Californy, HERE WE COME!

NOTE:  IF YOU WANT TO VIEW ANY PHOTOS LARGER, JUST CLICK ON THE PHOTO.

OUR CALIFORNIA VACATION

SEPTEMBER 2 THROUGH SEPTEMBER 8, 2011

            The impetus for this early fall vacation was two fold. First, I was between jobs and it was a good time to go, and second, Vickie and I had not been anywhere, just the two of us, for sometime. Also, Vickie had never been to the west coast and we thought it would be a great time of year to go, so we went. We only reserved one room for the first night and decided to throw caution to the wind and stay wherever our vagabond hearts decided once on the road. The grand plan was to fly in to LA, head south one day to a Spanish Mission Vic wanted to see, then reverse directions and head north along Pacific Coast Hwy 1 until we reached San Francisco. That’s exactly what we did and I have briefly listed below the days and major events of our “sight seeing excursion”. Let me say from the start, modern technology such as mobile computing, cell phones and GPS equipment make traveling in a foreign place so much better than in the olden days.

            Friday, September, Vickie received a text message from Expedia, as we are boarding at Pounds Field, informing us that our departing flight to San Francisco from DFW had been cancelled due to mechanical problems. American accommodated us by providing us a room in Dallas with three free meals at the Marriott. It was a luxury hotel with excellent dinning. In fact, I feel that the dinner we had of steak, shrimp and crab cakes was the best of the entire trip. Yes, we lost a day in California, but American Airlines definitely treated us right for the inconvenience. Vic and I watched Water For Elephants that evening, yahoo!

Saturday we caught our flight to Los Angeles at 7:30 AM. Arrived in LA early morning and picked up a new Camry rent car and took off south, headed for Mission San Juan Capistrano. The town of Capistrano was nestled in the hills and was very quaint. The weather was fabulous, sunny, coolish, and everything was green.  It looked sort of tropical in So. Cal. with palms and hibiscus and bouganvilla everywhere! You wouldn't believe all the lush flowers.  We ate hamburgers at Ruby’s on their second story, overlooking the street not far from the mission we were there to see. The mission was very nice with a  great courtyard and beautiful trees and flowers. After visiting the mission we went in the Catholic church which was also very impressive. We toured south to San Clemente, a surfers town with a main drag, expensive homes with 0 lot lines on hills like San Francisco. We went to the beach and then ended up back at San Juan Capistrano, after going to Walmart and getting a fan. That first evening we ate at the towns  most famous Mexican food place. It did not compare to Tex-Mex. Food wasn’t as good and the enchiladas were $16 per plate. We stayed at a very undesirable hotel. Reminded me of the Executive Inn in Abilene we stayed in when Adam played Abilene several years back. It was the only hotel we made reservations at prior to being in San Francisco and definitely the worse place we stayed. So much for the internet pics for this place. It however did not ruin our stay at all. We left early the next day.

Below are photos from San Juan Capistrano.  It was beautiful!

Sunday we headed north back to Los Angeles. We went to the Le Brea tar pits and museum. Very interesting to see so many skeletons of prehistoric animals. It was after the dinosaurs from around 10,000 years ago. Saber tooth cats, mammoths , wolves and very large bird bones filled the museum. Also, there is still active pits of natural gas and asphalt percolating from the subsurface. They say that animals rarely got stuck in this asphalt goo. They estimated it only took on animal every ten years to comprise the bones they have found thus far. Of course, that’s every ten years for 100 centuries, a lot of bones. It was a downtown LA park and museum. It was a stop worth taking.

This next picture is an actual pit where they do the excavations.  It's filled with pitch and tar. Nasty job...

The above picture is for Hayley - read the street sign - "Rodeo Drive"... Right around the corner was where they filmed "Pretty Woman".

When we left to head north, we went down Rodeo drive, and detoured in the Beverly Hills neighborhoods. GPS is great way to find your way around. We went through Malibu and late afternoon found ourselves in Santa Barbara, wow what a beautiful town by the ocean. We saw a sign for the Santa Barbara Mission and decided to drive by. Glad we did. It was more beautiful and was built in a more spectacular scenic place than San Juan Capistrano. We stopped at a Baskin Robbins in Santa Barbra to get Vic a triple dip banana split with brownies covered in fudge and marsh mellow sauce and I got a tiny cup of yogurt. We drove until about nine PM and decided to stay in the little town of Atascadero, on Hwy 1. Cheap  room and was very clean and nice. Hotel manager recommended a dinner for tomorrows breakfast.
Here's some photos from Santa Barbara and some pictures of the ocean as we drove up PCH 1.

Next is Friar Antonio...

Hayley, here is a bad shot of Pepperdine U.  You once said you'd like to go there... This was as close as we could get - it was gated...

 Monday morning we ate at the Cowgirl Café which was recommended. Best breakfast we ever had, period. Could not eat all the food. We tried to buy Hayley a beautiful lavender and yellow tee, but they were out of smalls.  Hayley, if you ever go to the Cowgirl Café in Atascadero, get one of those shirts. Well back on Highway 1, one can not describe the beauty of the ocean on this stretch of blacktop. The cliffs, the rocks, the ocean waves and spray and the undeveloped mountainous land is just to beautiful. That’s why it’s world famous. We did stop at Moro Bay early morning. A true fishing village with a great promontory rock and beach. We stopped early, very cool and Vic went skinny dipping in the freezing surf (ONLY my feet!)  The water was freezing!!!  BRRRRR.

 Then we were off again on Hwy 1. We eventually came to a sign pointing to the Hearst Castle. We debated whether or not that would be something we wanted top see. We decided to take the road and at least drive by. When we got there, there was a really nice visitors center and museum with a restaurant and a movie theater. We decide it would be worth the admission to see the castle and view the 45 minute introductory film.  It was worth seeing we decided. Regarding the manmade scenery we saw on this vacation, only the Golden Gate Bridge was more impressive. Anyone in this area has to see the castle. I wanted to describe in detail this place here but the pics are great and you can research the life and times of Hearst on the net. (  see www.hearstcastle.org for information). Well back on the road and ate an early supper at  Outback Steakhouse house in Oxnard. And then traveled on to the town of Gilroy and spent the night.

Above is Hearst's indoor pool, all done in blue and gold tile.  It was beautiful...

We ate here at this place on the PCH.  It was really different - we wondered if the folks ever got out any...

            Tuesday, we left early and headed to San Fran. But we wanted to go north a little ways to Napa Valley. The town of Napa is something you would see in a travel magazine. It is on the southern edge of Napa Valley, world famous for it wineries. We stopped at three different wineries, ate lunch and yes did a little wine tasting  just for fun along the way. Again, research the net and also see Vic’s pics. An absolutely beautiful place. A man we met at one of the wineries said acreage at this place goes for $1 Million per acre. Slightly higher property values than at Sand Flat Texas. This place even smelled of money, different than Rodeo Drive, but still a very  heavy money smell here. Basically the valley is 30 miles long and several miles wide with low mountains on the east and west sides. We drove the perimeter roads and pulled off at the various wineries. A great afternoon road trip and a must see for those interested  in seeing beautiful California wine country.  Following are some photos from various vineyards:

Above is a blueberry scone.  Not sure if Tony liked them, but I loved it!

This bestest place we went was Castello di Amoroso.  It was so beautiful - it was built like a castle. They even had earlier century wine presses and all kinds of period furniture and architecture there.  Felt like we had gone back several hundred years in time!

Above:  Can you see the rooster?  There were chickens and peacocks around this castle.

100-year old olive trees surrounded the vineyards.  Most vineyards also had gardens - vegetable and flower, and chickens.  Mostly self-sufficient lifestyle - such fertile soil in that area...

Above:  R. Mondavi Vineyards - it was more a modern mission-style.

Again above - R.  Mondavi

Next we went to V. Sattui Winery and ate a picnic lunch there. It was cool and beautiful!

After Napa it was an hours drive to san Francisco. A lady at the Napa visitors station gave us the “right” way to get to SF, driving in from the north over the Golden Gate Bridge (GGB). We drove over the bridge early evening, well before dark. It’s spectacular. Began building in 1933 and one of the most recognizable structures in the world. The Oakland Bay Bridge is just several miles away and is a very large bridge over the bay as well but nobody out side of SF knows what it is. The GGB is the crown jewel of this part of the west coast.

We decided that regardless of cost , we would stay at a nice hotel down at Fisherman’s Wharf in the middle of everything along side san Francisco Bay, within walking distance of famous SF sites. We paid more but it was definitely the way to go. We parked our car at the hotel ( for an extra $36 per day) and didn’t see it again until we left Thursday morning. This evening we ate sea food at Alioto’s, served by a Chinese young man from Alabama. Clam chowder for Vic and chicken sandwich for me…..no just joking, I had a great meal of grilled shrimp and rice, caught in the Pacific that morning. We had a wonderful evening in a very cosmopolitan place. One is not in Kansas anymore when you are in SF. It's all Orientals - Chinese and Europeans. Walking down the street would be like what I would imagine walking down the streets of Hamburg or Amsterdam would be like, not very many people in boots and jeans.  We ate chocolate and ice cream at a wharf store and strolled around the wharf admiring the bay and making fun of all the humans.

Above:  "The Rock"  - Alcatraz

Above-  "Zoltar"  - remember the movie BIG with Tom Hanks?

Wednesday of course was the last full day. We ate at the Arcos Dorados (the Golden Arches) for breakfast on the wharf and then went to the SF Marine Aquarium. That was something Vickie really wanted to do. Then we took the trolley to China town. Vic wanted to eat a lunch of dim sum. I told her I was not eating anything that sounded like that and I would rather spend my time somewhere else besides Chinatown. So we walked back which was an easy downhill walk (only about 18 blocks). We ate pizza at Luigi’s Pizzeria on the wharf. We made the waiter clean a table off by the window overlooking the harbor. I told him scenery was everything to us and he kindly obliged.

Well at 5:30 we headed down to dock 391/2 to catch our sunset boat tour of the Bay on the original charter cruise company, The Red & White Fleet. We spent two hours by boat seeing the bay. We went by Alcatraz, Angel Island, Sausalito and of course went under the Golden gate Bridge. As the sun started to go down the temps were about 48 and the fog started to roll in over the bridge. Spectacular scenery. Vickie and I never left the outside deck of the ship except to eat a quick bite for supper. We ended up being the only two people peering out over the bow. A deck hand came up and told us we won the prize for staying out in the cold longer than anyone else. I informed him that we were from Texas, this was our last evening in SF and the last night of our vacation and after 100 straight days of 100 degree weather, we were not about to let ourselves get warmed up until we had to. He laughed and told us his story of how he got to be a deckhand. Seeing the  Golden Gate Bridge from below was “big show” of this vacation.

            We ended up by Vickie eating some clam chowder in a bread basket while I ate a CC cookie and drank a cup of $2.25 coffee and then we went to the hotel.

Above & below - Sausalito

See the bread alligator above?  They had a girl there that made all kinds of sea creatures out of sourdough bread!

This was the last photo we took in San Francisco.  Good-bye!  It was great!

            Not much to say about Thursday except our trip back home was uneventful, just like you like it. This was a great trip and one we will of course remember always. We talked about how all our children would like to visit southern California. Josh would probably agree that SF was probably a lot like some places he’s seen in Europe. Who knows, maybe that’s our next stop!!!