Day 3 - Cambria to Monterey
We got up early again, packed up, went and got some breakfast, and then looked around Cambria (pronounced CAME-bree-ah). What a cool little town Cambria is! There were shops, galleries, restaurants and neat little homes throughout the town. It had a very "homey" feel to it. Cambria is one of those places where you could go, look around for an hour and say, "Oh, yeah. I could live here."
We went out to the beach to watch the surfers for a while, then went back in town to a little grocery store/deli to get some stuff for a picnic lunch we figured we'd have later in the day.
Cindy wanted to go into a little shop and so we did. While we were in there an older lady engaged us in some conversation. She wanted to know if we were going to stop at the Hearst Castle at San Simeon. I said, "You know, I went one time about four years ago and it may have been something for people who grew up in that day and age to see, but I found it to be somewhat overblown and garish."
Geez, you would have thought I'd just taken a healthy dump on the shop's floor. The lady began to chastise me, saying that if it wasn't for San Simeon the town of Cambria wouldn't be there. "A lot of workers lived in this town when it was being built and lived here for years after. My father worked on the castle."
I told her the only thing I really liked was the pool and gardens and that would probably be the only thing my wife would like, too. I said, "If we could go up there and walk around on our own instead of having to sacrifice three hours of our lives to sit through the tour program, I'd do it. But I guess they don't let you do that."
She said, no, it was very structured. But she did tell us the night time tours in the spring thru fall are very nice. But it was also something like $25 per person ($30 dollars today).
We left Cambria thinking that we just didn't spend enough time there (but long enough to piss off one of the locals). 
Just outside of Cambria, we encounted this sign. That was nice to see on the start our trip that day.
We did stop at the visitors center for the Hearst Castle, about 10 miles north of Cambria. It's now run by the State of California as a state park. They had some re-creations of a couple of the rooms from the castle, and a few of William Randolph Hearst's personal art collection and artifacts on hand. That was enough for me.
Hearst Castle from the Visitor's Center
Cindy and I discussed going up. I told her that we had to take a bus up, we had to sit and watch a movie, then we'd go on a guided tour. I said, "It starts at 11 a.m. and we won't be back down here until after 2 p.m. 
Like I told that lady earlier, the only neat thing that I think you'd like are the gardens and the pool."
Cindy thought about it for about 10 seconds and said, "Naw, we don't have to go up there. Let's go."
So we took off up the coast again. 
We stopped a few miles up the road to look at the sea lions laying on the beach sunning themselves. It was kind of neat to see.
We drove about 30 miles up the road, not going overly fast because there was a lot of traffic (it was a Sunday). We found a little turn off that took us down to a rocky beach area right next to the ocean. We decided we'd have lunch there.
It was great out, the wind was no where near the speed it was 24 hours earlier. The sun was warm and it heated the rocks we sat on to have our picnic lunch. 
Cindy made friends with a seagull who sat literally a foot or two away from her just eye-balling her lunch.
After lunch, we made our way up the coast a little more before we came upon Julia Pfieffer Burns State Park. It was literally like an oasis. Great views, waterfalls, beautiful flowers - it had it all.
We got out and walked around the park. Man, it was just beautiful. Probably the nicest spot was this view of a cove of aqua blue water with a waterfall feeding into it. There were flourescent colored flowers all around the place. We stayed there for about an hour.
We decided we'd better get back on the road and headed up north. We got to Big Sur - home of the BIG trees and got out and looked around for a while. Here's Cindy hanging out in the woods.
From there, we went north a few miles and found Nepenthe, a restaurant with a great view of the Big Sur Pacific coast line. Originally the site of a vacation home for Orson Welles, Nepenthe was bought by the granddaughter of one of the founders of Carmel, CA in the early 60's. She was just going to make it a roadside sandwich stand, but an associate of Frank Lloyd Wright designed a nice building that had some modern techniques as well as some rustic backwoods charm. The little sandwich shop turned into a world class destination restaurant.
We decided to have a snack on the deck and the bill for an appetizer, a couple beers and a pop came to about $30 bucks. Wow! Someone has to pay for that wonderful view, I'm tellin' ya.
Up the road a few miles is the famous Bixby Creek Bridge - one of the architectural marvels of the early 20th century. It was kind of funny to see the amount of people stopped on both sides of the bridge to take pictures of the structure.
A few mile up the road we got to Carmel. One of the neatest - and highest priced - cities in America, Carmel is very elegant, yet kind of homey in a "Pleasantville" kind of way. There are galleries and exclusive shops all through the town. And there are a lot of great gourmet and exquisite restaurants, as well.
After driving around Carmel for a bit, we found our way to one of the entrances of the 17 Mile Drive around Pebble Beach and Pacific Grove. You pass world class golf courses such as Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill, and Spanish Bay. Of course, we had to stop and get a shot of the familiar Lone Cypress - the trademark of Pebble Beach.
We continued around the drive and looked at the homes and golf courses, and the weather started to get cool and cloudy. You could see the clouds coming in off the ocean. I remarked to Cindy that I was glad I wasn't on the golf course as it got cold very quickly.
From there, we went into Monterey and found a hotel on the north side of town. Monterey is a nice city, but a lot of it is a tourist trap.
We had dinner that night at Rappa's Seafood on the end of the Old Fisherman's Wharf. Originally a snack shop, the Rappa family expanded the restaurant before finally tearing down the mishmash of additions and putting up the existing restaurant in the early 80's. The food was good, the service was fine and we were happy.
By this time, it had started to spit rain and the wind coming off the ocean was cold. It was a dreary and very quiet Sunday night in Monterey. We walked around a bit, then drove around some more to stay out of the weather. After a while, we decided we'd had enough for the day and we went back to the hotel. Tomorrow is the drive up to San Francisco.
Next - Day Four - Monterey to San Francisco
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