Morro Bay

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Trip Start Jun 14, 2008 Previous
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  Morro Bay, California
Friday, June 27, 2008

We set an early alarm call today for 7am. I was surprised to still be nice and warm in my sleeping bag, but quite glad of it.  In leaving the tent to visit the bathroom, I was surprise to find the air thick with smoke.  We'd heard many fire engines throughout the night and they continued during the time we were up.  The smell of burning was quite strong and we discovered we were not the only people making an early start.  We were packed up and ready to go at 8:20am and so dropped off out keys and headed off up the way we had come in.  As we were unable to head down Highway 1, we had to go back up to Monterey and get on the Interstate instead.
 
We stopped off in Salinas for some breakfast in a little diner with an outrageous number of TVs in it.  There were some shockingly awful shows on, particularly the Ellen Show, where contestants were trying to eat marshmallows dangling on strings.  Classy.  We also found a newspaper reporting on the fires at Big Sur - we were lucky to have got out in time.  We resumed out drive, getting on the highway and motoring down there.  The drive was smooth and fast, making up for the lack of scenery.  Parts of the journey were like driving through states like Kansas or Iowa - all flat and pasturelands.  We stopped and bought some cherries en route from one of the farms we passed - perfectly sweet!
 
On the road long the coast we passed through a little town called Seaside, with an altitude of a mighty 25ft.  This was not lost on us, as earlier we had passed through 8000ft - a huge change.  We rolled into Morro Bay at around 1pm, which made a change as we usually got to our destinations very late.  We checked into our motel and loaded our stuff into our room.  Sarah wanted to visit Hearst Castle so phoned up and got us tickets for a 2:10pm tour.  We got back in the car and headed up the highway.  It only took about 20 minutes to get there so we parked up and went in to pick up our tickets.  We boarded out tour bus and it took us up the winding path to the castle.  Hearst Castle belonged to the newspaper magnate William Hearst.  It is a castle decorated in a variety of styles (Spanish, Gothic, Roman, and Indian) and filled with the most amazing furniture, generally plundered from other countries.  There is a fireplace in the hall around 15ft high and an enormous Book of Gregorian Chants (about 4ft by 2ft).  We saw the Greek-style pools and the indoor Roman Sap.  The castle was a pretty amazing place and I was glad we went.
 
We left Hearst Castle and returned to Morro Bay.  We decided to take a walk around the town, discovering little was open, then out to the big rock, and then into a little souvenir shop.  We then decided to get some dinner and went into a nice little restaurant where I had some very good swordfish.  We witnessed a pretty beautiful sunset, although one of the locals said they had been more spectacular before the smoke came...
 
We returned to our room at around 9:30pm where we watched some bizarre TV show about designer cakes and updated our journals before turning in to bed.

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