OK, so our trip to California was back at the beginning of August and I'm just now getting around to updating my blog and posting about it. To be honest, I think I've spent the last 2 months feeling like it was going to be too much of a project to get all the pictures up and actually write about it. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill! ha :) So anyways, here's the trip in pictures... and there is no way I can capture how much fun it was to spend the week away with my family or how incredibly beautiful the California coast was, but it was all just breathtaking. Couldn't have asked for a better vacation!
The flight out was quite early in the morning... but here's the airport selfie showing that we were mostly awake and happy to be on the way.
We flew into San Jose and arrived around noon. Then we made the short drive up to San Francisco. My sister had told me not to miss the ride on the Cable Cars down to the waterfront, so we parked our car near the start of the famous Powell/Market Street line and had a good view of how they manually turn the cable cars around while we waited in line for an hour to ride it. :)
I do have to say that, despite the faces being made below by my children who did not want their pictures made, we had a lot of fun on the ride. It was definitely a unique experience and the view riding down to the waterfront was spectacular!
Once down on the waterfront, we walked way out on this very long pier out into San Francisco Bay and I took this picture with Alcatraz out in the background. And as you can see, it was pretty chilly. Even in the first week of August, San Francisco seems to hover around 65 to 70 degrees all the time. With the wind always blowing, it feels colder than that!!
We spent the first night just south of San Francisco, got up the next morning, and started our trek down the famous California 1 Pacific Coast Highway. Our first stop along the way was Santa Cruz. They have a fantastic boardwalk there with an amusement park, arcades, roller coasters and a gorgeous beach. We made it there just in time for lunch and a very lively "Step Up" kind of dance and acrobatic show. The weather was beautiful, but again, not very warm. That was one of the interesting things about the Northern California coastline... after years of Florida beaches and vacations, this was so different because it was just so cold most of the time. This particular day was probably the warmest at, maybe, 75 degrees! But it was still just so pretty, as you can see.
After Santa Cruz, we continued on down PCH 1 and I just have to mention here that I was amazed at the miles and miles of produce farms that we passed thru along the way. Somehow I just didn't expect to see so much farmland sitting right on the edge of the Pacific ocean. And again, I think this is my Florida bias... just about every inch of beach property in Florida is used for tourism and vacation homes. It was just weird to see the lack of commercialism along the California coastline. And it was all just so beautiful...
A funny moment along the way was when we were passing thru an enormous strawberry farm and saw that it was the GIANT strawberry farm. I can't remember if it was Jack or Anna that realized that those are the very strawberries that we buy at Walmart every week. haha. So we stopped at a fruit stand along the way and bought some fresh strawberries and I swear they tasted like candy. They were the sweetest strawberries I have ever tasted. It was amazing! Of course, now I have a very hard time enjoying the ones that we get from Walmart because they just aren't even close to being as good!!!
One last funny story... as we were driving along, suddenly, right in the middle of one of the strawberry fields, there was a lone port-a-potty just sitting there. It was very odd looking. But what was more funny was Anna pointing it out and saying, "What is that 'pot-a-porty' doing out there?" Maybe you had to be there, but we got a good laugh out of that. :)
Anyways, moving along. Our next stop was Monterey and the Monterey Plaza Hotel and Spa. And yes, it was just as nice and fancy as the name sounds... this was our 'splurge' for the trip and it was so worth it. I think we all are agreed that we could have stayed in Monterey forever... I'm running out of adjectives to describe how nice it all was. Here are the girls outside of the hotel just before we went out to dinner.
This won't mean much to anyone but us, but this is the view from where we ate dinner out on the end of a pier in Monterey. Off in the distance, as the sun went down, there was this mountain that was still all lit up and honestly, it just looked fake. Like it was part of a Hollywood set or something. It caught our attention for a while and I tried to capture it but I think I needed a better camera than my iPhone. ha This is one of those 'you had to be there' kinda moments. :)
One of our best adventures on this trip was a kayak tour of Monterey Bay. The guy in the picture below, whose name I can't remember now, (John?) was our guide and he was so much fun! We spent 3 hours in kayaks paddling around with sea otters and seals popping up around us (so cute!) and all sorts of amazing birds and other sea creatures that we got to see along the way. We stopped at one point and our guide pulled some star fish out of the water and let us hold them - along with a weird creature that he called a 'sea bunny' that looked more like a big (really big!) slug that leaked purple ink when it got upset. My hands stayed purple for a while. :)
After the kayaking adventure, we stopped at a beautiful beach and took these pictures...
We hadn't really planned on doing this, but a couple that was part of our kayaking trip told us that we HAD to go to the Monterey Aquarium. So before leaving town the next morning, we took a trip thru the aquarium and it was great -- this is one of my favorite pictures from there... giant octopus! :)
So from Monterey, we continued south on PCH1 and traveled thru Big Sur. This was the stretch of road that I had pictured in my mind of what it would be like to travel along the pacific coast highway. On one side of the road were the mountains of Big Sur and on the other side of the road were cliffs down to the beach and out to the ocean. It was breathtaking! The two pictures below were taken by a waterfall that falls out into the ocean -- so pretty!
This picture just turned out funny because it was so windy. We were trying to get a picture of us with the really awesome bridge in the background, but Mackenzie's hair ended up being the most interesting thing about this picture! :)
As we were nearing our next destination, Cambria, we saw all these cars pulled over in a parking lot by the ocean and people lined up at an overlook pointing at something. We were curious to see what everyone was looking at, so we pulled off and took a look... this is what we saw -- elephant seals! Everywhere! There were all just laying around on this beach - huge ones and babies, all over the place. I don't know if you can see it, but there are two really big ones right in the center of this picture that were fighting with each other. It was funny to watch.
This is the girls posing in the really pretty garden at our hotel in Cambria. We were headed out for our tour of the Hearst Castle.
I can't take credit for this photo, but this is a photo that we bought of the Hearst Castle. It is perched on the top of mountain and the view in the OTHER direction from this picture is out to the ocean - this place was beyond amazing!
This is a view of the roman themed outdoor pool. Apparently the Hearst family loved to entertain movie stars and politicians - I was trying to imagine the parties they must have had around this pool! Crazy....
Here we are with the view from the front of the castle out to the ocean... How would you like to wake up to that every morning? Wow...
And as if the OUTDOOR pool wasn't enough, this is the INDOOR pool... really? And my picture really doesn't do it justice...
I loved the Hearst Castle. It was all just so over the top - like a fairy tale. The only drawback for me was that the drive up to it was fairly terrifying! The only way up was on tour buses that took about 15 minutes to wind their way up what was sometimes a one-way drive to the top of this huge mountain... it was a little scary for those of us afraid of heights. :)
SO, after our morning at the Hearst Castle, we left Cambria and the Pacific Coast Highway and made our way inland to take the interstate back up to San Francisco. (it's a lot faster than the PCH route!) Another nice surprise along this route was traveling thru Paso Robles and the Central Coast wine region. I wasn't aware of all the beautiful wine country that we were going to be traveling thru. I would have loved to stop and tour one of the wineries, but our schedule was tight that day. But they were pretty to look at as we drove thru! :)
So we made it back up to San Francisco and this is a picture of us driving over the Golden Gate Bridge... in the fog. :)
So our last destination on this trip was Muir Woods just north of San Francisco. We wanted to see some GIANT trees and we found some! This was a very popular destination -- we had to park about 1/2 a mile away - but it was worth it. The trees were huge! Again, it's hard to do it justice with pictures, but I like this one of Jack, Anna, and Mackenzie cause it gives a little bit of perspective on how big the trees are....
And this last picture is another one that probably won't be as cool to anyone but us, but the 'hands' are a big mural on the side of the parking garage at the San Jose airport. If you saw it up close, it's a big wire mesh screen with what looks like ping pong balls that make up the 'hands.' From a distance, this is what it looks like and it's pretty cool... :)
I left this for last cause it was the best family picture we got on the trip... and it was the one we had to buy from the gift shop at the Hearst Castle.. ha. That's us, superimposed on the really amazing gathering room in the castle.
So that was a quick tour of our trip to California. It was great to be away with just our family - the older the girls get, the harder that is to do! So I will cherish this time and these memories -- and I hope to make it back out to the west coast one of these days and see more!! :)
