California Day Four and Five

I’m gonna walk where?




Okay, so in all honesty, you do get to drive to the base of the big rock out there, but that's it, you walk around and up that rock.

Access to the Pt. Sur Lighthouse is by guided three hour walking tour only. In order to take the incredible lighthouse tour you have to be one of the 1st 12 people parked in the little pull off on Hwy 101 and they recommend that you arrive a half hour before tour time. Also, due to high winds the tour might get cancelled. We arrived about an hour before tour time and were the first ones to arrive (even before the tour guides). However, I’m glad we got in, as there was a car that was turned away. And this was one of the main 4 things on the itinerary.

The idea of a half mile plus walk doesn't sound to bad and the .12% grade or a little less doesn't even sound horrible, the vertigo that you get as you look down on the birds is a little freaky.


Walking across a gap on an old wooden bridge and you look at old wood pieces on the hill below is a little scary. They assured us the wood pieces were not part of an old bridge but I’m not sure I’m buying.

We are told the cliffs out there (now privately owned) is where the VOLUNTEER Coastal Search and Rescue team trains. Cars that go off the side of Hwy 101 works out to about one a week, sad! And we did read some of the newspaper article of the one that had just happened. Incredibly sad.

Families worked and lived up here for almost 100 years.









We got to hear about how the friends of the lighthouse come out for their work days and paint things and wash windows and such. An amazing place

So the lighthouse was amazing. We got to walk all around the light and see out for miles. We got to hear all kinds of shipping history and about the blimp crash.

The cat walk (the no rail bridge from higher ground down to the light house, which was used by lighthouse workers) was no longer there. On the picture below you can see the gap. The spot where it starts from was off the photo to the right and it was a wooden bridge, without a rail that crossed to the black balcony you see.

Could you handle this view?

How about the private beach?

There is our car, all the way down there –

Hey everyone, this is Fran.

From the lighthouse we headed south. Ran into a few little sights along the way. We stopped for a cool waterfall that didn't turn out to be all that cool (because we were to far away from it) but on that path, we learned why we were so far away from it. Someone used to own that private beach and have a cool looking house up there. Mildly interesting.

Another stop was supposedly a view. The view didn't turn out all that great but the shops with items by local artists was very cool! Continuing south to San Simeon we arrived before dark.

California says good evening again.

San Simeon is a great, quiet, flat area. Its cattle ranch area but the coast line is fairly flat for several miles and not real curvy so you can just see up the coast line, very pretty!

And we have a down day -- shopping the local shops and artists of Cambria (6 miles from San Simeon). We were so proud of ourselves for not buying anything, but that was short lived as we didn't impulse buy. Instead we went back on our way out of town and bought the things we still wanted.

Okay, seriously I want to find someone locally that offers this. Seemed weird in October to see these signs all over town in Cambria, but honestly what an amazing offer. I was tempted to call and find out the charge.

Who can name that bird?

Piedras Blancas Light Station - we missed the tours.

We stood out here forever willing these guys to move – move, do something – seriously guys. Just do something! They didn't, I havemany pictures of them just laying there.

Thankfully Fran wasn't ready to get back in the car she walked to the other end of the beach and we finally found a few who did some moving. I have tons of photos of those guys in various points on the beach, but the wind in my ears started to hurt so I had to go in.

I love the coast line there in San Simion. So beautiful. There was a stretch of land with a closed down hotel and cafe on it. The signs indicated a remodel but it looked deserted for some time. Makes you think, perhaps dream, of a completely different life.


Doesn't this look like a painting?

Hey, see that little white dot up there? That’s where we are going tomorrow.

California Day Three

I think I got a little smarter this time on the whole posting thing. Hopefully, I won't have to re-arrange the photo order as they upload.

Okay, I left off shopping in Monterey - I did bring home the business card for the jeweler we found, because you just never know. :)
From there we drove a few miles along the coast. . .
Hey, if I was independently wealthy, I think I’d live here. . .






With this beautiful view. . .

In Pacific Grove we stopped at the Point Pinos Lighthouse. . .

I'd happily work here. . .

Although, I don't know how you'd get ANY furniture up the spiral lighthouse stairs into this house. Craziness.


Here is the map of the Monterey area and honestly it’s not really any bigger than it looks. This lighthouse is surrounded by a golf course.



Okay, moving on as we left the lighthouse we continued on around the coast line

and I’d happily live here,

viewing this

Or here,

viewing this,



It’s not a private beach by any means, but with little place to park I can’t really imagine it completely crowded either.

Although, I have to tell ya, even through I didn't have my camera in hand for a photo. . . I was just has happy kicking through the beautiful fall leaves at a rest stop in Washington on the way home. I'd build a little home under all those trees as happily as in these beautiful coast homes.

Off we went on the 17 mile drive into pebble beach. Private community, with a private road, as in you have to pay 9.50 to dive through their community and stay on the coast line. They give you a cool map with view points along the way. Really most of it’s not that impressive and although the homes seemed beautiful it’s really sad that they have to be completely gated and even then signs posted about no trespassing and no beach access and stuff. I don’t think I’d like to live here.

Hello,

I think I could get used to golf pebble beach style though. . .

However, although this is to be the site of the 2010 US Open, I won't be going down to visit. Ugg. . . crowds just aren't my thing and in the beautiful, although tiny piece of earth. . . I'm not doing it. We got to watch them set up a little putt putt tournament on the green behind the lodge (in front of the shops) and you can just see how the monster camera would dive in and play that shot to be something else entirely. Hollywood at it's best to be sure.

California saying good evening. . .

I called my mom most every morning on the trip because I really like the sunshiny way that California says good morning.

We missed some little things we thought about doing in Carmel because sunset was upon us and we really didn’t have a realistic idea of how far we had yet to travel for the day. . . and no hotel reservations.

However, because the Bixby Bridge was on the top of our "extras" list and I was driving, we headed off Hwy 101 onto the Old Coast Hwy.

This photo of Bixby Bridge with the sun coming through it was the ONLY high point of the 10 plus mile gravel road that folks used to have to travel to get north. Silly, silly move at Dusk.

We did eventually find a hotel in Big Sur in the DARK -- risky move, especially with no cell service in the area. We had a great time giving the gentleman at the desk of the highly priced lodge a hard time. We were all laughing so hard I really thought someone was gonna wet their pants. The one good thing about Big Sur is that EVERYWHERE that you stop they will hand you another Big Sur Guide and Map. It's a 4 page news paper with a VERY Detailed Map. . . which I should photograph for you because it's a lot of words and info to fit into 5 miles of map.

Back to the point because if they had not have handed us that fabulous map we would not have realized that by taking the OLD COAST HWY we completely missed the next days stop. The first stop of the top 4 things to hit on this trip.

I'm gonna walk where?

California Day One plus

I don't know how many photos the system will let me have so I imagine I'll have to tell you about California in several posts. Of course, maybe I'll get tired of uploading images. . . or tired of arranging them, anyway. . .

We left Everett at 3:30 in the afternoon, expecting it to take 14 hours to get to San Francisco.
Getting Started. :)

As you can see, I got bored in a hurry!




We stopped for a sit down dinner in Centralia and stopped at Walmart right after that. Already dark, so I took over driving. We hit another Walmart somewhere in Oregon. (For those that don't know, I met my travel partner while I was working at Walmart and she gets a discount. So anytime we thought of 3-4 things we needed, we stopped at a Walmart. Our handy map told us where all the Walmarts could be found.) I don't recommend a book light, it only worked a few hours, we ended up returning that further down the road. I do recommend the book "The Shack" which I picked up at that first Walmart stop and finished hum somewhere mid-trip.

Since we weren't going to make San Francisco by 6am we decided to go on past toward our first stop in the Santa Cruz area. We almost missed our 11:00 train tour through the redwoods.

Roaring Camp Railroads:
We made it. I guess there were about 6 open cars with a fun conductor. We were in the caboose which had a roof so we didn't sit in the hot sun before heading out.

These redwoods are just babies at 200-500 years old.

Aren't they beautiful!! The ride was fun and at the top we got to learn how God designed the forest to rejuvenate itself. How a grandma tree will grow children and even grandchildren onto her root system and how even a "dead" tree can produce life. It was pretty amazing info.

So the train ride costs a bit more than we felt it was worth, it was very informative and a nice rest for us after only an hour and a half of sleep in the car. We headed off to the mystery spot to learn about the absence of gravity, but the steep, steep climb scared us off so we passed on that one.

We drove down to the Santa Cruz pier -- I'm never going here during "the season" and probably never on a weekend. We got there and it was fairly dead and a good thing to. The driving was bad enough with no other cars to worry about. The Beach was beautiful.

Yards and yards and yards of HOT, white sand. We didn't enjoy it for very long and I can't imagine it completely covered with bodies. . . We had places to go though so off we headed to Monterey. I recommend that should you every decide to drive to California and think driving straight through would be a good idea. . . I wouldn't recommend it. . . most especially if you don't have a hotel reservation on the other end. We made it into Monterey and we did get a VERY NICE and inexpensive hotel room, but figuring out the roads and maps and rates and what have you just isn't worth it when your so tired.

We headed down to Fisherman's Wharf for dinner. Did you know that every coastal town in all of California has a Fisherman's Wharf? A little confusing. We did a little research ahead of time, but we were to tired and ended up looking for a restaurant CALLED Fisherman's Wharf and being highly disappointed when it wasn't where the map said it'd be. Anyway, we had a very nice (tasty) dinner. Serenaded by these little fellows.

Masses of these little fellows. Fran didn't care for these guys but I found their noise to be kinda "white noise" like and actually enjoyed it. Even when I awoke to it the next morning.

Our plan this day was to tour some old homes as part of the Monterey State History Park but the info and web sites were highly misleading so we ditched that plan and instead went shopping.



Fascinating and fun shopping to be found. A fairly nice lunch, highly overpriced and a store I feel completely in love with. It's a good thing the store is far from home because I could easily spend a small fortune. We went off to find another shopping area as well. It's housed in an old Cannery factory (HUGE OPEN Space) very nice shopping but apparently rent is overpriced because not many stores to be found. Of course we did stumble across a very nice jeweler. . . dangerous grounds to be sure.

Okay, I'm already tired to fiddling with photos and we're only through day one of 10 days of travel and the most boring day to boot. So stay tuned, I've got 55 more photos as I take you through my travels and the most pretty come up next.

Motivation

So, if you scroll back through my blog posts I was all excited about a cleared off desk and an empty wire basket.

I want to get there again.

This doesn't look terribly intimidating, but although I try -- over and over again, somehow I never seem to clear it off.

And the silly basket. You think I'd have been able to keep it empty more than a couple of hours.

On a happy Note, my stamps are all completly organized -- I've sold off about half of the duplicates and such (still two full boxes left to sell) and am preparing to lable.

Can you say, WAY to many stamps?

They aren't all mine, some of them are Mom's -- remember she moved all her craft stuff to my house.

Speaking of organized though. If you scrol back through my messages you'll recall this shelf in the back of my garage that used to be practically empty. Not so empty anymore and you see those cloth boxes at the top, they now house my ribbons and fibers and I am so much happier with this arrangment. I was highly hesitent to puchase yet another organizational item and they were spendy in my opinion but they make me happy.

You know what else strangly makes me happy this year. Corn Fields. I haven't photographed any but lately I've been noticing corn everywhere and when I have the opportunity to drive past a corn field I point it out to whomever is in the car with me. They just make me smile.

Isn't this fun -- Happy Birthday Mommy!

tiny chuckle

sadly this quote made me chuckle this morning.

David Frost
"He's turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he's miserable and depressed."

Isn't life grand

Isn't life grand?

I think so

Huge Sigh of Relief

For several months I had lost the 1st birthday photos. I searched high and low, yesterday I searched the recycle box of my computer. I couldn't figure out how they could just disappear but I was getting very sad about the whole thing. My fabulous husband was able to find them with only a small amount of effort. I'm thrilled. To cute to be lost.

Color me Annoyed

I've been searching for photos to blog about for several days and was going to do the start of school and what we do while the one is at school, but none of the photos are that great.
I'm having a great day, but color me annoyed that silly yahoo. . . . there is an advertisement that stretches across the whole screen and flashes very quickly the whole time I'm looking at messages. It's really starting to tick me off. I wonder how long they bought that spot for. I'm not gonna be able to check my mail for day's. It's not even really advertising anything. It's a fake winner thing, the 999,999,999th person to click or some dumb nonsense.
If you are a parent of school age children. . . let me know how you get them to school and if you drive, how long is the drive?

summers almost over

I've had an incredibly lazy summer. We haven't gone anywhere, we haven't done anything. I watched the TV series Dr. Quinn this summer, that's it. The little man started swim lessons here in August and loves it. So with the lazy summer the idea of blogging was just to much work, but others have recently posted again to their blogs so I'm feeling compelled to join suit. Went to find a photo -- here's what you get.

There is just something about marshmellows. . .