Day 3

We started off the day by saying goodbye to the Madonna Inn, it was a shame we could only stay for one night but there’s just too much to fit in on this road trip so there was no time to hang around. We will come back in the future though.

Madonna Inn

After packing up we headed to get breakfast at Louisa’s Place in San Louis Obispo but when we arrived there were bunches of people hanging around outside, waiting to be seated. The place was full to the brim so we figured we couldn’t really wait as we had to get on the road. Luckily there was a coffee shop next door where we bought a bear claw, a muffin and a raspberry scone, which were all very yummy! We decided to eat on the move as we had a 250 mile drive and we were excited to get on the Pacific Coast Highway.

The first stop we made was San Simeon where we had a little walk up a lovely historic pier and then went to look at the elephant seals on the beach. The adults were very big and noisy, the babies were very cute, I liked the way they used their little flipper hands to flick sand on their backs to keep cool. One little fella had an itchy tummy and kept scratching himself, it was pretty adorable!

Lovely view from the pier. Hearst Castle is a tiny blob on the horizon near the trees.

Historic pier used to transport materials used in the construction of Hearst Castle

Elephant seals

Noisy adult seals fighting in the shallow water

Cute baby seal

We stopped off quite a few times to look at the beautiful vistas, the scenery soon became much more dramatic with steep cliffs, mountains, sweeping beaches and the occasional patch of atmospheric fog.

Each look out point we stopped at seemed to be better than the last. McWay Falls was particularly picturesque, it’s a shame you can’t get down to the beach, although that’s probably why it’s so perfect.

McWay falls

We started to get a bit peckish so we pulled over to eat the Madonna Inn steak leftovers, they seemed to taste even better today. Natalie got a bit fixated by the oaky smoked flavour. She wouldn’t shut up about it!

Mmmmmmmm!

We saw the lovely historic Bixby Bridge, Natalie liked it lots, I stayed in the car this time and continued to look out for licence plates to help complete our ‘licence plates states bingo’. We started playing this yesterday and quickly realised that it’s a really good game, however it is a bit addictive and I started to get excited about lookout points, not because of the lovely views but because there’s always lots of cars and lots of cars means lots of opportunities to spot a new state. We were really excited when we first saw Oregon, by the end of the drive Oregon was everywhere and we hated it! Where’s Hawaii when you need it?

Bixby Bridge

Best game ever.

Scenic views

At Monterey we pulled off onto the scenic 17 mile drive, the highlight of which was the Lone Cypress tree near Pebble Beach Golf Course.

Lone Cypress Tree

We’d originally planned to get into San Francisco, check into our apartment and head out for some dinner but as we approached Santa Cruz our tummies started to rumble and we couldn’t wait to get to SF. We parked up, had a little walk along the boardwalk (which was ridiculously busy, clearly it’s the place to be on a Saturday night), we both got hotdogs and ate them on the beach. We didn’t hang around for long, we still had two more hours left before we would reach San Francisco, plus it was just too noisy to stay any longer!

We stayed on the PCH all the way up to San Francisco where all of a sudden the nice quite road turned into a foggy five lane freeway full of crazy drivers. We managed to battle through and finally got on to Leavenworth Street, we then had to find somewhere to park the car for ten minutes to unload and check in (sounds like an easy task but it wasn’t). Following instructions from our Airbnb host, we let ourselves into our lovely apartment, dumped the suitcases and made our way back outside to find somewhere to park the car for the next three days. Luckily there was a place round the corner, the attendant took the keys and said he’d park it for us. I hope he doesn’t take the car for a joyride like in Ferris Bueller!

Our apartment (well, a bit of it)

Fog!

It was 9.30 by the time we got back to the apartment and after such a long day’s driving and sightseeing, we were too pooped to explore the city so we just popped up to the roof deck to have a look at the view. The fog stopped us seeing too far but it was still pretty easy to tell San Francisco is a cool place that will be exciting to explore tomorrow.