Oregon Coastline

We spent the night in Reedsport, Or last night.  Stan wanted to try and catch a dune ride at the Oregon Dunes National Rec Area when we got up.  We stopped in and found out that the ride wasn't leaving for another 1 1/2 hrs, and the ride was an hour!  He decided it would take too long and we needed to get going before then.  We stopped at the Sea Lion Caves next in Florence, Or.  It was alot of fun seeing all the animals in their environment.  There were 2 different places to see them.  One was in the caves and the other was outside on a ledge.  Pretty amazing but boy were they stinky!  Very loud too! 

Here is the Dunes!

One of my Favorite pictures!

Yes, our road is at the top!

Not a monster, just a rock!

Sea Lion Caves

This is another rock in the cave

A seal getting ready to jump in!

This is outside the cave

I believe some of these are the babies!

Finished or not?

You are all wondering what happened to the end of the trip!  Towards the last 2 days of the trip we did a lot of sightseeing and it made for some long days.  I plan on posting the rest of the trip, but I also want to download my photos from "the good camera"!  So please be patient and wait till the weekend!  I promise you will love the pics!  But now I need to get back to my grandbaby as she is crawling out of sight!  lol

Tuesday~Northern Ca and Southern Oregon

We slept in this morning finally.  Didn't leave the room until 10:30!  Decided to take it slow and just have fun.  We ate at a wonderful little place down the street and it was so delicious.  Guess I'm getting tired of taking pics as I didn't take any of the food or name of restaurant!  We took the scenic route around Crescent City.  Just drove around the town.  I think this is my favorite place so far (other than Cambria).  I love the way the town is set up.  Not too touristy, but very quaint.  I could live here!  Started taking pics of the houses and other scenery.  The towns are now every half hour or hour apart, so I only took the pics of really interesting things.  Stan wanted to take a side road ~ doesn't he always ~ and I thought we were climbing to the heavens above!  There was a steep climb and the fog/mist had not burned off yet up there!  It really was an awesome drive!  There were many turnoffs to take pics and lighthouse views.  Lots of beaches that were beautiful.  We ended up in Reedsport, Or for the night.  Another nice room.  Didn't even know it had a view until after we ate and settled in.  There happens to be a river running behind our room!  I think we have been extremely blessed! Ok, these popped up out of order but this first one is the unexpected view from our room.

 Lighthouse above and the path to the lighthouse below

 Other views along the way

Our room again!

Redwoods and the coastline

I have taken so many pics with my new fancy camera and have hardly any on my phone or smaller camera.  These are the ones I'm downloading from.    So some of the photos I don't have the important things like where they were taken!  What a crack up I am.  So I will post our beginning and ending points along with some pictures unless I remember exactly.  Well breakfast was at Antonio's Mexican food restaurant.  Someone told us where it was and recommended it.  I think it is comparable to like a Federico's in Phoenix!  lol  It wasn't bad, but not quite what we were looking for.  Then we moved on up the coast to the famous drive thru tree.  It's called the Chandelier Tree in Leggett, CA.  Everyone was taking pictures when Stan drove thru cuz we barely fit in.  It was kind of hysterical everyone rushing up to take a picture, saying wait for the red car it's gonna be best!  lol  People are so strange!  Then we stopped for lunch at a little store called the Peg house deli.  The sandwiches were great!  I had turkey, tomato, lettuce, avocado.  Yummy! Next on our to do list was Avenue of The Giants.  Where you could see some of the biggest redwoods.  We started getting tired soon after and decided to start looking for a room.  We went thru 3 or 4 towns before saying we are stopping at the next place no matter what.  We ended up at the Blue Anchor Inn in Crescent City.  What a room!  We were so tired at that point that when we checked in we almost didn't want to leave the room. We ate and went to bed.

 Here is the tree, the ones with the car~ on the good camera! lol

 Stan standing next to one the the widest ones in the Avenue.

 A view of our drive

 The view from our room in Crescent City, CA

Really?????  lol

 This was our room!  ahhhhh!  space!

 This was in the morning fog!

Ocean Cove cash register.

Taking off this morning was hard since we so enjoyed our stay last night.  I forgot to show you the old cash register in the bar from the ocean cove.  I don't know what it is about it but I loved it!! It was all in Gold, not real I don't think but I didn't ask either!

End of Day Sunday

After the crazy driving in San Fran, we were so glad to get back on the road.  We ended up at a place called Ocean Cove Lodge Bar & Grill.  It was the most awesome place so far!  There was no wi-fi internet, no cell phone service, and even no regular phone in our room.  The bar and grill was about 500 feet from our room.  We were the only ones in there and met the nicest bartender.  She made some awesome Long Islands too!  We ate fish tacos and talked with her.  As the fog rolled in for the evening it was a very eerie feeling knowing you have no contact with the outside world whatsoever!  They had been closed for 10 years, and only reopened just last year.  I wish their spa had been working as it would have looked over the ocean!

                        Inside our room

                     Our view from the room!

                      Just outside our room

                    This is a picnic area and a slide for kids

                       The hotel

Pier 39, San Francisco, CA

Today was a long day!  We left Santa Cruz and headed to San Francisco.  We wanted to go to Pier 39 and see what was there.  What a different society!  Everybody, at least everybody we were next to, honked their horn almost every five seconds.  We were waiting in line for 45 minutes just to park.  There were no spots available in the garage, so we had to valet park.  We finally get to walk around the pier. It was actually pretty awesome.  There were all kinds of things to see and do.  You could go on boat tours to see the whole bay coastline, another one to see the Golden Gate Bridge.  There was also a rocket boat ride that was a hit with alot of people because it was supposed to go fast.  We walked to the end of the pier and could see Alcatraz and part of the Golden Gate Bridge.  It was a pretty amazing site.  The weirdest thing is the night before we went, the movie that came on was Escape from Alcatraz.  We watched the whole thing.  So here are some of our pics.

Destination: Santa Cruz, CA

We are staying overnight at a Howard Johnson's hotel.  Real expensive up here, but we figured it would be.  We are across the street from Fisherman's Wharf and the Santa Cruz boardwalk.  Walked there for a look and a bite to eat.  Excellent fish & chips however, the veggies were the best of all!  Nice big chunky cauliflower, zuccini and carrots.  Couldn't finish hardly any of my fries.  Stan had the seafood platter and said it was good as well.  We sat outside on the patio overlooking the pier and ocean.  Did I say relaxing?  How about awesome?  Sorry, phone was dead and have no pics of this, but I do have some of our view from the room! On the top photo, you can see the walkway to the stairs we used to get to the pier, and the bottom is the walkway to the pier. Enjoy!  Will try and get more pics tomorrow.

Coastline pictures

These aren't exactly coastline, but we had a lot of fog going up.  It finally burned off close to 1:00 PM.  So here are my foggy pics! lol

Along the road

Our next stop was at the elephant seal lookout.  Certain times of the year the elephant seals migrate there.  The females and the babies are there a certain time of the year, and the males were there this time.  I can't explain why I could sit here and watch these animals for hours at a time, but it's so different in real life than on a television.  We didn't stay all that long this time as we had seen them before.  I told Stan that I thought last time we were there we saw the females and babies, but he says they are only there around December according to the guide.   What do they know anyhow????  

 Anyways here are the pics I took.  Some are of the seals fighting in the water.  Hope you can pick them out as they look an awful lot like the rocks in the water!

It's the little things

When you go on vacation, you are relaxed and everyone seems so nice.  Maybe it is because we are relaxed that they are nice.  I seem to enjoy my day more when the tiniest of things make my day more than the big important things.  For example the hotel we stayed at last night, had beautiful succulent flowers out front with 3 adirondack chairs right in front of them.  You could sit there, enjoy the flowers and look out at the ocean!  How relaxing is that?  They also had a beautiful picture in the room that pretty much sums up all of Cambria.  Loved our stay there.