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We must turn back time a little and finish blogging about our last vacation which seems like months ago. To save time, it will be more of a picture montage of our little trip up Pacific Coast Highway on route to Uncle Chris's wedding in San Francisco.
1st stop was Solvang the small and quaint Danish town that is the setting for the wine aficionado's favorite movie, Sideways. Actually our 1st stop was really the Camarillo Shopping Outlet that mommy forced us to stop at!
Finally found my clogs. Looking all over for them!
Next stop, Buellton for some world famous split pea soup. I have passed by this place at least a dozen times on both PCH and it's sister store on Interstate 5 but have never stopped. Finally took the time to enjoy the best bowl of split pea soup I have ever had. Ryder says yummy too!
Spent the night in Cambria which is a great bed & breakfast town just 5 miles south of Hearst Castle. If you ever make it out to Cambria, make sure you stay at the Olallieberry Inn. They have a fantastic little place there which serves an award winning breakfast. What's an Olallieberry you might ask? The olallieberry (pronounced oh-la-leh, sometimes spelled ollalieberry, olallaberry, olalliberry, ollalaberry or ollaliberry) is a cross between the loganberry and the youngberry, each of which is itself a cross between blackberry and another berry (raspberry and dewberry, respectively). I just love wikipedia!
It was a great place but I don't have any pictures but you can google the inn.
We then headed out the next morning to Hearst Castle which was suppose to be one of the highlights of the trip but it was cloudy and rainy. So I don't have any pictures except when we got back to the main guest center where there was an old firetruck that use to patrol the grounds of the Hearst Castle built by Mr. William Randolph Hearst. Notice the initials on the firetruck. Ryder says it's pretty cool to have your own real firetruck.
From there we drove up to Carmel-by-the-Sea which is actually the official name of the fantastic little art-gallery filled town just south of Monterey. We stayed at another great bed & breakfast called the Lobos Lodge which is straight out of the 80's. The town seems to have a ton of great little restaurants and we had some delicious seafood pasta there. I took this great picture of the little smurf while riding on mommy's shoulders. 
From Carmel you can enter world famous 17-Mile drive which is a loop around the Monterey Peninsula that goes through some fabulous houses and is home to argubly the most beautiful golf course in the world, Pebble Beach. We ate at the lodge there in this was one of those meals I will remember for the rest of my life. The weather was great and it made the view stunning. I snapped this picture of grandpa, grandma, and Ryder right off the balcony of where we were sitting. The background is a never ending lawn that drops off in the pebble beaches and you can see the golfers there on the 18th hole. 
In addition to the picturesque view is the scrumptious food at the lodge. I had the best fish and chips of my life!! I had always thought of it as some junky British dish which used cheap fish they couldn't sell so they deep fried it. Boy was I wrong! And momma Jax said she loved the lobster sandwich also. The last reason you won't forget this place is because the price is exhorbitant for lunch. The sandwiches are all $30 so your wallet never forgets! Add a few drinks, appetizers (get the calamari!), tip and tax and you're walking out of there at least 2 Ben Franklins lighter for lunch. I didn't feel too bad when I found out it was almost $500 to tee off there for a round at the world's most expensive public golf course. You must have a group of 4 AND stay at the lodge to get a good time slot to play there. If you don't stay at the lodge, they said the wait-list is a couple of months! So that's like $2800 to play a round of golf with 3 of your best buddies. NOT INCLUDING LUNCH!Onwards we drove through the private 17-mile drive road which by-the-way cost $10. Yup there is a toll just to drive through the neighborhoods of the rich and famous. But you get that refunded if you eat at the Pebble Beach lodge so that makes your meal a super cheap $190! The drive is slow and breathtaking and there are a couple of other golf courses there that are half or a quarter of the price of Pebble Beach. When you get to the Northwest corner you can get a great view of the Pacific Ocean and Monterey.
We eventually make it to Monterey and spend an afternoon by Cannery Row made famous by John Steinbeck in his book of the same name. Use to be a big sardine fishing town but overfishing killed the industry. Now it's just a tourist town with a lot of shopping. We walked around for a little big and finally made our way north towards our last stop...SAN FRANCISCO!!
There, Ryder actually got to see a real firetruck courtesy of the SF Fire Department. We were just walking by the fire station staring at the humongous truck when a friendly fireman said we could come and and take a look around. Ryder just loved it!
Actually I think I loved it more than he did cuz he was just awestruck at how big everything was. Ok, we finally made it to San Francisco and our next blog will be the actual wedding at the end of the rainbow.
3 comments:
looks like it was a lot of fun!!! a lobster sandwich sounds really good right now.. good luck continuing w/ the unpacking.
btw i had no internet yesterday and i was dying a slow death. hahahahha. luckily it's back up today. don't know how you lasted for 2 weeks!
How many vacations do you guys take? Damm, it's seem like you guys are always on vacation. Roxy and I are so jealous. Take some pictures of your new house and post it. we want to see every room.
Remember to lock down your site if you plan on posting pics of your home and stuff. Not something you want just anyone to be able to see and read since you guys are in the industry.
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