Morro Bay and Hearst Castle

On July 11 Ammon drove from Mesa and we(my mom, dad and I) drove from Morgan Hill and met in Morrow Bay! Beautiful! I ended up driving because I had not taken any motion sickness medication(a must) and when I drive, it's not a problem. My dad was good with that. He sat in the back and worked.
When we got to the Inn at Morro Bay (where we were staying) they were still working on cleaning our rooms and Ammon was still a bit away from us, so we met in San Luis Obispo (SLO) for dinner. I was SO SO SO excited to see my husband again after more than 3 weeks! I love that man!! We drove into SLO and went to this Italian place on Higuera St (downtown). The food was Awesome! Yum! The company was good too!

My dad was born in SLO while my grandpa was going to Cal Poly and Grandma said that this is the house they lived in! Cool! Grandpa built the little shed at the end of the driveway.
We then checked in and my parents had this yummy treat sent to the rooms! How thoughtful!
The view from our second room. Yes, second. Dad had wanted us to have a room with its own hot tub, the first room did not, the second one did! Thanks, Dad! It was almost like a third honeymoon. The second was our trip to Yellowstone, which Ammon swears he will post someday...

Anyway, the low-lying clouds or fog was the main weather we had.
This was the view the morning we left! Gorgeous!

Our first full day on the central coast we drove north to Hearst Castle. This castle was built by the newspaper giant William Randolf Hearst starting during the 1920's. This was one of his 7 homes and the tour guide (below) says it was his favorite.
The castle was built at the top of one of the hills along the central coast and affords a great view of everything, when there's no fog!

Toward the end of our time on the hill the skies began to clear!
Heart had a great taste for the ornate and detailed artwork from Europe. He also had grand pools and gardens on the property! Wow!

The Neptune Pool. Hearst had to name his pools because he has two! I think the picture says it all!See? Very pretty gardens...or are they pretty because my mom was in them? You decide.
The Roman Pool was down the hill from everything else, which also was UNDER the tennis courts. Yep! He had the tennis courts built on the roof of the pool house with little windows in the courts so the pool got some natural light.
You can see the difference in light in the back of this pool area as compared to the front.

This man was all about details. This is a picture of the bottom of the pool. It's all little mosaic tiles. Amazing!

This is the view of the castle from the coastal highway!

The golden hills leading to the trees with the castle just above those!

From the castle, the Elephant Seals were not far away! The park ranger explained that the elephant seals come here to get sun burned and shed a layer of skin. Their layer of "skin" was about a half an inch think! Holy cow!

They look almost dead, until they start scooting around the beach.

A pup! We didn't see too many of these!The video shows some of the seals on the move. My favorite part is right towards the end of the video when one comes into the space of another, and rather than putting up a fuss, the other just moves away!




The next day we went Kayaking on the bay and on a small "hike" which really was more of a nature walk. Ammon liked the name of one of the flowers: Sticky Monkey!