California Coast Road Trip – Day 9

THE LAST DAY OF VACATION!

Today was the very last day of our official vacation.  We have now arrived in Monterey where we will be staying in a hotel until our house is ready to be moved into.

We spent the day driving from Pismo Beach to Monterey along the 1.  Although it’s a very scenic driving along the coast it’s also a very windy road and we had to arrive in Monterey by a certain time to drop the pooch at another kennel so making frequent stops wasn’t really on the cards for the 2 (Jay and myself) who get car sick.  So for us it was a very long drive, but we made it safe and sound.

Along our route we did make a few scheduled stops.  The first being at the Madonna Inn so the boys could check out the men’s bathroom for me.  Yes, that’s right I forced my boys to pee just so I could get photographs of a bathroom.  Apparently you pee into a waterfall.  Yes, these small things amuse us to no end.

Then we drove to Cambria which I’d heard from a friend (thanks Danny) had a lot of antique shops and sure enough it didn’t disappoint.  It’s a tiny town, but the antique stores are great, one of them even had a playroom for the kids.  We ended up staying in the town for lunch and found a great Mexican restaurant, Las Cambritas, with a patio out the back so we could eat with the pooch.    I swear I had the BEST jambalaya … I know, not very Mexican, but it was really good.  There was only one other couple out on the patio when we arrived but they were just finishing up their meal so we had the whole place to ourselves which was great.  We could just take our time with our meal and the little ones could get up to explore and run around for a bit.

The little friend that was keeping a watchful eye over us during our meal.

Randy’s lunch, doesn’t it look delish.

The kids helping me mix my margarita

We got back on the road straight after lunch and headed toward Hearst Castle, making one quick stop along the way to have a look out over the ocean. 

We didn’t actually go up to see the castle though as we hadn’t allocated enough time for a tour, but Marisol got to see the castle from the side of the road at least.   We did leave enough time to stop just north of Cambria to see the elephant seals.  The kids loved that stop.

Then it was back on the road for the windy drive north to Monterey.  Thankfully both of the little ones fell asleep.  We had a breakthrough with Marisol not peeing during her 2 hour nap in the car.  Yay!  Poor Jay was feeling a little seedy on the drive though and resorted to watching King Kong on the DVD player in the back of the car for distraction.  The scenery along the way was beautiful though and I wished we had a little more time to make a few stops for photographs and to stretch our legs.