California Here We Come!

Spring break - at last! We headed to California with our good friends, the Bykowskis. Tim and I both took Friday off of school so we could get cheaper flights, and headed to San Diego on Thursday night. We connected with Tim's uncle Gene and he hooked us up with a Trolley Tour of the city that included a seal boat ride around the bay. Here we go ...

We saw wild dolphins, sea lions, seals, pelicans, and other assorted birds as well as lots of cool sailboats.

The US Navy was out training dolphins, and people were paddling around on stand up surf boards. It was a beautiful day!

There were about 100 birds on this dock, all showing off for us...

... and so were the seals and sea lions.

A lady volunteered to take our picture, and she somehow put her fingerprint right in the middle of my lens - I have fingerprints on the next 50 pictures!

People were out flying the coolest kites!

Then the tour continued as we went across the bridge to the Coronado Hotel. WAY too expensive for us!

Uncle Gene lived on a hill in Old Town overlooking the bay in a fabulous art deco styled house. It was amazing!

We stayed for the sunset and headed out for a great steak dinner at Uncle Genes favorite local bistro.

On Saturday we headed north to San Juan Capistrano and toured the mission where all the swallows build their nests. They come back on March 19 every year - we missed it by two days!
The flowers were gorgeous, too. I'll have to post just a set of flower pictures!

The mission had lots of great photo ops:)

We continued up to Santa Barbara - and stopped to walk out on the pier.

I wonder if this pigeon can read?

We made it to the Hearst Castle for the last tour of the day - 3:00p.m. This place is a must see if you ever get out to the west coast.

This is one of the three guest houses. Can you see Joan and I in reflected in the windows?

The Roman pool was as clear as glass. This is just one side - imagine the matching columns opposite and steps down into the pool with fountains in the middle. Wow!

Former discus thrower Paul Casey competes with the Olympic statue. nice form, Paulie!

William Hearst died in 1947 and had spent 20 some years building this place - and never finished it! You can see the side that doesn't have any marble decorations on it. Still, it was an incredible structure.

The indoor pool was so smooth you could see the beautiful gold tile work perfectly reflected in the water.

We continued up the Pacific Coast Highway and had to stop numerous times for beautiful views.

Tim is really a pro - he brought his tripod and lots of lenses as well as a computer cable so we could hook up the camera to the TV at night and watch a slide show. He could even use my digital card and we could see my pics, too!

Sunset - time to stop for the night. the PCH is a bit scary in the dark - it's only a two way road, and not very wide. Luckily, we were heading north so the drop off was on the opposite side of the road - whew!

On Monday we headed back south to see all the stuff we missed driving to San Francisco in the dark on Sunday night - the Monterrey Peninsula, Pebble Beach Golf course, the 17 -mile Drive, and Carmel by the Sea. First - the 17 mile Drive that takes us along the Pebble Beach Golf course.

Hmm - Paul, is that your ball????

Yes, Paul really had a treat for this little guy - a peanut.

This is a famous photo op - The Lone Cypress. They have had to add cables to the tree to make sure it doesn't blow over!

They call these ghost trees - it kind of looks like a reindeer, doesn't it?

We tried often to get the waves splashing high over the rocks. It seemed like I would just miss a great shot, and then stand and aim at the rock for another wave to come rolling in, and it would crash just to my left or right. Arrrgh!

We ate lunch at the Pebble Creek Golf course - maybe we'll golf there someday (in our dreams - you need much bucks!) The lunch was great - I had a sea food sandwich - m m good!

There was another old mission in Carmel, and we stopped for a tour. More beautiful gardens and, of course, photo ops.

The sign on the front door warned us that this church is NOT earthquake proof - enter at your own risk!

There was a school connected to the mission, and this courtyard would have been a beautiful place to have recess.

We headed out to Angel's Camp in the foothills of the sierra Nevadas to stay for the next three days. We toured a vineyard near Murphys, a town with 50 some wine tasting places! The vineyard we went to was famous for this 44 pound gold nugget! The wine was not my favorite part of the trip, but we bought two bottles and had to wrap them up REALLY well to get them home in our suitcase!

Just about 30 miles up into the mountains from Angel's Camp was Big Tree Sate Park, and they weren't kidding! Look at the size of this stump! It took them 22 days to cut this tree town back in the late 1800s.

Can you see Paul and me at the base of this tree?

Now THAT is a pine cone for the giant sequoia - the one on the left, of course.

Angel's Camp is famous because Mark Twin hung out there - and wrote The Celebrated Jumping Frogs of Calaveras County. They have frogs all OVER town, and the whole county, for that matter. This is at the local golf course, where Joan and I dropped the guys off to golf on Thursday while we went ...shopping!

Yep - here we are in fron t of one of the "celebrated jumping frogs of Calaveras County." The lady inside the real estate place saw us taking froggy pictures, and she came out to offer to take ours. Turns out she was from ... Minnesota!

We couldn't figure out what was growing in a lot of the dead looking trees - and it turns out, it's MISTLETOE! The locals get out their shotguns and shoot down the globs in the late fall and they sell it around Christmas

This is the view from our timeshare at Angel's Camp - overlooking the golf coursewhere the guys played - in shorts, because they didn't allow jeans! It was a tad chilly the end of our trip, but at least the sun came out for a while on Thursday.

On Friday we headed back to San Francisco on a cloudy cool day. We started out a Ghiradelli

Square, and had a YUMMY hot fudgeturtle sundae!

We headed for the cable cars, and I got a cool video of them turniong the car just before we got on - and the rain started!

We went to Chinatown for supper at a restaurant that was over 100 years old. The food was excellent - and we ate family style and had plenty! The tea was hot, and really hit the spot because we were WET!

Yep - we got a tad wet waiting for the cable car to take us back to Ghiradelli Square!

Stil, we had a great time, and got some interesting pictures in the rain. We dropped Joan and Tim off at the airport around 10:00 p.m. and we stayed two extra days. Had to stretch those vacation days!

On Saturday we drove back down south heading towards San Luis Obispo where Tess, Paul's niece lives. We stopped at Pinnacles National Mounment on the way - but it was raining ... again! We could have gotten out and hike to some cool caves, but passed on that one.

We connected with Tessa at the end of hew work shift at the Jada Winery, and got a personal tour by the master winemaker! It was very interesting, and Tessa gave us a quick demonstration of what she does as a wine hostess - we got to sample some wine and cheese. I must say, it tastes a whole lot better with cheese. Then we went out to dinner at a Thai restaurant - yum!

Hurray - sun on sunday! Lots of wind, and cool temperatures, but that didn't stop us from tour San Francisco one last time. This is a street car that used to run in Minneapolis. Maybe my mom and dad rode on this one back in the 40s!

We tried to get tickets online for alcatraz that morning, but they were all sold out. We got off the street car at the Alcatraz station, just to check out the goft shop. A man was standing on the corner selling two tickets that he couldn't use because his wife got sick. We bought them, and were the last two people allowed on the boat!

Let me out! This place was creepy, but VERY interesting.

The buiding in the background was for a military prison around the time of the Civil War. They manned a fort here during the war. Later, whole families of the guards lived on the island and the kids had to take a ferryback and forth to school. In the 70s, the American Indian Movement, AIM, took over the island for a couple of years. Lots of history here.

So long, Alcatraz ....

... and hello San Francisco. We had dinner at a place at Pier 39 called Chowders - we shared the BEST clam chowder in a sour dough bread bowl and a fried shrimp basket. WOW - I'd go back just for that meal! Hope you enjoyed the photos - I took 639 - so you just got a taste of all we did. Hmmm ... now where should we go NEXT year???