.
For kids—and adults—who aren’t content with what nature has to offer, there are the Mustang Water Slides: two 600-foot curving waterslides, a Stampede inner tube ride down a 38-foot drop, a tot pool with mini-slides, and waterfall trees.
Lopez Lake is the perfect area to enjoy the heat with average summertime temps in the 70s. There are plenty of oak trees for sitting and enjoying the shade. Windy coves make it a popular place for windsurfing as well. More than 175 species of flowering plants and more than 150 species of birds have been identified in the park. Yet the place was, once upon a time, covered by the sea.
The grounds were also hunting and fishing havens for the Chumash Indians. Later, homesteaders and ranchers inhabited the area and harvested grain crops for Mission San Luis Obispo.
In 1969, the lake was created to provide domestic water for the Five Cities area—not to mention provide some summertime fun.
We rounded up our kids and met up with our friend Rick and his kids, who were already taking advantage of the camping at Lopez Lake. As a parent, it’s great to sit back with a beer, stoke a campfire, and watch the kids be kids: no technological accessories, no Disney Channel or Nickelodeon, just kids using their own limbs powered by their own biological fuel to run and jump and laugh without the aid of technology. We clicked beer bottles at the site and sighed in contentment—until we looked down and noticed our toddler Sebastian, who can’t yet run and jump without the aid of Mom and Dad, looking up at us.
At that moment, he was busying himself with collecting pine cones, rocks, and various interesting objects he found in the dirt. Life was sweet again.
Lopez Lake offers several camping areas and RV hookups, and we discussed the down-and-dirty about camping in a motorhome. We have a motorhome we use for day trips and haven’t yet used it for camping (that doesn’t make a lot of sense, I know), but there’s a lot of crap that goes with having a motorhome. Yes, I’m talking about poop. Many RV owners we know use the public facilities where they camp. However, camping with kids means a lot of trips to the bathrooms. Connecting the motorhome to the campsite hookups sometimes means your—because I don’t know the name of it—poop tube is hooked up right next to the neighboring camper’s camp fire.
That was our situation as we discussed the pros and cons of RV camping, sitting right next to our neighboring campers’ poop tube, enjoying our campfire and a little dirty (bathroom) talk.
That’s when it happened. Even though we were talking about bathroom hookups, we weren’t really noticing the actual hookups anymore. But Sebastian did. Despite all the pinecones and trees and dirt and rocks and climbing and sun and breezes and laughing and kids, Sebastian lost interest in those things and suddenly took great interest in the gray tubing snaking out of our neighbors’ RV. Before we could jump up and stop him, he pulled the tubing out of the hookup and began to swing it around like a cowboy at a calf-roping event.
My husband and I instinctively lunged toward him, dodging Matrix style lest we get bulleted by any biohazardous matter being flung from the tube. I don’t know that anything was flung, but we weren’t taking any chances.
With that one maneuver, Sebastian made up our minds about whether or not we were ready to do the whole RV hookup thing in the future. We’ll still camp at the lake, however, because that’s an experience that’s a can’t miss.
With the hookups once again hooked up, we walked the kids to the edge of the lake. They skipped stones, and we watched them as the sun set on another one of the beautiful natural places the Central Coast has to offer.
Arts Editor Shelly Cone wants to know the correct term for “poop tube.” Tell her at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 28 – May 5, 2011.
