Beachside Parking

While reading a blog  yesterday, I came across an item that reminded me of something I had all but forgotten.

Many years ago, when I was still in college, before I got married, my parents lived in southern California.  My college was in northern California.  I was dating the man I later married (and divorced).  He lived with his sister in southern California.  We had met at college where he was a law student.  He had graduated and I was still an undergrad.  After spending the summer at my parents’ house, I had to go back to school.  He offered to drive me to college and take a load of my stuff.  I’d have to come back and take more stuff up but it was nice to be driven because it gave us a chance to spend some more time together.  We knew that soon we’d be a seven hour drive from each other so the drive to campus would bridge that distance a bit.

We drove on highway 101 which runs along the coast in a lot of places and a bit inland in others parts.  He was driving me in his newly purchased vintage 1966 Mustang.  As we approached the Pismo Beach area, he said that a friend had told him about Pismo Beach and how pretty it was and then he proposed that we get off and go check it out.  It really was quite beautiful.  He drove through town and toward the beach.  When we got to the beach, there was a parking lot to the left.  He headed for the parking lot then noticed that some people were parked ON the beach.  He wanted to park on the beach like the other cars BUT he didn’t want to park WITH the other cars.  He wanted to park away from them.  So he drove onto the beach and steered left to the isolated spot instead of right toward the other cars.  All was fine until he stopped the car to figure out exactly where he wanted to park.  When he decided on the exact spot, he gave the car gas.  The tires spun.  The car did not move.  The sand sputtered all around us.  We were stuck.

About an hour later, a sixty dollar towing bill, and a lot of embarrassment, we had been pulled out of the sand and the kind of cocky police man showed us the sign next to the driveway leading on to the beach.  In very tiny and faded letters, it had an arrow pointing to the right accompanied by the words Parking and in even tinier letters, it read “No Beach Parking To the Left.”

Kind of a dumb thing to do but it really wasn’t all his fault.  The area wasn’t properly posted.  In fact, it was probably a ploy by the towing company who towed us and then a couple of other cars who had followed us on to the wrong side of the beach parking!

I laugh now but at the time, it really wasn’t funny.  It was embarrassing and cost us both money we didn’t have.  Before driving back south, he also had to have some work done on the car to get all the sand out of the axle!  I know he never tried to park on the beach while I was with him after that and I’m fairly certain he hasn’t tried it with anyone else, either.