Wednesday

In the morning, we had a lot of laundry to do so we stayed at the park. The kids and I took a walk to see if we could find a way down to the ocean. Instead, we found lots of these signs...

After the laundry was done,we headed into town. We had lunch on Fisherman's Wharf.

We took a walk and saw the trolleys.

In the evening, we went to the Aquarium of the Bay. The tour person said that we should look very closely because some of their coolest animals like to hide. James said that they probably didn't have any cool animals and she was just saying that, he's a skeptical boy, he's a lot like Jarrett.

They did have cool animals though. Lots of Seven Gill Sharks and Leopard Sharks, tons of huge Starfish and Rays. At the end, there's a touch pool where you can pet baby Leopard Sharks, Bat Rays and Skates.

Riley loved the skates. One of them swam up to where she was and just sat there, she was able to pet it the whole time she was there. She really wanted to bring it home.

The baby sharks were very cool. They swallow water in order to intimidate enemies, they can swell to twice their size. After they swell, they pop up and spit out the water, swimmming vertically. James petted the sharks but was a little freaked out about them.

Also in the aquarium they had a video and section set up to educate about 'finning', when people cut off the sharks fins and then throw them back in the ocean to die. If you go, I would avoid it with little kids, or at least be prepared. It was pretty gory. James was fairly bothered by it.

Tuesday

This is the view from the front windows of the RV in San Fransisco...I really love it here.

In the morning, it was off to the Golden Gate Bridge. I had a book about it that I read to the kids, so they were very excited to see it. Jarrett and I marveled at the engineering.

Riley loved the view, here she is trying to see ships in the bay.

We could just barely see the bay bridge through the fog.

We had to stop to see the statue of Joseph Strauss, the lead engineer. James had seen it in the book and wanted to see it more than the bridge.

After we left, we drove down Lombard St. Riding with Jarrett is always an adventure so this was enough for me to be clutching the Jeep safety bars. The kids loved it, they put their arms up like they were on a roller coaster!

We made it back in time to catch the sunset, I'm going to miss the view.

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!