We made it to the Vineyard!

 Friday September 10 - We made it to the vineyard and had a fun (but wedding productive) weekend planned.  We had fun seeing progress on the house that Ian and his Dad have been working on over the last year, and Elaine took us through the layout for the wedding.  Looks like we will have a bit of work to do next week, to get it wedding ready, but that's why we got here early.  We visited the Booker vineyard for a glass of wine (the Greene's grapes are being sourced by Booker) and went to a cool little beer garden across the street from The Carleton, and got to try out the food truck that will be at the Friday night welcome party.

Booker

Beer Garden across from the Carleton

Saturday, September 11 - Today we took a drive to the little beach town of Cambria.  We ate brunch at a cute little vegan place that had wonderful gluten free waffles.  Then we did a hike along the cliffs in the Fiscalini Ranch preserve.  It was a beautiful hike and it had very unique benches along the trail, which went along with my interest this trip in cool benches...so I've got way too many pics of benches from this hike!

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Our favorite camping spot of all...under the tree in the middle of the Greene's vineyard

hanging out, early morning on "our hill"

Brunch in Cambria

Gluten free waffles 

The "bench tour" at Fiscalini Preserve

more benches

and MORE benches...

LOTS of benches, I couldn't help myself!

Monday September 14 - In the morning we decided to run errands in Atascadero/Paso Robles and thought we would check out the Stadium Park hike in Atascadero.  It was about a 45 minute hike, doing the biggest loop around the park and had really nice views overlooking the town.

a few switch backs to get us to the top.

Nice views on the way up, in the middle of the pic is the Atascadero City Hall

Obelisk at the top, that the locals told us kids like to steal, but this one they made out of heavier steel than the previous ones.

Morro Bay

Wednesday & Thursday, September 8/9 - On our drive to Morro Bay we stopped in Paso, to get groceries and it was 103 degrees.  It was only a 40 minute drive to Morro Bay, and as we headed that way, we watched the car thermometer move down one degree about every mile closer we got.  Once we got to the campground it was 64 degrees.  Crazy that there can be such a temperature difference in such a short distance away.  The campground is basically a parking lot, right next to the beach, and it's just 10 minutes from downtown Morro Bay, which is a really cute sleepy little town.  Wednesday night when we got in, Morro rock (which is an iconic rock in the middle of the bay) wasn't visible due to all the fog. We walked in the fog on the beach and found bunches of sand dollars.  Yay, we were able to sleep without the air conditioning!  Thursday morning we woke up to more fog and we were wondering if we would get to see Morro Rock while we were here. We did some laundry and on our way back the fog broke and there it was!  We decided to have lunch on the beach, and Kev went for a swim (the ocean was 64 degrees, brrr...not for me).  In the afternoon we went to Morro Bay State Park golf course, and Kev played 9 holes, while I caddied for him.  It's a pretty gorgeous golf course.  When we got back to the campground Morro Rock was visible!  There is a bike path into town so we went for a bike ride after dinner, then grabbed our chairs and headed to the beach for a beautiful sunset, complete with dolphins frolicking and surfers surfing. 

walk to the beach

lots of sand dollars

our first view of Morro Rock

Kev goes for a swim

9th hole at Morro Bay SP golf course...love the ocean view

Yay, view of the rock from our campsite

Our parking lot campsite

Bike ride after dinner

Morro Rock in the distance

Crazy clouds

View of our campground and Tiny from our bike ride

The drive into the campground

Last Day at Pinnacles and onto Morro Bay

 Wednesday September 8 - We decided to cancel 2 camping nights at Pinnacles and spend our last two nights before getting to the vineyard at Morro Strand State Beach.  So we got up at 5:30 to hit the trail before the heat. We hiked up the High Peaks Trail, which was steep and narrow, with a few areas with cut out steps in the rock with a metal handrail to keep you from falling off the cliff.  We decided it was a top 10 hike.  We got a shaded spot pretty high up and stopped for a drink and right in front of us, sitting in a tree, was condor #21.  Pinnacles has been involved in reintroducing condors into the wild and usually have about 27 condors at any one time, at the park.  They are all tagged so that the rangers can track them and see how they are doing.  We looked up #21 on condorspotter.com and found he was born at a zoo in Oregon 3 years ago, his name is Whiskey Papa.  We sat there for 30 minutes hoping he would decide to fly away, but he didn't. So glad we got to see a condor up close before leaving Pinnacles, and we will definitely come back some time.

nice view of the east entrance, part way up the high peaks trail

scary steps

condor #21