CA day 4: San Simeon seals + Morro Rock & Beach

San Simeon was originally just a waypoint to break up the driving into reasonable chunks of time. But when I started researching it more, the location had two interesting tourist features: Hearst Castle and elephant seals.  While touring the extravagances of Hearst Castle might've been interesting for Zac and me, taking the kids there would've been a nightmare. If they couldn't behave at a botanical garden, we didn't stand a chance in a fancy castle. It ended up being closed anyway due to the road up to the castle needing repaired. 

So that left us with the seals. After checking out of our hotel, we drove about 20 minutes north, retracing some of the scenic route we'd done in the dark the night before, and found a roadside parking lot for the Piedras Blancas Rookery, where you could see the blubbery beasts sunning themselves in the sand. It was really fun to watch them galumphing on the sand, but the kids got quickly bored since they weren't allowed on the beach to climb around or dig. Plus, the morning wind off the ocean was freezing. I also think they're a bit spoiled by all the nature videos they watch that have narrators, music, and close-ups of the animals doing interesting or funny things. Simply watching a bunch of creatures laying around just wasn't entertaining enough for them.

So, we drove to our next destination about an hour south, still along the coast: Morro Rock. I picked this place because it looked cool, and it had a beach and lots of rocks. This would be our last day on the California coast before heading inland for a week. 

The sheltered Morro Bay, right in front of our parking spot, immediately proved interesting, as Simon and Alice spotted sea stars and sea cucumbers in the shallow clear waters.

Then we walked down a path along the southern side of Morro Rock, where the kids had fun climbing boulders that had either fallen off or were blasted off Morro Rock.

The kids loved scampering around on the boulders by the sea and climbing partway up the side of Morro Rock (look for the spots of color in the picture below).

To me, it was freezing cold with the wind, but the kids just can't resist a beach!

They had fun finding sand dollars and crabs along the beach and in the tide pools in the rocks.

Eventually, we walked around to the northern side of the rock, and ate our lunch while trying to defend it from seagulls and rock squirrels. Here's a video Alice made of our attackers.

After lunch, the kids ran around on the broad shallow beach until they were wet and freezing. Then we got them rinsed off and into fresh, dry clothes (no small feat) for the two hour drive inland to Tulare. The drive was kind of bizarre. I hadn't expected California to have so much empty space for some reason.

We got to Tulare and first stopped at Blaze Pizza to fuel ourselves, then we gassed up the car and got more groceries, since we'd spend the next two days in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park. There was nothing particular in Tulare, it was just a waypoint, the last major town to stop in for provisions before the park. We had an excellent and cheap hotel in Tulare. The secret, apparently, is to stay near a highway interchange in a non-tourist town.

CA day 3: Santa Cruz Wharf + UC Botanical Gardens + Natural Bridges Beach + Point Lobos + Coastal Hwy 1

 Our second full day in California started bright and early, at the crack of dawn you could say. Since we were all sharing a room, once one person started rustling around, the rest of us woke up. In normal life, Zac and I stay up 2-3 hours after the kids go to bed, and on weekends the kids get up two hours before we do. But on this trip we went to bed with the kids and woke with the kids. This system worked well for the trip since we got going for the day sooner and had more time for all our adventures, and there wasn't anything to do after dark anyway.  On this particular day, we woke up at 6:30 am and got to enjoy beautiful morning views of the Santa Cruz beach right from our hotel room balcony.

Once we all had some food, we headed out for a morning walk on the wharf. Alice and I wanted to show Zac and Simon the seals we'd discovered last night. Sure enough, they were sunning themselves under the pier and on the remnants of old docks.

On our way back to our room, we noticed that the restaurant right outside our hotel was open for breakfast. We decided it would be fun to eat outside while watching the beach community come to life. Unfortunately, the kids didn't care for their ham and egg croissants that looked like giant sea shells with the ham and cheese baked inside. Zac and I shared a breakfast burrito and tried to help the kids finish their food. So far, eating out with the kids wasn't going very well. For our supper yesterday, Alice ordered a bacon cheeseburger but then didn't want it because it came with mustard on it, so I had to eat it (yuck) and traded her my nice healthy chicken salad pita. Anyway, it was a struggle for them as food that sounded good on the menu turned out to be quite different in reality.

After second breakfast, we packed up and drove to the nearby UC Santa Cruz Arboretum and Botanic Garden. It was filled with really cool flowers and trees, but the kids struggled. They don't really like to just look at things -- they want to climb and trample. Having to stay on paths and not being able to climb trees is torture for them, which means they torture us with their whining as we constantly reprimand them to get out of the tree, stay on the path, stop picking things.... We ended up walking around fairly quickly, and then eating our lunch sandwiches under a tree at like 10:30 am.

In addition to chasing lizards, Simon had to resort to entertaining himself by snorting up flower petals, making us take a picture of him, then laughing hysterically at how ridiculous he looked.

Anyway, we saw some pretty flowers.

Our next stop was nearby Natural Bridges State Park Beach. Now this was more like it. The kids could climb, run around, and play as they pleased. The rocky ledge had tide pools with creatures for Simon to find, the beach had sand for the kids to dig in, and the ocean had water for Alice to run in. Zac and I explored a bit, but mostly just sat around relaxing and enjoying the scenery.

Around 2 pm we needed to head out. Today was a big driving day, 3.5 hours along the scenic coastal highway 1, but first we needed to get gas and more groceries, since our next destination was rather remote.  So this part of the story is about how time got away from us. Somehow the gas and groceries took longer than expected (I couldn't find the fruit snacks in the grocery store and kept circling around determined not to be defeated. Turns out they were with the breakfast cereal. Then the checkout line took forever...) 

We were finally on our way, and I started trying to figure out where we could get supper. The plan was simple: stop to pick up Chinese take-out at the last real town, about an hour into the drive. Choosing restaurants was a surprisingly difficult task as I toggled between maps and Yelp reviews on my phone, trying to figure out locations and prices and food the kids would actually eat. The restaurant I finally selected, called Tommy's Wok, ended up being tucked away in a trendy part of a trendy town called Carmel-by-Sea, just past Monterey. We had trouble finding the restaurant, and the street parking was limited and full, so we finally pulled into a bank parking lot, exasperated, only to find the door to the restaurant magically right there at the back of the parking lot. I used the restroom, picked up the food I had called in, and jumped back in the car and we zipped off to nearby Point Lobos State Natural Reserve to eat our supper at a picnic table. 

Point Lobos turned out to be stunningly beautiful. We could have spent a day or two exploring the entire park, but alas, we just had time to eat our Chinese food and do a quick hike up to look at the incredible views of giant waves smashing into giant rocks. 

By the time we left it was already 6:15 pm and we still had over two hours of driving to do to get to our hotel in San Simeon. There wasn't enough daylight left, so despite my best efforts to keep us on schedule, we ended up doing the last part of the scenic, winding road in the dark. But before that, we had some beautiful views!

And we got to see our west coast sunset at least!