Day 17 – 7/29/2012

This morning Karen and I took a short walk on the Cambria, CA boardwalk along the Pacific Ocean.  It is beautiful but was largely hidden by the morning fog.  As a family we then headed down Route 1 to take a tour of Hearst Castle, the former home of William Randolph Hearst.  It is an amazing residence and story of its construction with all of the ceilings, fireplaces and artwork purchased and moved over from Europe.  And to think it was never finished to his vision!

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After our tour, a walk around the grounds, and a quick lunch along the shore we traveled the remaining 141 miles down the coast to Santa Barbara, CA to visit Karen’s Aunt Sue.  This will be our turn around point after travelling 4,702 miles.  In evening we enjoyed a home cooked meal and a relaxing evening watching the Olympics.

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7-28-12

This morning we went to a forest of redwood trees.  They were very big and tall.  It was fun to climb on some that had fallen down in the path.  Also, we saw a sign that said that in the gift shop they sold snacks, t-shirts, water bottles, and leather stuff.  We thought this was pretty odd and funny.  Here is a picture of us “holding up” a tree:

Next, we drove to a place to kayak.  It was really fun but we got pretty wet.  We brought a lunch and had it floating out in the middle of the slough.  We also saw lots of animals including sea otters, sea lions, seals, and pelicans.  One sea otter swam under Lindsey and Dad’s kayak and came up right in from of them.  It surprised them and Lindsey screamed.  That was one of the funniest parts of the day!  Here is a sea lion floating upside down in the water:

After kayaking and changing out of our wet clothes, we drove to our hotel right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.  But, it was foggy and cold so we didn’t really get to enjoy the view.

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Day 16 – 7/28/2012

This morning we enjoyed some more time with our friends Jon and Tandy as we walked through the Henry Cowell State Park to see some amazing redwood trees.  The trees are absolutely spectacular.  It is amazing to see how large they are.  The slice of Redwood behind us in the picture below dates back to the birth of Jesus Christ.  You will see in the picture that Lindsey was having a rough morning.

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After our walk through the Redwoods we headed south along the California coast.  The weather continued to be relatively cool as the marine layer of fog hugged the coastline.  As an adventure along our way we took a couple of hours to go kayaking.  We split up into two person kayaks and traveled about two miles in the Elkhorn Slough in Monterey Bay.  We made the mistake of putting Kelsey with Karen, so Karen had a lot of paddling to do.  Lindsey was a natural kayaker and did very well paddling.  During our adventure we had close encounters with sea lions, sea otters, pelicans and other sea birds.  One sea lion emerged right in front of my kayak and scared Lindsey.  Although it was a tiring trip (especially paddling back while the tide was coming in) we really enjoyed it.

ImageThe quote for today was from Kelsey.  While she was kayaking she asked Karen, “Why aren’t we going faster?”  The answer was that they would go faster if she started paddling!

The rest of the afternoon we spent traveling down route 1 along the coast.  It is a beautiful drive and so interesting to see how the west coastline is so different from the east coast.  After traveling 161 miles we stopped for the night at a nice Best Western right on the ocean in Cambria, CA.  This is a very cute little town and is on our list for Karen and I to return to someday.  Unfortunately due to our evening arrival and the marine layer fog in the mroning, we could not enjoy the ocean view as much as we would have liked. Cambria has a cute little town and a boardwalk along the shoreline.

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7-27-12

Today we spent the day with Jessica, Jeff, and Brad in San Francisco.  First, we went to a science museum.  There was an exhibit of really cute baby ostriches.  Then, we went in an earthquake stimulation room.  It was actually really fun.  There was a fake goldfish in a bowl and it did not look like it was going to make it through the earthquake!  We also went in a rainforest room that had lots of butterflies, birds, and other animals.  It was really cool!

After the museum we went for lunch at a place that had traditional sourdough bread.  I had pizza on sourdough bread and it was delicious!

Next, we drove to Santa Cruz to stay with our friends, the Scovilles.  We went to the boardwalk and saw some sea lions.  We had dinner there and then went to the part of the boardwalk that had rides.  Even though our favorite ride, the swings, was broken Lindsey and I still went on a few other rides.  They were a lot of fun!

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7-26-12

Today was one of our San Francisco days.  We started off the day with an insane amount of stairs (I can’t believe my mom made us go up all 447!) just to see a tower.  Then, we had lunch at an Italian restaurant.  The pancakes there were fabulous!

Next, we went to Pier 39 and saw some sea lions.  They were really cute.  After this, we went to a Ghirardelli store and got free samples of chocolate and some ice cream.  That was a really good afternoon snack!  Next, we got to ride on a cable car into Chinatown.  In Chinatown we went to a cute, small fortune cookie factory and got free samples of the rejects (today was free sample day!).  Mmmmm! We also got some tea there to help us warm up.  It got really cool when it got cloudy!  We met up with Jessica and Jeff and had dinner with them.  It was nice to see them again!

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7-25-12

We drove into California today and stopped to visit with my dad’s cousin and her family.  They have an almost-two-year-old boy named Elliot and a six-month-old girl named Lillian.  Both children are adorable.  We had a great time sitting in their backyard talking and having snacks.  Elliot loved showing us the lemon tree they had growing in the yard and Lillian was perfectly happy just being held and adored.

After this we stopped at Stanford University, where Unc lived last year.  His office mate showed us around and we even got to see his office!  After, we got Jamba Juice (deeelicious!).

Next, we drove to my mom’s cousin’s house.  Jessica and her husband, Jeff, made us dinner and my mom’s other cousin, Brad, was there for dinner as well.  We had fun meeting their cats and walking down to the frozen yogurt place near them after dinner (not as good as Pinkberry, but who doesn’t love frozen yogurt with delicious toppings?)

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7-24-12

Today was pretty boring.  We drove for pretty much the whole day.  I mean, there aren’t really that many good places to stop in the middle of Nevada.  We ended up staying in a hotel just outside of California called the Nugget.  The Nugget, much to my dismay, does not give you free chicken nuggets!  What’s up with that??  But, it does have a really cool pool.  It had a regular pool and a hot tub as well as individual bubble pools that you could sit in and an area that had a cool waterfall!  Lindsey and I had a lot of fun playing in the pool and under the waterfall.

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Day 15 – 7/27/2012

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We spent the morning touring and enjoying some sites with Karen’s cousins Brad and Jessica and Jessica’s husband, Jeff.  We started at the dahlia garden in the Golden Gate Park and then walked over to the Academy of Sciences, which is located within the park.  They have an interesting exhibit about the movement of the earth’s plates, which discusses the evolution of ostriches and the frequent experiences of earthquakes on the west coast.  Kelsey and Lindsey loved seeing the live baby ostriches on display.  The Academy also had a really neat, fully enclosed rainforest exhibit with a number of butterflies and birds flying around.  To keep them in you have to enter the exhibit through an air lock.

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For lunch we satisfied our desire for sourdough bread by traveling down to Fisherman’s Wharf to have lunch at the Boudin Bakery.  The Boudin Bakery has been making sourdough bread since 1849 and is still baking sourdough bread off of the same “mother dough” starter.  The bread was delicious.  We spent some time after our lunch touring the Boudin museum and bakery.

From the wharf we bid farewell to San Francisco and headed down the coast on route 1.  Unfortunately much of the coast line had the summer fog, but we did see some amazing views.  We traveled to Santa Cruz to meet up with some family friends, Jon and Tandy, who live there.  We met them for dinner on the Santa Cruz wharf and then walked the boardwalk.  While we walked we could hear the summer boardwalk concert featuring two ‘80’s groups: Animotion and Flock of Seagulls.  Although the swings ride closed before we got there, Kelsey and Lindsey enjoyed a couple of other rides.

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7-23-12

Today we drove to Salt Lake City and went to a few different places there.  First, we stopped at the place where the Olympics was a few years ago.  There was a video and some pictures plus you could see the structure that was lit by the torch and the stadium.  It was a lot smaller than I expected.

Then, we went to a church and looked around for a while.  This was soooo boring.  When we finally got to our hotel we went to dinner.  On the way back we saw these orange flags by the side of the road.  We asked my dad what those are for and he didn’t know so he just said jokingly that you have to take one across while you cross the street and leave them on the other side.  As we got closer we saw the sign and saw that he was actually right! We had lots of fun waving them as we went across the street!  When we got back to the hotel we went in the pool and hot tub.  It was very fun and refreshing even though it was a little cool out in the dark.

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7-22-12

We drove to the Grand Teton National Park.  We got to ride horses through the park, including through a few little streams and up a mountain.  It was really fun!  My horse was Tony.  He was black and he was a very nice Mustang.  As we were just getting back to the camp, it started to rain.  It got pretty foggy and we didn’t really get to see a lot of the park (or any meese 🙂 ).

 

We got to our hotel which my mom said was supposed to look quaint and charming but to me it just looked like an old lady room.  Everything was in terrible prints and faded colors- not very pretty to say the least.  But, I survived staying the night!  We went out to dinner at a local brewery and we took some funny pictures:

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