Hotel Bay View Inn Morro Bay

... sea. We find our motel, having driven past a<br>sign telling us San Simeon has a population of 442... Pretty much<br>nothing going on here! Drove to the next biggest town, Cambria for<br>lunch, this town actually had some shops and a petrol station! The<br>petrol station also had vacuums so we took advantage of this and<br>cleaned the inside of the car ready for returning ...

... down Morro Strand, looking at the birds, watching the surfers, and looking for interesting shells or flotsam. Mom tends to pick up weird things, which isn't bad, except I get to carry everything because she had no pockets. The weather continues to be wonderful. Again I wandered around in shorts, although I did have to put on a sweatshirt. The tide was coming in and the waves were crashing. I watched a kayaker navigate the waves by ...

... for mom as this is the way my father and her used to travel when they took the motor home out. As usual we ran into the ever present road construction, but the slow travel only gave me opportunities to see the sights. We came up over a hill and pulled off on a scenic overlook and took the short hike to the scenic point. It overlooked the Santa Ynez river valley. You could smell the pines and we found some wildflowers still ...

... the Santa Lucia mountains along the dramatic coastline. The sea was really rough and we saw some massive waves, crashing against the rocky shoreline.It took us hours just to travel the 100 mile route, we must of stopped off about twenty times! We had lunch halfway down at the Whale Watchers Cafe, but sadly didn't spot any whales. <br><br>Just towards the end of the drive, we came across a number of cars parked alongside a beach. We decided to stop and ...

... we head for LA-hollywood to be exact.it will be another full day of driving. just before this place, we saw sea lions on the beach, heaps of them. and the seals on pier 39 well that was something else! 100's of them all trying to get on not enough pontoons. we had a lovely 1 hour Bay cruise by the way, the fog had lifted by then so we had a good view of everything(that was yesterday as we were too late for ...

I ate dinner - pizza - this evening in "Rose's Landing", by the sea here in Morro. There was an interesting combination of nuances here - all positive. Tradition - being seated by the staff and the bill presented in the leather folder at the end. Informality in the form of a red straw sticking out the glass of coke and the touch on the arm from the waitress apologising for ...

... from the era. Then we were shepherded onto a bus to be driven up the hill to the house and led around by a very jovial tour guide. Although we were slightly put off by the exaggerated number of "wow!"s expressed by many of the other audience members (really, every detail deserves a wow? can't we just save that reaction for the most impressive bits?), touring part of the property was pretty special. It was remarkably tasteful ...

... of a series of volcanic formations called the Seven Sisters. The rock dominates the landscape in Morro Bay and is visible from almost all areas of the town. The look of the rock changes dramatically as the day progresses and the fog moves in and out. The harbor also features some otters and lots of birds. It's quite cool in the morning here and stays pretty cool all day which we both found lovely after hot Texas and hot China! I could see spending some time in Morro ...

... we passed - perfectly sweet! On the road long the coast we passed through a little town called Seaside, with an altitude of a mighty 25ft. This was not lost on us, as earlier we had passed through 8000ft - a huge change. We rolled into Morro Bay at around 1pm, which made a change as we usually got to our destinations very late. We checked into our motel and loaded our stuff into our room. Sarah wanted to visit Hearst Castle ...

After<br>a terrible night of fearful driving, we made it to the hotel and were<br>lucky to be alive, so we went for a visit of the Hearst Castle. This is<br>a mansion/castle built by W.R.Hearst and it just amazing. It sits on<br>900 acres of land, on top of a hill with stunning vies of the ocean.<br>The tour is very informational and the castle is beautiful inside.<br>Driving on to Solvang, we passed through rolling hills of ...