Fun Times With Kelly Ü

Hearst Castle

Kelly and I had the opportunity to go on a tour of Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA. It was amazing! Can you imagine having the front of your house look like the picture above? The whole thing was so unbelievable - it was full of some of the neatest things. It is a huge place and some of the things there really gave me some great ideas for our house LOL.

This is the Neptune Pool. It is in the front of the castle and has an awesome courtyard that you could read a lot of books in or do some serious crocheting. Just looking at this pool makes me feel like swimming. It is so huge and so beautiful. Apparently, the people who work at the castle get to go swimming in it once every year and they get to bring along 2 friends too. I really need to make a new friend!

Don't worry if you don't like swimming outside in the sun, because this is the indoor pool or the Roman Pool. This pool is 3 meters deep and you can see the diving platform in the picture above. I think I could get used to swimming in this pool too.

Kelly now wants to have a lion at our house. I reminded him that I once found 2 lions that we could have put in the yard and he declined - apparently the 2 for $10 plastic lions that I found were not what he had in mind Ü

This is the dining room. I really liked all the flags that were hanging in here. It reminded me of the Officer's Club where we had our wedding reception. Also, I liked the woodwork on the ceiling. There was just so much to see at this place!

I really liked the castle and our day there would not have been complete without our tour guides. The guy on the left that looks like he has smoked way too much weed was our tour guide and believe you me - it was a unique experience. I had recently watched Willy Wonka and I noticed many similarities between David (our tour guide) and Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp). All I can say is - SCARY!

Hearst Castle was definitely a good idea. I would highly recommend it to anyone traveling the Central Coast of California.

Elephant Seals

Once we got done at the castle we decided to drive to see the Elephant Seals. For the most part, these are the most uninteresting things we ever did see. They are huge and fat and they just lay around on the beach sleeping. Not a bad lifestyle, but very boring if you are living at a scenic lookout area and people are watching you all day everyday. They just lay there and occasionally flip sand on themselves or make disgusting noises. We drove a little further and were able to see some actually swimming around in the water and playing.

This guy is parked on an island of algae and garbage. It appears that he has been there long enough that he is starting to mold. Pretty sick if you ask me.

San Luis Obispo

These are the beautiful sunflowers that were waiting for me at the hotel. Kelly bought them at the Farmer's Market the night before I arrived. I love sunflowers and thought they were so pretty.

This is Bubble Gum Alley. Basically, it is an alley about 4 feet wide that is coated with gum on both sides. There were some very creative designs, but I would think once you had completed one of them you would probably want to burn your hand off.

It reminds me of the gum paper we had in junior high school. We had a big piece of wax paper at the front of the lunch line and you could do the same thing with your gum there so it wouldn't get put on tables, chairs, walls, etc. The lunch ladies at my school would not have approved of this.

Avila Beach

We drove out to Avila Beach to see what they had to offer and we found a jellyfish! I had never seen a jellyfish (unless Finding Nemo counts). It was a very strange looking thing and kind of just looked like a piece of garbage floating in the water. There was also a tiny crab near the jellyfish but I wasn't able to get a picture of it.

This pelican was very tame. A boy was trying to get brave enough to get close to it, but I don't think he ever succeeded. I believe the bird had been trained to stay between those white lines you see painted on the pier. Perhaps the fish lady would throw him the innards of the fish she was cleaning - who knows. Due to the fact that there were smelly fish present, we didn't hang around too long.

We did have a nice lady snap a picture of us out on the pier. It was very scenic and there were more of those elephant seals playing in the water. It is hard to imagine that I had such a nice trip despite having to be exposed to so many gross animals.

Morro Bay

Here we are at Morro Rock. This is a self-portrait using the back of the truck as our tripod, hence Kelly is missing some of his head. Imagine that this sign was a huge rock and about 70% covered in bird dung - Voila! You have now been on a virtual vacation to Morro Rock.

Speaking of bird dung, this is the huge rock that is located in the bay, and yes that is guano. This rock is HUGE and it is covered in poop. To me, it was more scary than impressive. I didn't want to get too close because I am not too fond of being pooped on. For those of you who are - a definite "must see".

As we were leaving Kelly saw this really cool shot with the fog around the rock. I have to admit it would have made a great picture. Despite the fact that Kelly was driving, he decided to stop in the middle of the street and take the picture. Nothing comes between Kelly and his photographer's eye - except maybe me. He asked me for the camera, so I handed it to him. There were a few cars stacking up behind us so he was trying to rush things along. Lesson learned - you can't rush art! Below you can see what happened to his cool picture and why we have the picture above instead. I was laughing pretty hard about the situation, but Kelly failed to see the humor at the time. Another priceless vacation memory.

We had a wonderful time on our trip and I am so glad that I got to go out and see Kelly. About the only thing I didn't post pictures of was what I did everyday. I laid by the pool, in my pajamas, and read a book. Now that is a vacation!