I had already been in San Francisco for 5 days by the time Wade joined me to kick off our road trip vacation. The night before he left he loaded up the furry kids and took them to Mom and Larry's for some grandparent time (haha). We were really lucky that they were so generous to share their home with our zoo while we were on vacation - knowing the kids were going to be well cared for make it so much easier for us to enjoy ourselves. The Ladies, however, stayed at the house in their coop, but some of our lovely neighbors traded off coming to check for eggs, feeding them, and letting them out to play in the yard. The neighborhood kids have come to love the Ladies and we're pretty certain the chickens had a fun time while we were gone. :)
The plan for our trip was to see coastal central California, redwoods, wildlife, and eventually Big Sur. I wanted to show Wade some of the areas I've traveled to for work, and we both wanted to see wild Big Sur and the redwood forests. However, given the uncertainty with the future of my job, we needed to be thrifty to make it work. We got really lucky on a great deal with the rental car, and to save more money on the trip, we decided to camp half of the nights in state parks, which would also let us see more redwoods. Since we were ultimately heading to Big Sur, where it's very remote and there aren't really any stores for supplies, we decided to stock up on everything in San Fran that we could before leaving. We even brought a collapsable camping cooler so we could bring good food along and cook for ourselves instead of eating out.
Friday morning Wade's flight was a little delayed on the way out to join me, but he finally made it safely. I used the extra time that morning to pick up the rental car and some additional camping supplies that we needed before we could leave town. Once I had picked Wade up at SFO, we headed back to the hotel to drop all of our luggage (which included camping gear) and the car so we could stroll down the Embarcadero that's along the waterfront downtown. We saw the classic gathering of sea lions at Pier 39, which were backdropped by foggy views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge, before continuing down to the heart of the tourist district at the end of the Embarcadero.
 |
| Wade on Pier 39, with San Fran sprawling behind him. |
After seeing the sights, we hopped on a trolley car back to where we started to have a nice dinner at the waterside organic vegetarian cafe, The Plant. It was a little surprising how quickly it got cold once the sun went down, so after some hot tea with dessert we hoofed it back to the hotel for a hot shower and PJs.
Saturday we got up early to hit the farmers market at the Ferry Building behind our hotel. We had breakfast at a little gluten-free bakery I'd been frequenting all week call Mariposa. After some fantastic quiches and breakfast tarts we bought some of their fresh GF bread and GF cinnamon rolls for our trip. Next, we needed to get the rest of our supplies for the week and challenged ourselves to only buy whatever local organic foods we could find and to try as many new things as we could. We bought the most red tomatoes we've ever seen, onions, shallots, wildflower honey for our tea, kale, heirloom apples, green beans, purple potatoes, thyme sea salt, plum jam, rosemary, chocolate, cheese from Cowgirl Creamery, and GF veggie wraps for a picnic lunch on the road that day.
 |
| The farmers market at the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero. |
Once we stuffed everything into our cooler, we checked out of the hotel and headed to Whole Foods to top us off with a few more essentials... some frozen black eyed peas, sweet potato chunks, and mixed veggies, plus some snacks and jugs of water. Then we headed out of town and got on Skyline Blvd/CA 35 to cut through the Santa Cruz mountains on our way to Big Basin Redwoods State Park. It was a lovely drive, but the last bit of road into the park was pretty winding, tight, and the visibility was bad so we were relieved to finally make it to the ranger station in the late afternoon for check in. After buying some firewood, we set up camp, started a fire, and got to making dinner. Our method of cooking for this trip was making campfire packets - chopped food wrapped in parchment paper, then tinfoil, left over the fire to cook. The first night was a combo of some of the best looking stuff from the farmers market, followed by a dessert packet of banana, chocolate, and GF graham crackers, mmmmm. We hovered by the fire to stay warm and played Zombie Dice until the fire died, then we crawled into The Ghost (our recycled white tent) in a grove of beautiful redwoods for the night. That was actually a terrible night of sleep - despite having great sleeping bags and having lots of clothes and even hats on for bed, the 41 degree low of the evening was more than we were capable of handling - even our eyes hurt form the cold. Also, sharing two mummy-style sleeping bags zipped together was a new experience since we were used to sharing our huge square honeymooner sleeping bags that zip together when we car camp.
 |
| Sunday morning in Big Basin - The Ghost's first camping trip out West. |
 |
| Wade checking out some of the giants we shared our campsite with. |
 |
| Inside one of the large trees in Big Basin - it's still alive although the center has been burned out! |
Sunday morning we lit a fire to warm up, while Wade made tea, hot cereal with fruit, and cinnamon rolls from the bakery in San Fran. It was a breakfast of champions.
 |
| Freezing our buns off our first morning in camp - and thankful for a hearty breakfast and warm fire! |
We then proceeded to experiment with the state of California's way to deal with budget cuts - quarter operated showers. Fortunately we were prepared with a roll of quarters, but it took us some exceeding painful minutes to figure out how to work the shower in the freezing cold before we could get the hot water to work. At one point when Wade told me to get in and I realized it was not actually even warm water, I may or may not have almost cried like a small child, until I realized he hadn't bother to adjust the temperature to turn on the hot water. Worst.Shower.Ever. We finally warmed up a bit, and sort of felt clean and were ready to pack up camp and head down into Santa Cruz. We swung by the Patagonia outlet there then took a beautiful drive along the water to Natural Bridges State Beach just outside of town to see the monarch butterfly aggregation. There's a little eucalyptus grove there that is protected from the cold and wind where the monarchs winter on their way to Mexico. There will end up being tens of thousands there, but we were a little early and were treated to only a few hundred clinging to the branches and fluttering overhead.
After that we headed to Monterey to check into our hotel and be thankful for a King sized bed and fireplace. We lucked out finding the Monterey Bay Lodge with a great AAA rate that also had a fridge so we could make some of our own food while we were there. Once we were settled in, we freshened up and headed out to an early dinner of Indian food at Ambrosia, a place a coworker and I found and liked last year. After a ridiculously good and big dinner, we put our leftovers in the fridge, and curled up in front of the gas fireplace in our PJs to read for the rest of the evening. It felt so good, but I couldn't get close enough to the fire and eventually Wade begged me to turn it off since he swore it was 100 degrees in the room.
Monday morning the weather was grey and rainy as a front pushed through, so we headed downtown to see the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This was Wade's first trip, but my third since I do some work with folks at the aquarium, so we took our time for Wade to see everything.
 |
| A neat sandollar display |
By the time we were done, the skies had actually cleared so we were able to go out on the observation deck to see otters and sea lions playing in Monterey Bay right behind the aquarium. We ended up heading back to the lodge to enjoy our Indian leftovers for a lunch on the porch before getting back in the car to take the 17 Mile Drive around Pebble Beach. The scenery was pretty incredible and we were treated to lots of wildlife too, including playful otters.
 |
| Iceplant covered much of the rocky shoreline along the 17-Mile Drive. |
We ended up in Carmel-by-the-Sea after the drive and had dinner at a little sushi place. It was great to warm up with a little bowl of miso soup. We ended the night in our PJs again in front of the fire reading a good book.
Tuesday morning we packed up the car, enjoyed our last real shower for a few days and started the journey south. We stopped in Point Lobos State Nature Reserve to hike and enjoy the rugged coastline. We were treated to more sea lions and our first seals basking on the rocks.
 |
| Wade checking out the tide pools. |
Not long after this picture was taken, my beloved Canon G series camera died. The motor finally gave up and it stopped working. I was heart broken since that camera and I have been through a lot together (including surviving winter in Yellowstone), but it also meant the rest of our trip and time in Big Sur we would be without a camera. Since one of my favorite things about our vacations is to capture it, photojournalist style, I was at a loss for how to really enjoy or remember our vacation. Wade did some quick thinking and remembered that we had passed a Best Buy north of Monterey, so we hopped in the car and booked it back north to get a new camera.
We didn't have much money to spend, and weren't sure which good replacement camera we wanted just yet, but I had been wanting one of those "tough" waterproof point and shoot cameras and thought it would be great for our outdoor adventures. Fortunately, Best Buy had one left and on sale so we were set. We managed to make it back down to Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park (about 3 hours south of San Francisco, and an hour south of Monterey) just in time to check in, buy firewood, and make camp for dinner. We made another great packet meal over the fire of Mexican food (with a s'more packet for dessert) and settled in to a chilly night in front of the fire before heading to bed.
Wednesday morning we awoke cold and tired. We didn't sleep that well since we were freezing, but we did enjoy hearing owls in the pre-dawn hours. We finally motivated to get up, light a fire, and make breakfast.
 |
| Testing out the new camera, I got Wade to pose with a huge redwood log in our campsite that reminded me of a humpback whale. |
Once we got ourselves showered we were ready to explore. We headed south to Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park to do an easy hike to see McWay Falls. It was a beautiful hike, but we were a little surprised that we couldn't get down to see the falls and that there were big warning signs everywhere not to try because people hurt and kill themselves every year in the attempt! Big Sur is pretty remote (it's a wilderness area) so there are no facilities or help nearby and to access the coast is very difficult, only making rescues more challenging. We heeded the warnings and stuck to the trail.
 |
| Testing out the panorama function on the new camera - Wade is checking out McWay Falls in the cove below. |
 |
| Looking north up the coast from McWay Falls. |
After that we headed back up the coast to Partington Cove for a hike down through a tunnel to a cove where bootleggers used to land during prohibition, and then over to a rocky beach.
 |
| Wade checking out the cove. |
 |
| A cairn we found on the beach. |
It was a nice hike filled with wildflowers, but like most of our hikes, we were constantly struggling with the sun being in our face, so the pictures never quite captured the colors of what we were seeing. The end of the hike on the beach was no so great though because Wade slipped and cut his leg up pretty nastily so I had about 30 seconds of panic while I calculated how to drag him back up the trail and get help with no cell reception and no one around. Fortunately, it was just a bad cut and he didn't break anything, and we were both thankful for that.
We were pretty hungry after two hikes, so we stopped at the iconic Nepenthe for a pick up. We had some good snacks and drinks and enjoyed the view that the restaurant is famous for - a long view down the Big Sur coast. It's basically an open air restaurant with almost all the tables facing out towards the water to take in the view.
 |
| The driftwood phoenix carving on the patio at Nepenthe - it's bigger than a person. |
Once we found our second wind, we headed north to Pfeiffer Beach, part of Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park. The beach is normally known for reddish-purple (garnet) sand and spectacular sunsets. It's a long twisty drive down to the beach and once we got there were surprised by how rough and rugged it was. My favorite was the iconic large rock/small hill in the middle of the beach with a peep hole for sunset and crashing waves. I tried testing out the video function on the new camera by getting a shot of the waves churning through the keyhole in the rock.
 |
| Wade taking in the view. |
 |
| The big rock on the beach that the surf constantly crashed into and through. - the key hole is big enough for several people to fit through at once. |
 |
| Almost sunset on Pfeiffer Beach. |
We ended up not being able to wait for sunset - the temperature was dropping rapidly and with the ripping wind, these two Floridians were turning to ice. We booked it back to the fire for a lovely night of camp meals which included the best apple pear cobbler ever.
Thursday morning we decided to wander down the coast to see Hearst Castle, the elephant seal rookery, and a few other beaches along the way. After another cold night, I was starting to feel like maybe I was getting sick. A hot breakfast by the fire (including leftover apple pear crisp!), followed by a hot shower helped get me going. We headed south until about lunchtime when we decided to stop along a pull off to eat (there are pull outs all along CA Route 1 on the coast to allow visitors to take advantage of the view and to get out of the way of the locals who don't want to drive as slow. One pull off we found had two dead trees that had been carved into seats. One was as big as a throne and big enough for us both to share while we ate lunch. The view was spectacular and it made our picnic feel special, so naturally I had to get a video of it.
 |
| Our picnic lunch throne. |
We continued down the coast after lunch and the land changed - it became softer and turned into rolling grassy hills that gently met the coast. This was my kind of land. We saw lots of hawks roaming the prairie and more horses and cattle on the land. Finally, we made it to San Simeon, where Hearst Castle is, roughly 5 hours south of San Francisco, or halfway to Los Angeles from San Fran. It was a longer drive than we expected, but it was worth it in the end. Perched upon a hill with a view of the Pacific Ocean, the mediterranean style Hearst Castle was once the remote summer escape of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst, which was donated to the state of California upon his death. In the Roaring Twenties, the house was a gathering place for the rich and famous of the day including movie stars, inventors, and star athletes. To accommodate such a crowd, a lavish and sprawling mediterranean-style estate was built (complete with pools, airport, cattle ranch, fruit orchards, and a zoo!).
 |
| Neptune's Pool, the Greek/Roman style outdoor pool. |
 |
| The formal dining room, modeled after a medieval castle. |
The castle was quite a spectacle and it was a nice change of pace form hiking since I was starting to feel sick again.
After the tour, we started working our way back north, stopping first at the elephant seal rookery, where hundreds of juvenile elephant seals were sunning on the beach. In winter, the adults return to mate and raise young.
After chuckling at the seals, we got back in the car to head north again. We had some snacks during the long drive, and once we were back in Big Sur, stopped at Jade Cove. The cliffs contain jade, so the rocks are green, and real jade can be found. We found a small rock that flaked like shale, but was a deep green that we selected as our memento. However, it was one of the worst hikes - it was pretty steep, and at the end, the last 20 feet down you had to hold a rope to let yourself down the steep incline. I almost totally refused, but Wade finally talked me into it and we made it without incident.
 |
| Looking down at Jade Cove from the trail head. |
 |
| The cliffs surrounding the cove were even green! |
After that we headed back to camp to make a feast for dinner with whatever we had left in the cooler. We had a great BBQ campfire packet of veggies and beans, followed by an incredible apple crisp. We finally let the fire die and we crawled into the tent very full and very tired.
 |
| On our last morning at the campsite, the sun was streaming through the redwoods. |
Friday morning dawned in the campground with sun streaming through the redwoods while we reheated the apple crisp for breakfast and started sorting and packing our supplies. I also awoke officially sick with some sort of cold and felt pretty miserable. After breakfast and a hot shower, I could function, but it was clear I wasn't doing much that day since I was constantly carrying a kleenex box around. We had to be out of our campsite by noon, so we packed up then headed over to the laundry facilities to wash our clothes - we managed to keep our luggage load small (despite bringing our camping supplies) by under packing our clothes and planning to do laundry. We did some laundry as soon as we had arrived in Big Sur, then did more Friday so we'd have things to fly home in that didn't smell like campfire.
 |
| Oh yeah, folding laundry on vacation! And note , my best friend the kleenex box within easy reach. |
Once that was done, we went to the Big Sur Lodge in the campground to check into our room. We figured that by the last night of our trip, we'd be ready for a real bed and shower, and we were right! We paid a little extra for a room with a king bed and a fireplace and were so thankful we did. By the time we checked into our room, I was a pathetic site. Wade really wanted to do a nearby hike to a waterfall, but I was starting to get a fever and my head felt like it weighed 100 pounds. So I sent Wade on the hike alone while I curled up in an arm chair in the room under a blanket - just what I needed. Even though I didn't leave the room, I still got to see wildlife - a flock of turkeys wandered by our little cabin calling to each other so I was able to see them from our balcony!
 |
| Redwoods along Wade's hike to Pfeiffer Falls. |
 |
| The turkeys were decidedly not impressed with my turkey call. |
Once Wade got back from the hike, we got cleaned up to have a nice early dinner somewhere. Our first two tries failed, but the third was a charm. We ended up at The Big Sur Bakery and Restaurant for an amazing gourmet vegetarian dinner that really hit the spot. We came home, stoked the fire, got into our PJs and read in front of the fire. Eventually, Wade realized I was just sleeping in front of the fire and put me to bed.
Saturday morning we finished packing for our trip home, ate a quick breakfast in the room, then checked out to go have lunch and try to check in for our red-eye flight home that night. We had some great tacos at the restaurant in the Fernwood Resort and finally got internet access to check in while we were eating. Once that was squared away, we headed to Andrew Molera State Park to find an easy hike or see if I could go horseback riding while Wade hiked (I was still sick and in no shape to hike, but riding to the beach sounded perfect). We lucked out and I made it just in time for a 2 hour trail ride through the park to the beach, while Wade decided to hike instead.
 |
| Me on the beach with Snickers. |
It was nice to be able to just enjoy the scenery, the fresh air, and the sun rather than be worrying about my footing for once. I also got some pictures and a video of the beach. The vacation made it clear I am a flatlander, and rocky/jagged coasts are not really for me. It was nice for Wade too since he got some time to hike at his own pace without having to worry about whether I could keep up.
We met back at the stables, and after a quick trip to the bathroom it was time to get on the road. We stopped at one last place on the way out of Big Sur, the iconic Bixby Bridge, which is also the unofficial marker of the entrance to the Big Sur area. Big Sur isn't a town so much as an area of the coast that is more wilderness than development with no cell phone service and very few structures.
 |
| A panorama shot of the historic Bixby Bridge and the Big Sur coastline. |
 |
| The last windblown shot of our California road trip vacation. |
We said good bye to Big Sur and got started on the 3 hour drive back up CA Route 1 to the SFO airport. To get some extra time out of our vacation, without taking an extra vacation day, we picked a red-eye flight home from San Francisco that night. We made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare, returned the rental car, freshened up and chained clothes in a bathroom, had dinner at the airport, then made it through security without a single person in front of us - an unprecedented event for me at SFO where the security line wait is usually at least an hour. We used my frequent flier status to board early and settled in for a long flight.
Sunday morning we connected through Philly before finally making it back to Tampa before lunchtime. We were happy to get home, take a shower, and change into clean clothes before heading down to the island to pick up the kids and give Mom and Larry their thank you gifts for watching the kids. As expected, the kids were all happy and healthy and missed us, but seemed confused as to why they had to leave. They certainly had made themselves at home. :)
So, in a little over a week, we drove over 500 miles and saw most of the Central California coast. It was more time in the car than we expected, but we did cover a lot of ground and saw a lot of dramatic scenery. And Wade finally got his first real taste of California. However, for me, I realized a vacation where I'm cold is not really a vacation for me, so next time we're heading to the tropics!
To see more pictures and video of San Francisco, coastal redwoods, otters, sea lions, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the dramatic Big Sur coast, check out our Picasa site, here.
