Monday

We left Pismo Beach in the morning, still driving up the coast. We parked the RV and drove the jeep inland through wine country, heading towards Hearst Castle. It was a perfect day for the jeep, the kids usually complain about the wind or the temperature, today they really enjoed themselves.

Kelly enjoyed himself also but didn't want his picture taken.

Jarrett and I drove down the coast through wine country on our honeymoon, so this drive brought back lots of memories. We stayed at a bed and breakfast near Paso Robles in these hills.

When we got back to the coast, it was foggy and cool. I love the fog!

We arrived at Hearst Castle just in time for our tour. None of us knew anything about it, so we signed up for the Experience Tour, which is geared towards first time visitors. The castle was incredibly decadent. William Hearst's father made a forune in silver and bought tons of land in California. When William Hearst had made his own fortune in newspapers, he started the castle. He was 57, at that time the average life expectancy was only 61. The castle was in it's prime for about ten years- until Hearst ran out of money. After seeing the castle, I'm amazed his money lasted even 10 years!

Hearst had collected tons of amazing art, artifacts and arcitecture pieces throughout his career and had them built into the castle. His builder was one of the first women ever to earn an engineering degree. The castle contains ancient Egyptian pieces, 2000 year old roman artifacts, tapestries and statues from around the world, etc. It was baffling to think of the origins of everything. He also had a full zoo on the premesis, one of the animals in his open range area was the zebra, the zebras have continued to live there and breed. On our way out, we actually saw a herd of zebras grazing near the coast!

The tour was very impressive. The castle is a bit inland, maybe two miles in. It's in the hills, so you can see all the way down to the water. Riley loved the castle, so far it's her favorite part of the trip. Here she is at the Neptune Pool. It's one of the most recognizable places. Part of Sparticus was filmed there and it was on the cover of Life Magazine in the fifties.

Here's James at the entrance to one of the guest houses. Neither of the guest houses had kitchens because Hearst insisted that his guests always dine with him in the main house. Supposedly Winston Churchill requested tea in his guest room and Hearst said no and made him come to the main kitchen for it.

This is the entrance to the castle, some of the sculptures on the front are over 400 years old. On the terrace out front, there were marble pieces that were 2000 years old. There were equally impressive things in the castle but there was no flash photography allowed so I didn't get any good pictures.

This is the Roman Pool, it was the last stop on our tour and it was gorgeous. The ladders in and out are all marble. The entire pool is 10' deep but the tiles are laid specially in order to make the bottom appear curved. The gold tiles on the floor and walls are actually real gold, 22 carat. Is it any wonder Hearst ran out of money?

After the castle, we headed on to our next stop, San Francisco! Unfortunatly, the GPS was confused and lead us into the heart of Castro instead of our RV park. Poor Jarrett had to manuver the RV through super narrow, crowded, one way streets in the dark...did I mention that he's a superhero?

Sunday

Pismo Beach was wonderful! We ran around the RV park on scooters all morning, then left for lunch. The restaurant had a dolphin fountain out front, so Riley was in heaven.

After lunch, we went to a great playground near the beach. Riley and James rode dolphins and an orca.

We walked along the cliffs over the ocean and went down the pier.

There were lots of people fishing on the pier, the kids really wanted to fish too. We went back to the RV to get poles and went to Shell Beach. Jarrett and the big kids fished while Kelly and I searched for shells. There were tons of them. You can't see very well in the picture but we found a lot of intact shells, two broken sand dollars and a whole black sand dollar. While we were searching, we found an abandoned sand sculpture, very cool!

Afterwards, we drove down the beach and into the sand dunes and then home for bed, everyone was SO tired!

Saturday

We left from Vista in the afternoon and drove along the coast towards our next stop, Pismo Beach.

The drive was beautiful, we went through the Los Padres National Park near Santa Barbara. My phone pictures don't do it justice.

At the end of the park, we saw Cachuma Lake. Again, the picture isn't that great but it was a fantastic view.

Riley and James were horribly carsick, so they just snuggled and moaned. Kelly was excited to do his favorite page for letter I, he's a do-a-dot marker freak. After he does each letter, he totally annihilates the entire page.

James' Sweet Tooth

James is a bit of a health nut, he's always been that way. During the summer, he'll sit in the garden and eat his little heart out. For dessert, he loves green beans or grapes. He turns down cookies, cake, candy and chocolate whenever they're offered. I was fairly certain there was nothing sweet that he liked, until...

Apparently, James loves ice cream! He'll only eat it out of a cone. I probably shouldn't get such a kick out of him liking junk food but this is the first time I've seen him finish a sweet. It was pretty cute!

Bible School Dropout

My husband's eldest sister is the wife of a Nazarene preacher. Every year, she does an amazing vacation bible school, last year she had 200 kids! She works on it all year long.

So, even though we don't belong to the Church of the Nazarene, we were really excited that it happened to be the week that we were here. My in laws signed all of our kids up- not mentioning to me that the minimum age is four years old.

My youngest, for anyone who hasn't met him, is 3 1/2. He's very mature for his age... but he's also very small for his age, he's just started wearing his brother's 2T hand-me-downs. He's yet to hit 30 lbs! As I said, though, he acts much older than he looks.

His instructor was his 17 year old cousin, David, who is amazing with kids, so I wasn't too worried about him. Plus he had his 3 1/2 year old cousin in his group- apparently, we're a family of rule-breakers, who cares about age cutoffs!

The first day he did really well. He participated and sat on his cousin's lap for most of the activities. When I picked him up, though, he told me that bible school is fun but he's never going back. I'm stubborn, so I brought him back Tuesday. He had a harder time with me leaving, so I let them know to call if they needed me.

They didn't call, but when I got there to pick the kids up, I ended up talking to one of the teachers. She asked who my kids were and when I told her she said, "I know Riley and James... Is yours the tiny Kelly who cries all the time?"

Um, yeah, probably.

Oops, turns out day two didn't go so well, he cried (silently, according to the teachers) until they switched him to the group with Riley and James. Then he broke all of James' crafts, intentionally, and refused to participate. I guess he's stubborn too!

So he dropped out... I've had that 'Beauty School Dropout' song from Grease stuck in my head all day!

Sunday - Friday

Father's Day was not the best one we've ever had. Jarrett insisted on cooking breakfast for everyone (no complaints here) and then we packed up and were off to California. Jarrett wanted to get to his dad's house, in Vista, on Father's Day. Unfortunatly, the RV overheats fairly easily while pulling the Jeep, we were driving through the desert and a lot of hills so it was a stressfull day for him.


The In-Law's house was a welcome sight. Jarrett's parents live with his sister and her family in the hills of Southern California. This is the (amazing) view from their patio.

My mother in law is a home-ec teacher, she sets a beautiful table. She says, "Italian food must be eaten outside."

Wile in Vista, we took the kids to the beach. To me, this little walk is what makes the vacation, we always go to the same beach.

Riley and James loved it. We practically had to wrestle them out of the water.

Kelly said that he didn't like the ocean, turned his back on it, and pretended it wasnt there. He helped his cousins and uncle work on a 'hot tub'.

I also took the kids to Legoland. They're Lego-obsessed so it was a huge thrill for them!!

Here are the kids with some cousins, crawling all over a Lego-Man...

We rode some rides...Riley was faking excitement, the rides that Kelly can ride aren't too much of a thrill.

The kids got airbrush tattoos. James wanted a hummingbird, sweet thing, but eventually his boy cousins (nicely) convinced him to get a turtle.

It was a great stop but we were all excited to keep moving.

One more picture for mom. Yes, that is a donkey made entirely of Legos!

Saturday- Grand Canyon

We made it!

Our campsite was about an hour away from the canyon and the drive was beautiful, rolling hills, lots of trees. We stopped and bought buffalo jerky from roadside stand and read up on the canyon during the drive and read up on the canyon.

This is a little of what we learned. The canyon has been carved by the Colorado River. It was long a home and revered place to various tribes- mainly the Pueblo. Native Americans first brought Europeans (Spaniards) to the canyon 600 years ago. They showed the Spaniards around without showing them the river so eventually they had to leave to get water, not realizing that there was any there. It was about two hundred years before Europeans returned so the trick worked pretty well!

We learned that five million people visit each year. Jarrett was skeptical of that number until we got there. People were everywhere! We waited in line to drive through the gate for half an hour. It was definitly worth it though.

This was our first glimpse of the canyon...

It was amazing!

We were on the South Rim of the Canyon and there were lots of places to climb. The boys, unfortunatly, were fearless. They had a wonderful time but there were places that made me nervous.

James loved the canyon. He plans to go back and climb it when he's older. He wanted to stay forever.

Riley was scared of falling. At first she clung to my hand and tried identify all of the other languages people were speaking. Eventually, she got a bit braver and did some hiking. Despite being scared, she loved it.

We stayed about two hours, stopped at the gift shop for a book and headed out. We could have stayed much longer but it was getting dark. We stopped at the East Rim on the way out and saw the sunset. It was beautiful but so bright I couldn't get a picture.

As we drove away, you could see the line carved by the canyon for miles.

The kids were exhausted, James fell asleep on Riley's lap on the way home. It was a great day.

The Giant Buffalo

Before Jarrett bought the new map, the kids and I were tracking our progress on this little map that we bought from scholostic last year.

Once I showed the the kids this map, James was SO excited about the Grand Canyon. When will we be there? Can we go faster? I can't wait.

As we got closer though, he got a little nervous. Do I have to go? Is it dangerous? I did my best to reassure him that it would be okay.

As we got closer still, the questions got a little weirder. What if I get squished? What if it smashes me? I was getting pretty confused until the next question. What if the giant buffalo steps on me?

What giant buffalo?!

Aha! Totally makes sense. We had a long talk about maps and symbols and he feels much better now!

Friday

Friday morning, the slider on our RV broke, so Jarrett ran to the Camping World superstore that was a couple of blocks from our campsite. (The word 'superstore' should have tipped me off that it was going to be a long morning!)

The kids and I stayed in the RV for a while. Riley read to James, he's enjoying her American Girl books almost as much as she is. 

Can you tell where Riley spends most of her time?

It was amazingly hot, I guess we're not used to the desert. The kids and I went to the RV park pool to cool down. Considering it felt like it was 100 degrees in the shade, we were expecting a fairly warm pool.

Wow, were we wrong! The pool was freezing. The kids rescued ladybugs while I got up the courage to climb in. Once you got used to the water, it warmed up a bit but it was still pretty cold. We had a great time playing sharks and mermaids and convincing Kelly to come in, he's not much of a water kid!

I knew the kids had seen a couple of ladybugs in the pool but I had no idea how many there really were, one entire corner of the pool was full of them. The kids kept going back there to work on their rescue mission. Riley worked on her swimming, James pretended to nap and Kelly climbed in and out- over and over! I tried to teach them Marco Polo but only Riley understood.

After a while, I realized all of the kids' lips had turned purple and Kelly's purple was spreading to the rest of his face, so we decided to head back. It was amazingly cold! I have no idea how they could even keep it that cold in the middle of the desert!

Jarrett had found quite a few things he needed at Camping World and had come back to start fixing things. We ended up finally leaving Albuquerque around 3:00, hopefully, that's not going to become a pattern!

The scenery that we were able to see before dark wasn't very impressive, lots of desert, some interesting rocks but I never grabbed my phone in time. We passed the Arizona State sign and did our picture.

The kids also added Arizona to the really cool US map Jarrett bought at Camping World. I love this thing! We started reading Little House on the Prairie and the kids had fun tracking where Laura and her family were.

We stopped in Flagstaff, AZ for the night. It reminded me a lot of Colorado mountains. It's less colorful there but they have the same big pines.

Woohoo, Grand Canyon tomorrow! We're all so excited!