Tuesday, August 26, 2008

California Dreamin' - Day Three

Continuing with my California Dreamin vacation series.....

After our nice drive up the PCH and past Santa Barbara, we ended up at a resort on the oceans at Pismo Beach. It is a really nice beach area fairly close to the town of San Luis Obispo. The beach has a really nice boardwalk and pier type of area where we had a BBQ dinner. It's very touristy here so there are lots of ice cream stores, candy stores, and souvenier shops.

After dinner we walked toward the beach and found a candy store where they sell all kinds of chocolates and salt water taffy. Silly me thought salt water taffy was only popular on the East Coast. Anyway, this particular store also sold chocolate covered bugs. That's right...BUGS. We were fascinated and thought why not try some bugs. So the older boys and husband tried chocolate covered scorpions while I played it safe and went for the worms. Both were really no big deal. In fact it just tasted like crunchy chocolate.

We moved along and watched the sunset off the pier and it was quite beautiful but very COLD. I could not believe how cold it was for an August day.

After much needed rest, we woke up the next morning and enjoyed a nice leisurely morning at the hotel. We mapped out the day and husband suggested that we might want to venture over to the sand dunes. Curiously I said yes not really knowing what to expect. After a fairly short drive we drove down the highway and saw signs for the sand dunes. This venture took us on the beach where we literally drove on the beach (I thought that you could only do that in Daytona) and then to a trailer that sold dune buggy rides.







After a quick education and $250/hour, my older boys and husband decided to give it a try. Geared up in helmets and safety belts, the kind dune buggy guy strapped them in and they were on their way. While they were out dune-buggying, I stayed on the frigid beach with my two little munchkins trying to figure out a way to keep two little people entertained while surrounded by a mountain of sand and 40 degree beach water. We decided to sit in the sand and just play away until the older ones came back. They tell me that it was an awesome experience and that a few times on a few intimidating 40 ft sand dunes they actually were a bit afraid but said the entire experience was worth it.

After leaving Pismo Beach we enjoyed a scenic ride up the Central Coast of California. I enjoyed looking at the mountains since we don't get to see much of that kind of land in Florida. Our goal was to get to Monterey before dinner. We ended up making good time and had some time to kill so we ventured over to a nice park right near our hotel. Although I didn't take any photos while there, this little town is so quaint and cute. It was still quite cold and I still had my jacket on but we had a lot of fun at the park. We ended up retiring for the night pretty early because the agenda for the next day was going to be pretty full.

Next up: Monterey Aquarium, Pebble Beach, and the moment we all were waiting for....San Francisco!

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