Elephant Seals (Tuesday)

After lunch at the Hearst Castle, we drove just a few minutes down Highway 1 and enjoyed this Elephant Seal beach.  This sandy spot is one that the massive and blubbery seals migrate to from Alaska several times each year.  In July, it is the males that claim their piece of this "timeshare", coming here to molt and shed their winter fur. 

Mostly, they were just laying on the beach like sand-colored lumps, but we saw a few guys lumbering around.  It was cool to watch this seal roll out the ocean after a swim.

A long talk with a very passionate docent taught us many things.  The week we were at the coast was actually on the warm side (we LOVED it-- cool enough for the fireplace in the morning and hot tub in the evening, but warm enough in the afternoon sun to wear shorts).  She explained that the seals were roasting and kept tossing sand over their bodies to cool off.

Seeing animals in the wild like this never ceases to amaze me.  Later, you'll read about some of the other ocean life we sighted this week, it really was incredible!

Hearst Castle (Tuesday)

When the Central Coast vacation was planned, the first thing we knew we surely wanted to do was tour the Hearst Castle in San Simeon.  The opulent house was something to see, but by the end of the week, some of the other amazing sights of creation we witnessed actually topped it.

A super brief history of the castle is this: the Hearst family was crazy rich from silver mining and owned a ton of land on the coast.  The son, William Randolph, continued in the family's wealth with a mega newspaper and movie producing industry.  He decided he wanted to build the home of his dreams, one that was inspired by sights and architecture of real castles in Europe, and dedicated a big part of his later life to designing and building this imposing mansion on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific. 

We started the tour with a bus ride winding up the hills.  We learned how Mr. Hearst loved animals and saw where he once kept his personal zoo.

The tour went on for a little over an hour and showed us all sorts of glamorous and glorious aspects of the castle and Mr. Hearst's famed art collection.  You may be wondering how the girls did on a tour of this length and nature and the answer is GREAT!  As you can image, Ella loved the fancy house and listed it among her favorite things that we did during the week.

Throughout the tour, we encountered no ceiling that was un-fancy.  Each time we looked up, we were impressed.  I love this moment I caught Delia and Dave in.  She kept whispering, "Wooow! Wooow!"

One view of the ocean.

The castle's outdoor Neptune Pool is pretty famous.

The property is divided up into La Casa Grande (the big huge house Mr. Hearst lived in) and several guest houses that every significant star from the golden age of film has stayed in.

The guest houses were set up with clothes, shoes and accessories from the era.  The display of fancy dresses delighted Ella!

We played the "If you could have any room from the castle in your house, what would it be?" game and it was unanimous that the indoor Roman pool was the one to choose.  The grand movie theatre was a second choice.  Our guide told us that because of Mr. Hearst's connections to the industry, many big name movies, like Gone With the Wind, were actually premiered for the first time at his home for his personal parties!

The castle is so humongous that the tour we picked for first time visitors just barely scratched the surface.  Die hard tourists can take more extensive tours of the gardens, guest houses, libraries, etc.  What we saw was just right for us, though-- enough to say we saw it!

Avila (Monday)

Since Teri's parents own a home in the same coastal town we were staying in, it worked out perfectly for us to meet up with them while they also visited the area!  Together we did a morning outing to Avila, a great little beach town with a great big farm.  The Avila Valley Barn has a country store with multiple rooms of goods.  Here you can buy homemade pastries and jams, home grown fruits and veggies, wines and cheese and cute crafty things.  Our homeowners warned us that a stop there was dangerous, and that we'd come home with something we weren't planning on buying.  In our case, it was an apple-raspberry pie.  A very delicious apple-raspberry pie!

The farm also has hayrides out to their U-pick fields and a huge petting zoo.  The girls got a bag of fresh greens and gave the barnyard critters some love and attention with their friends Beth, Allie and Nathan.

We were excited to see the peacock raise his feathers for us!

Next we drove to the beach, which had a pirate-themed park, swings in the sand, a long pier and a bunch of beachy shops to browse.  Phil, Teri, Dave and I juggled the kids back and forth between the park and the beach and squeezed some conversation in between.  Mom, Dad and Kyle strolled around the pier and town.

The girls were quick to start the sand castle building and Delia was a little too quick to get in the ocean-- running right in fully clothed!  We watched our brave friends jump the icy waves in their bathing suits. 

We're thankful for the perfect timing and location that allowed us to quickly catch up with these favorite friends.

The AMAZING House (Sunday)

When we arrived at our rental home that night, we opened the door and raced around in wonder!  We knew from internet pictures that we were getting lots of house for what we were paying, but seeing the actual beach retreat far exceeded our expectations.  The owners live in the home for part of the year and they just started renting it out.  We think they'll up the price and remove some of their super nice things from it as time goes on.  The house had 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2 living rooms (each with a fireplace), upstairs and downstairs decks (complete with wicker rocking chairs and hot tub!) and 1 amazing view!

Without doubt, our favorite room was this all-glass sun room.  The walls and roof were actually made completely of windows!  A golf course ran right through the backyard and while sitting there in the sun with the windows cracked for breeze, we could hear people teeing off.  We curled up on these couches and read over 1000 pages collectively!

The view was kind of a 180.  Yes, our immediate view was of the lush green golf course, but behind it was Morro Bay and Morro Rock.  To another side we saw the mudflats and sand dunes.

The girls' favorite room was this short-ceilinged, secret hideout under the stairs.  The owners turned this into kid-heaven, wish plush body pillows, artwork from children's stories hanging on the walls and stocked with toys and books.  Ella took several rests in the secret hideout.

And these are just some things we did in the fabulous house (for more pictures of the rooms, visit my Facebook album, or watch for a slideshow in the margin).  Grandpa and Grandma wanted to have a little birthday party for the girls since they aren't usually around for their birthdays.  They opened a few gifts and blew out candles on the Butterfinger ice cream cake I made.

One day a spontaneous dance party broke out!  Below is a much more common scene: game playing.  The week's Trains total was 7 games with Dad getting his first win ever!

This lovely home was our haven.  Just minutes away from fun activities every day, we'd come back each nap time and evening for some reading, meal making and game playing.  The owners blessed us by sparing no luxury on their guests.  It was a sad thing to drive away.

The Drive Down (Sunday)

I counted.  I have NINE posts about this wonderful coastal vacation!  We did such a great variety of cool things each day, I just have to record each marvelous memory!  For the sake of my readers, though, I'll tell the story in pieces-- probably corresponding the outings we took with the dates of exactly one week ago when we took them at the coast.

So it begins with the ride down.  We left last Sunday after church and decided to take the much longer, but much more scenic, way down famously beautiful Highway 1.  Dad and Dave did a professional job of packing the minivan, which we christened with this long trip!, with all our luggage, coolers, sand toys and bags of books and games. 

The drive down the coast was spectacular!  The views of the valleys, hills, rocks, cliffs and crashing surf made the length and the twists and turns of the drive worthwhile.  We pulled over and jumped out often to take in some of those views and gulp some deep breaths of fresh air.

Considering we were in the car for about 7 hours, the girls did GREAT!  We had lots of activities to distract them, and of course family to laugh and share stories with.

Sunday, the first day of VM Vacation at the Coast, was off to a great start!

It's State Fair Time!

Mom, Dad and Kyle arrived safely on Thursday.  You know we've been having a great time at home, competing in trains, playing with the girls and sharing meals.  I love how excited Ella and Delia are to have their family here.  They bust out of bed early each morning to spend time with them and ask things like, "Uncle Kyle which pillow did you sleep on?" to absorb every single detail about them!

We had time for one outing, so yesterday we took them to one of our favorite summer destinations, the California State Fair.  It was fun to show this off to new visitors and see the girls enjoy it that much more since they're older.

Both Ella and Delia milked the goat!

We posed in the gardens of the homegrown agriculture section.  (Ella is wearing a sunflower outfit and headband, doesn't she blend in well?)

We petted the slimy sturgeon and picked up turtles in the Fish and Game wildlife section.

Our favorite is always the Livestock Nursery.  Yesterday we saw 3 mama pigs with their piglets, some just born goats, a few calves and a  lamb.  Delia sang happy birthday to them all!

In the Insect Pavilion, Ella was brave enough to hold a millipede!

And, cheers to the wine garden! A little wine tasting, some wine slushies, some shade-- bliss.

Farewell, Old Friend

When I was younger, I received cash from every relative I had.  Every birthday, every Christmas brought a check.  As a child, you do not appreciate the value of this, especially when your mom forces you to put each dollar of it into savings.  And having to find a creative way to write "Thank you for the money, I put it into my savings account" on every thank you note you send for 2 decades was tiresome. 

How could I know that when I entered my 20's a healthy savings account would come to mean so much!  I paid college tuition, I paid rent, I planned the wedding I wanted, I even bought a brand new car.  I have grandparents and great aunts to now thank for these HUGE gifts!

I clearly remember the day, my senior year at Calvin, when I wrote the biggest check of my life and drove home in a sparkly new Saturn.  It even had a keychain that automatically unlocked the doors and an alarm system!  It was probably my most exciting purchase ever. 

We have gotten every penny's worth out of that now-12-year-old Saturn-- starting in college when it made the tri-state journey every other weekend to see my fiance in Chicago!  It moved us to Ohio and Indiana and back to Michigan.  It took us to vacation in places like Niagra Falls and Washington DC.  It saw each of the 7 states between Michigan and California.  It has been on countless adventures and has literally made some amazing journeys. 

I'm not sad to say goodbye.  The car is old, requires more work than we can afford and barely meets our needs anymore.  But I have loved my car from the day I saw it in the showroom with the "This Saturn is for Jennifer" sign next to it and thank it for the coast to coast ride and miles of life it gave us!

Our New Ride

It's official: we're a mini-van family!  Though, actually, this 2009 Kia Sedona is going to be primarily Dave's.  He always says he's in the business of "hauling students" as a youth pastor and is constantly making calls to arrange transportation for big groups of people.  The girls and I will continue to roll around town in our Equinox and just enjoy the luxury of more space for day trips, camping, and family vacations to the coast!  

 

Some details on the van:  it's a slate color (kinda grayish blue).  It was formerly a rental and has just 7000 miles on it.  We feel we got an excellent deal.  We've been casually looking for a bigger car for about a year now, when we saw this one, we knew it was too perfect to pass up.

The Boys

As I've mentioned, Dave was gone all last week on a service trip to Kentucky with a team of students from his youth group.  Once again, his team collaborated with a high school team from a Michigan church-- led by youth pastors and good friends, Nick and Amy.  To give the students some time to get to know each other, they met up in Chicago and drove down together.   The whole project and week saw an answer to many prayers, with health, safety, fun, effectiveness and great bonds between the two youth groups.   Among all these blessings, Dave got to spend a little time at home with his family since he took a later flight out of Chicago at the end of the week.  I know he really enjoyed seeing nephews Calvin, Aidan, Theoren and Cole and meeting new nephew Miles for the first time!