Mar 9, 2025 - It's a beautiful day on the Central Coast so we're taking our bikes to Avila Beach (a 20 minute drive) for the afternoon. There is a 3 mile trail that goes into town from a trailhead next to Highway 101. The Bob Jones trailhead has a huge parking lot and it was pretty full when we got there, since it was a sunny warm Saturday. We enjoyed the bike ride to town, which winds through a golf course, and we had fun walking around the cute little beach town.
But first a 2.5 mile round trip walk to the 3rd and final Los Osos Bakery
Wayward Bakery is another bakery that's only open 3 days a week. It was quite crowded and we enjoyed a pineapple upside down cake danish. Yum!
The Bob Jones Trail
nice "boardwalk"
people were on the beach in bathing suits and we had our fleeces on
2 piers in Avila Beach
picnic tables on the beach, love it
Mar 10, 2025 - Today we're headed to Hearst Castle in San Simeon, which is a 30 minute drive up Highway 1. I read a great book about the architect of Hearst Castle, Julia Morgan and have always wanted to see the castle. She was the first woman to become a licensed architect in California, after being the first woman to graduate from the prestigious Ecole des Beaux Arts, in Paris. She graduated in 1902 and opened her practice in San Francisco in 1904. Throughout her career she designed nearly 800 projects, her most famous being Hearst Castle, which she worked on for 28 years.
It was a beautiful day, and the drive was amazing. It's hard to see, but Hearst Castle is visible on the hill (picture taken from Highway 1)
There are multiple tours available at the Castle, depending on what part of the castle you're interested in. We decided to take the tour recommended for first timers, the Grand Rooms Tour. It's $35/tour, which includes the bus ride up the 5 mile road to the castle from the Visitor Center (which was a beautiful drive).
the view from the castle, with the 5 mile road visible as well as the ocean. When Hearst originally owned "the ranch" he owned 250,000 acres. The national landmark was given to the state in 1958 and now encompasses 127 acres.
Casa Del Sol, one of 3 guest quarters
The famous Neptune Pool
the pool was re-designed 3 times
pretty tile everywhere
pretty views
more sweeping views
Casa Grande, the largest building of the complex
more tile
pretty bench
that's a grand casa!
the Assembly Room, which is 2500 square feet
the room was built specifically for Hearst's collection of tapestries
the dining room was also pretty grand
the billiard room has 2 tables
The indoor Roman Pool
the pool is 10 feet deep and has a high dive, seen here in the pic
love these Julia Morgan drawings
the drive down, with the road winding in front of us
they still have cows on "the ranch"
next we drove 3 miles farther up Highway 1 to see the elephant seals
pretty cute
there must have been a hundred of them
so sleepy
Elephant Seal Video
We drove home through Atascadero and took Highway 46 which had especially beautiful views of Morro Rock
Mar 11, 2025 - Back to work today, with a few small projects while we wait for the electrician to come. He needs to remove all the electric wiring, left over from the stairway, so we can cover the "hole" with flooring we stole from the master bedroom. For a break we walked the mile and a bit to Sylvester's Burgers. Great burger and fries.
Sylvester is hiding behind the bush
the houses in Los Osos are each unique, which makes it fun to walk around town. These homeowners decided to decorate their "garden" with various containers. This section was red solo cups on top of PVC pipe.
this section had some grape juice jugs
and finally water bottles
Mar 13, 2025 - The electrician is coming tomorrow!
It's a waffle morning
a little work
And some flooring practice. We're worried it will be hard to fit the boards in this space. When you install flooring you usually start at one end and cut the last row to fit up against the wall. We have to fit the boards in between two sides that are already laid.
A rainbow over my favorite mountain peak
Mar 14, 2025 - The electrician is here, but it looks like it will take most of the day to clean up all the electric wires that are coming through the floor. We'll get the area prepped after he leaves so we're ready to lay the flooring tomorrow.
nice full moon behind the clouds
Tiny looking good in downtown Los Osos (one last trip to High St Deli!)
we finally have a nice clean hole (no electrical wires) where the stairs used to be
we have to slide out flooring that was cut on one end to fit the stairs
we put down padding and doubled the padding in spots that were a bit lower than the original floor
we'll stop here and lay the flooring tomorrow morning
Mar 15, 2025 - We finally get to try our hand at floor laying!
up to here it was pretty easy. Now we have to cut a hole for the floor electric outlet
we're getting close!
the electrician added 5 cans to the kitchen
Kev's headed into the crawl space to help the electrician
Finished! My dad always wrote on the back of the things he constructed for us, so we decided to do the same on the last floor board "no mistakes from a galloping horse"
Yay! It worked out!
Can't wait to see the room completely finished with all of Elaine and Ian's furniture in place
We decided to go ahead and get a few hours on the road. There is a big storm making its way across the country, but hopefully we'll be a day behind it. We did hit a bit of sloppy sleety/snowy weather when we crossed the Tehachapi pass, but made it to the warmer other side of the mountain for the night
Mar 15, 2025 - We drove 4 hours last night to Barstow, CA and slept in a Walmart parking lot. When we got up this morning and started to plan out our drive, we found that Route 40, which we're planning to take is closed through the Flagstaff area. It's a 5 hour drive from Barstow, so we'll head that way (instead of pivoting south) in hopes that by the time we get to Flagstaff, Rt 40 is open. We really would like to get beyond Albuquerque today (which is an 11 hour drive without any weather issues) so that we're warm enough for our un-winterized van. Some areas around Flagstaff are expecting temps in the mid 20s which is too cold for us. We'll see what the day brings!
nice mountains in the distance
as we cross the mountains we see snow from yesterday's storm. We stopped for gas in Flagstaff to see what we could find out, and a trucker said that the highway had just opened eastbound, so we timed it perfectly. Westbound 40 is still closed for about 50 miles, due to an accident they were still cleaning up.
they did get some snow here
the sign says "don't park along the highway to play in snow"
It looks like westbound 40 finally opened and it was a line of trucks for as far as we could see. When we got to Albuquerque there was construction, so of course Google wanted to save us 10 minutes by taking us off the highway. We're always ready to save some time and you never know what you'll see when you're on a Google detour. The new route put us onto old Rt 66 and as we were driving we heard a musical hum. Kevin thought it sounded like America the Beautiful. I looked it up and found that the town of Tijeras installed the musical road, so people would drive the speed limit. If you drive 45 mph you hear the song America the Beautiful!
we're still driving after dark, but we're enjoying the full moon. We'll stay at a Pilot Flying J in Santa Rosa where it's only getting down to 30 tonight. With our tank heaters we should be fine for the night.
