When we have the opportunity to travel we are just leaving the house. This is not because we are living in an awful place :) we just love to see different things.
My elder daughter just started Kindergarden. That means we can't go anywhere anytime, but she had a school day off on a Monday and we decided to make a long weekend out of it and visit Santa Barbara.
We are living close to San Francisco. Our first day goal was to reach San Luis Obispo which is about 5 hours drive from our home (using Highway 1). We wanted to make a few stops to make the trip more comfortable and to watch wildlife and nature.
Our first stop was at Point Lobos.
You can hike, dive and kayak there. We just made a short walk by the gorgeous bay but even there we were lucky to see some seals and jelly fish from the shore.
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| Jelly fish |
We went further south on Highway 1 to reach San Luis Obispo. It is not an usual highway because it follows all along the Pacific ocean. The views are amazing. The stretch of coastline South of the city of Carmel-by-the-Sea is called Big Sur. It is very sparsely inhabited but beautiful.
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| Big Sur |
Our second stop was at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. According to Murphy's Law if you are planning to make a stop somewhere during your trip your kids will definitely fall a sleep that time. This happened to us too. We took turns to watching the McWay Falls but we couldn't hike to see the redwoods. The falls and the bay were very nice.
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| It is hard to find the falls on the picture but it is on the left side :) |
After nap time we were resting on Sand Dollar Beach. If you usually read my blog you recognized my kids love the water even if it is very cold. Sophie and Lili want to go to the ocean/lakes/creek any time and any where.
The Sand Dollar Beach is a great spot to rest and if you are lucky you can find sand dollars too. (We were not lucky enough.)
My elder daughter, Sophie loves sparkles. We got the idea to search for Jade at Willow creek. I have to tell you the truth. We didn't find any of them. :(
The end of our day before we checked in our Hotel Embassy Suites in San Luis Obispo we watched the elephant seals near the Piedras Blancas lighthouse. This moment was amazing.
Hundreds of elephant seals were lying on the shore. My younger daughter, Lili loves seals since she seeing them on Kauai. I have to show her photos from seals every day. You can't imagine how happy she was after our long drive to watch her favorite animals.
As usual, we used our Hilton points to stay at this nice hotel. I really liked it because as the name said, suites, we had two rooms. Our kids could sleep in the living room and we didn't have to be quiet after they were in their dreams.
On our second day we decided to go to Santa Barbara which is about 1.5 hours from San Luis Obispo. The weather was perfect. Sunny but not too hot (around 80 Fahrenheit).
At first we visited the Santa Barbara Zoo.
This is a very nice, charming zoo. We forgot to bring our stroller but it was not a problem at all. Lili, who just turned two a month ago was running excited almost 2 hours there.
In the zoo there are more than 400 animals.
Our favorites were:
As usual, we used our Hilton points to stay at this nice hotel. I really liked it because as the name said, suites, we had two rooms. Our kids could sleep in the living room and we didn't have to be quiet after they were in their dreams.
On our second day we decided to go to Santa Barbara which is about 1.5 hours from San Luis Obispo. The weather was perfect. Sunny but not too hot (around 80 Fahrenheit).
At first we visited the Santa Barbara Zoo.
In the zoo there are more than 400 animals.
Our favorites were:
- the Humboldt penguins which we saw feeding too
- the turtles, Lili's second favorite animal
- the small, baby foxes
- the sheep and the goats
The best attraction was the giraffe feeding. We had to pay 6$ extra but it's totally worth it because it was so much fun for Sophie.
After the zoo we visited the Old Mission in Santa Barbara.
This is a very big mission compared the missions I've visited before (Mission San Antonio de Padua). You can take a tour, visit the store and watch a video about the mission.
We walked on the Stearns Warf until the end and had a nice ice cream there. We watched the sail boats and the stand up paddlers and a dog. :)
The beach was very nice at the warf but I didn't like the sign (a shark was sighted 2 days ago). I decided not to swim this time at the ocean. Hahaha!
On our last day we visited the Mission in San Luis Obispo de Tolosa which is a small, nice mission, before we came home.
(3 days- August 2013.)
Hú, ez megint csodás lehetett, igazán mozgalmasra sikerült a hosszú hétvége:-) Nem is tudom, melyik lehetett a legszebb élmény. Minden esetre jó, hogy nem kockáztattatok a fürdéssel:-) Az oroszlánfókák csodásak lehettek ilyen közelről! Hmmmm, ismét irigykedek, persze csak addig, amíg el nem jutunk mi is ide! :-)
ReplyDelete@Marka: Sokat autóztunk, de megérte. :) Remélem egyszer Ti is eljuttok az elefántfókákhoz is.
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