Escape to the Beach

After being in Fresno for almost 2 months we have escaped to the Central California Beaches.  We were busy while in Fresno: Doctors’ appointments, Roosevelt High School Class of 58 Reunion for Tom, and helping daughter Jennifer at the Big Fresno Fair. Of course we had some grand parenting fun times especially watching Logan in the play, Pirates, The Musical. He did a super job. We enjoyed Julies’ first dinner party in her first apartment, and we especially enjoyed the surprise visits on a regular basis from Ryan. But it was time to leave.

For the last week we have camped at the San Luis Obispo and Santa Cruz Elks lodges. Last Friday we left Fresno at 9 a.m. and arrived in San Luis Obispo in time to attend the Christmas open House at the Apple Farm Inn. The Christmas decorations were wonderful and the flowers at the Inn are always outstanding. We had lunch, a real comfort food experience.  They also had wine tasting and beer tasting. I didn’t think the wine was that good and quite honestly I am just not a beer aficionado so half of mine went in the flowerbed. We did bring home yummy muffins for breakfast the next day.

Apple Farm Inn VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Sunday we had breakfast burritos at the Elks. Later that afternoon we visited the Chapel in Morro Bay where Julie and Claudio will be married. As Tom is officiating we are a little anxious and excited about this very special event.

Monday we drove to Pismo Beach, one of our favorite little towns alone the coast. Tom’s family has gathered there for many years first clamming and building campfires on the beach. Now we search out the best restaurants, walk on the pier, and eat gooey cinnamon rolls in the morning.  We went to Mo’s BBQ where they have now started serving the best fish tacos with a lime cilantro sauce. That is my new ‘go-to’ menu item in Pismo.  We topped that off with a kiddy-cone from Scoops Ice Cream Parlor.  We walked down to our old hangout motel, Wave Court, and discovered the bus barn and all the cabins on the south end are gone. We walked north along the beach and found the restaurant, Pierside, is now out of business and boarded up. Pretty sad to see these changes.

Tuesday I wanted to get some yarn for another project so in to downtown SLO.  I found a pretty midnight blue yarn with a little sparkle thread in it. I am knitting a sweater. Hopefully I can finish before next spring. Then with the memory of those Pismo tacos still in my mind, I looked up fish tacos on Yelp and found a little Mexican place in SLO and we took home 2 dinners. I even had enough to have leftovers.

Wednesday we drove down to Solvang. Love the huge pancakes at Paula’s Pancake House. We walked the full length of Solvang, bought some humus at the street market, indulged in the Swedish bakery goodies, bought the cutest hat, and another Kachina doll for our American Indian décor bathroom

Then yesterday we drove up to the Santa Cruz’ Elks. We decided to save a little money and eat in last night; fish and a nice salad. Well, not only did we not save, our dinner cost us lots. I was microwaving some panko crusted fish when I opened the microwave door and the ceramic plate literally jumped out, hit the Corian counter and BROKE. We ate the shrimp salad and checked the internet for a replacement plate. $64.86 later we have a new plate coming for our Sharp Carousel Microwave. I think we should have gone out to dinner.

Today we drove up to Davenport on the Cabrillo Highway 1 to see the remodeling job that Jason had worked on at the Davenport Café.  It still looks good and we had lunch too. 

We found a geocache at the Jail and then drove about 45 minutes to New Almanden. We have an App on our Smart Phones called History. It highlights historic houses, museums, districts, and other places of historic interest. We saw the New Almanden, historic district, Casa Grande, and the Almaden Quicksilver Mining Museum. Since we have visited gold, silver and copper mines in our travels and have learned the importance of mercury, this museum sounded like one we would enjoy. We met a interesting docent that not only had worked as a docent for 25 years, but was also the daughter and granddaughter of mercury miners of the Quicksilver mine. She was being photographed for a story for the San Jose Mercury News newspaper. It looks like we, too, will be in the story as interested visitors to the museum.  We were so impressed with the quality of this museum, a 2013 award-winner, and highly recommend it. This picture demonstrates how Cinnabar ore was heated to extract mercury.

Tonight we had a excellent dinner at Firefish Grill on the Wharf where our neighbor and Julies’ best friend, Christy, works.

That’s our week at a glance. It has been 2 months since I have blogged so this is a rocky resumption.  So between my knitting, playing spider solitaire, geocaching, I will be sometimes blogging when we do something worth documenting.