La Cuesta Motor Inn San Luis Obispo

Another great day in Morro. The weather was great although today I opted for jeans. After another relaxed morning, including a walk up to the bird sactuary, we headed up Hwy. 1 to Rt. 46 and headed inland after a brief stop at Harmony, an old commune, now an artist haven. The scenery goes from beach to mountains that were fully into their autumn colors. We stopped at the scenic overlooks (often ...

... but it was still neat to watch them spray on another layer and to see the unpacked racks of skates standing by. Not far from the rink, we found a little coffee shop with a very upbeat "HOT" Italian barrista. I got a CHAI CHAI CHAI and we headed back towards the car. With a general idea of picking up 17-mile drive somewhere, I let Don drive wherever he wanted to while I tracked our location on the map. In this way, we ended up exploring ...

... Rock. We were also lucky enough to see the Peregrine Falcons, just as we were getting ready to leave.
We wandered up Main Street to Morro State Park and the Blue Heron bird sanctuary. This is a protected stand of eucalyptus where egrets and herons (both blue and night) nest. As it was not nesting season, we only spied a couple of the blues and one lonely egret. The walk is easy and not too long, which makes a nice chance to get ...

... 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 ...

... very noisy seals swimming around the docked boats. We shared a large fish and chips for dinner at Outrigger but had a nasty glass of wine so by all means eat but don't order the house wine! The restaurant had an amazing view of the mount where we watched the sun disappear out of sight for the evening.

One year today, happy anniversary a complete year of traveling, wow it's gone quickly. In the morning we had dry muffins as part of our free breakfast (not so great!), and headed down ...

... it is the most beautiful place and all the scenery all the way down the coast was just stunning.
before we forget........answers to the quiz 1) johnny cash sang the songs with jackson and folsom in them...2)creedence clearwater revival sang a song with Lido in it and ...3) ELO had an album titled El Dorado so no 100% to any of you but at least we know none of you cheated!!!
anyway back to the days ...

... left into a sheer rock face - what was she thinking of??? One place Wendy was keen to stop at was Seal Beach and we really only fell upon it by accident - it didn't seem to be very well signposted. It was well worth it and there were loads of seals basking in the sun by the shoreline. We spent half an hour or more watching them ....they weren't very active, but when they did move they were quite comical.

About 5 hours later we arrived at ...

... Another day, after surmounting our longest climb we came to a hamlet called Loma Vista, which included a café and a couple of art galleries, and a fanciful "Spirit Garden." There we were greeted by Rachel Fann, who owns the Garden Gallery, a small shop with original and imported art work and jewelry. Although she wasn't a Quaker, through a series of phone calls with a variety of like-minded people, Ruah had arranged hospitality for us in her home about 12 miles south of ...

... lunch we were off again headed north through numerous small beach towns and on towards San Luis Obispo for the night. We met up with Chris' cousin Brad in SLO and grabbed dinner at Woodstock pizza (it was pint night :) After dinner back to Brad's house to watch Lost that we had missed last week and play a little beer pong. Fun times....Kara and Chris

... of course there are still things missing. I'm really happy I took my blanket and pillow with me. My roommates and I are really a good match. We all like to cook and are not the ones who only want to party. I think we will get allong pretty well. Tonight (Saturday) there was the first Home-football game of the season, so went there but when we came it was already full on the student side of the stadium even I guess 500 ...