This was our first day driving up the coast on Highway 1, and it was a beautiful drive! Here are a few photos taken from the car or from the many vistas along the road!
We stopped at Hearst Castle because we read that it was a really neat place to visit... we were not prepared to pay the $24 per person ticket to tour a house, though! I think this photo describes our attitude toward that price tag:
Josh and I had heard about the Elephant Seal beach just north of Hearst Castle. There were a bunch of people parked in the lot and there were a TON of seals! Before viewing the seals, we educated ourselves and then walked closer to the group...
There were mother seals with baby seals. They were very cute!
The males frequently sparred each other, which was pretty scary to see. Another educational sign said that it provides good practice for fighting other animals in the wild.
At this vista we got a nice view of a lot of seals surfing in the water, and of a bridge.
We stopped at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. There was a beautiful view on both sides: one of the waterfall and one of the beach. Josh also took some really goofy photos...
We ate our lunch in the Big Sur State Park, surrounded by redwoods!
We stopped on Bixby Bridge and Josh took some great photos.
We got into Salinas and went to Destination Salinas, a visitor center that our host's husband, Dan, owns. He suggested that we check out the National Steinbeck Center which I was all for since Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors and "East of Eden" was once my favorite book ever!
There was also an Agricultural Museum inside of the Steinbeck Center, and that was definitely Josh's favorite part (I'll admit, it must be hard to enjoy a whole museum about books you've never read). He was really excited about this photo!
Around 5 PM we headed back to Destination Salinas and Dan gave us a tour of his store. It used to be a bank back in the early 1900's and the old safe is still in great condition! Josh was fascinated by the ridiculous door so he took a few photos :)
Dan led us back to his house, and we waited for his wife, Trish, to get home from work. He showed us his really neat music studio which was in a smaller building behind their house; he had a ton of old and new instruments and equipment, and we listened to one of his CD's! We ate his delicious cheese and crackers plus our also delicious (Trader Joe's) chips and salsa as appetizers, and Dan cooked a pasta dish that we ate when Trish came home... which wasn't until like 10 PM. We were exhausted so barely got to talk to Trish before heading to bed.
My high was the Steinbeck Center: I haven't read any of his books in a few years but that museum made me really excited to either re-read an old favorite or start one that I haven't read before! It was really a great museum and I wish we had more time to explore it. Josh's high was the wonderful views all along the coast. My low was the smell of the seals. I think I mentioned the smell of seals when we were in San Diego, and these Northern California seals smell just as bad. Josh's low was being disappointed at the price of touring Hearst Castle. The free museum made the castle look really neat, and it sucks that actually visiting the castle is so expensive. My "ho" is the price of gas along Highway 1. Though we didn't need gas, Josh stopped at one of the very few gas stations along the road just to see the price...
... $5 per gallon?! Ridiculous!! Josh's "ho" was Dan's responses to Josh's questions about the old bank... he really had just two answers: one of them was basically, "Duh, don't you know that? Like I said..." and the other was, "You expect me to know everything?!" Either way, it was lose-lose.
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