Central Coast

Two weeks ago, Scott flew down to LA to meet up with Clara after she spent a week testing microspopes at USC.  We rented a car, and drove north along the Coast.  It was a part of California that we'd never seen, so we decided to take advantage of our limited time left in California to take in the sites.  It was a really hot and dry weekend, which was good for us, but bad for fires.  We actually saw one fire (the Sayre Fire) from across the San Fernando Valley, about 20 minutes after it had started, as we drove north on Highway 405 on Friday evening.  The Tea Fire was pretty much contained by the time we got Santa Barbara on Saturday morning, but you could definately still smell the smoke as we walked around town, and many of the roads leading up into the hills were still closed.  Our favorite spot in Santa Barbara was the County Courthouse, a beautiful old buidling that was decorated with lots of murals and pretty tiles.

There was also a really nice view of the City from the Bell Tower.

Saturday afternoon we drove through the Santa Ynez wine country, then took a short evening hike at Oso Flaco to see the dunes.

We stayed in San Luis Obispo Saturday night, wandered around town a bit the next morning (the mission and surrounding grounds there were really quite nice).  Our next stop was Morro Bay, where we had a nice stroll on the beach.  It was uncharacteristically warm on the coast that weekend, especially for November, but the water was still really cold so we decided to skip the swimming.  The views from the beach were really nice, though!

We also took a walk along the harbor where we got to see a pod (or scoop, squadron--thanks google) of pelicans and a few harbor seals.  If you look close in the picture below you can see a few of the pelicans diving.

Our next stop was at Moonstone Beach in Cambria for some tidepooling. Clara was a big fan of the sea anemonies.

It was late afternoon by the time we got to the Big Sur coast, so we only made a few stops, but we were treated to a beautiful sunset before driving the last leg of our trip to San Francsico to return the car.