Trip to CA

We had a great time on our trip to CA. The drive there ended up being not as bad as I thought it would be. Google Maps had it as nine hours, so I figured with all the stops we'd have to make it would be more like 10 or 11, but it took us just over nine hours. We left here at 3:30 and got to Cayucos about 12:45. Will didn't fall asleep in the car until 9:00 and he woke up a few times when we'd stop so I could get out and walk around. Then when we got there and went to bed it seemed like he was going to stay up all night, but he did eventually fall asleep.

Saturday was our first day there, and we spent it playing on the beach and checking out the town of Cayucos. Sunday the men had a tee time and went off to play golf in Morro Bay. The rest of us went in to San Luis Obispo to explore. We found a great coffee shop and had some treats, spent a lot of time in a way cool toy store (why aren't there more little toy stores around?!) where each of the boys got a present from grandma. We went in a baby store, and grandma got a cute outfit for New Baby, and I couldn't resist buying the softest baby blanket EVER. I feel bad this kid is going to get a lot of hand-me-down stuff from Will, so I splurged. We also found an amazing bread bakery called House of Bread. Lori, Aurelia, and I went a little crazy. They had a ton of yummy looking stuff on the day old shelf, so we got some cinnamon rolls, blueberry muffins, raspberry rolls, and a few loaves of really good bread. (Lordy mama, I just looked at the locations on the website and there's one in Peoria...wonder if they're open on Sunday and I'll go tomorrow when we go to my mom's house!!)

Monday we all did our own thing. John, Will, and I went in to SLO so John could check it out, then we stopped in Morro Bay on our way back for lunch. Everyone else had gone in to Morro Bay for some shopping and brought back a seafood FEAST for our dinner...fish and chips, clam chowder, dungeness crab, clams. YUM! Tuesday was Hearst Castle day. We didn't want to take Will with us because we'd wanted to go there for a really long time. Everyone else went in the morning, then we met for lunch and gave Will to his grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins. Before we met up with them we went to check out some elephant seals (fat, lazy, smelly, ugly things) and drove along the PCH for a bit. It was really hazy because of the forest fires in Big Sur. Hearst Castle was AMAZING. There are four tours you can go on, and we liked the first one so much that we signed up for the second tour when we got down to the visitor center and went right back up! The second tour was much more informative and a much smaller group, so we learned a lot about the house...if you can call it a house!

Wednesday the guys were off to golf again, so we hung out at the house for awhile (Lori, my sis-in-law had two flat tires and had to go get those taken care of!) and then went in to Morro Bay for lunch. We tried to see some otters, but they weren't really doing much. It was hard to tell if we were seeing otters or clumps of kelp! THe boys were all pretty tired, so we headed back to the house and everyone took naps. We had hoped to go down to the beach after naps, but it was ridiculously windy. In fact, after the weekend the temperatures dropped and it was windy most days, so none of us wanted to go sit on the cold beach!

Thursday we only had part of the day as we figured we'd leave after lunch. Will played with his cousins while John and I got everything packed. We had lunch together, and the Dugans went off to kayak or fish or something. We said goodbye to grandma and P-Bill and off we went! We made decent time to Long Beach, considering we hit LA traffic. Once we got to the hotel we hit the pool for awhile and had dinner there before calling it a night. There was no internet at the ocean house, so John and I both spent awhile on his laptop checking our email and our regular websites to see what we'd missed out on!

Friday before heading home we went to Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. It was really amazing...and huge!! We watched a couple different shows--scuba divers in huge aquarium tanks with the fish, an otter show to learn more about them, and a shark feeding show! Will got to play in a little tide pool and touch anemones and star fish. They also had shark petting tanks (like the ray tank at the Phoenix Zoo)! We saw tons of tropical fish (Nemo's relatives) and jelly fish...it was way cool. Will started to melt down towards the end (no big surprise after a week of staying up late, getting up early, and not taking good naps), but we'd been there for more than two hours at that point. He fell asleep once we were on the freeway. The aquarium was right next to the Queen Mary, which is where John proposed to me, so we drove over there to take some pictures. It was fun to see and reminisce about that night.

Thankfully the drive home was uneventful. We were pretty shocked to see the big plume of smoke southwest of Laveen from the forest fire, or whatever it was. We were glad to get home, but Will misses the ocean house and his family. He loves his cousins so much! I managed to sort through our pictures (600+ of them!) and get some online this afternoon while he napped, so here they are:

Cayucos