Travel Diary - Tuesday August 4, 2015

Date: Tuesday August 4, 2015
Theme/Title: Goodbye Boys - Hello Big Sur
Overview: The same diner next to the hotel that we had dinner at the night before, was the location of the free breakfast included with our room.We drove back into San Francisco to drop Greg and Jason off at the airport, on the way we stopped at Ike's Place so the guys could grab lunch. It is an interesting local sandwich place with a few locations in the San Francisco area, Teri's brother, Kevan, who lived in San Fran for a semester, recommended it. Teri and I proceeded south and made a stop at The Mystery Spot, which was hilariously kitschy and awesome. I had done some reading ahead of time so understood how the optical illusion worked - however I still can't fully figure out the height trick they did, For our lunch we stopped near Santa Cruz at a vegetarian restaurant, Dharma's, that we had purchased a groupon for. The portions were big so we tucked the leftovers into the cooler for dinner. Then we drove down the Big Sur coast.

The path we leave behind us:

The road ahead:

The coastal route basically starts in Monetary, which we toured around for a bit. It is a lovely seaside city and Cannery Row was pretty cool, in general though it felt a too busy, built-up, and high-end for our tastes. Teri and I preferred the vibe in Mendocino more. We stopped at a lot of vistas to check out the beautiful scenery. Both Teri and I took turns driving but didn't find the road as challenging as the ones further north. There were a lot of cool bridges (there is one in each photo above actually.) We stopped to watch the sunset and it was fun to see all the people doing the same thing at various points along the road. Photos got posted to social media with the hashtag 'nofilter' the meaning of which I clarified for Teri. We checked into San Simeon Lodge, having looked forward to swimming in the pool all day, but it is closed for maintenance; we are pretty disappointed, as it is hot, dry, and dusty on the Pacific Coast Highway and a swim would be refreshing. The hotel is really nice though, with a great view of the ocean. We ate our leftovers from lunch and have started to watch Citizen Kane in preparation for visiting Hearst Castle tomorrow morning.
Woke-up: 8:00am - Not sore from our hike! (I made us do stretches afterwards to avoid getting stiff.)
Transportation/Distance: Drove: 550 km
Meals: My basic diner breakfast (white rye toast, poached eggs and then I gave the bacon and hash browns to Jason). Pesto Portabello Sandwich from Dharma's for both lunch and dinner.
Highlight of the Day: The coastal road was incredible!
Lesson Learnt: That Yosemite is actually pronounced phonetically! I had really been struggling to get it right. If I heard a lot of people saying the correct pronunciation then I was fine, but if I had been mainly reading the word for a while I reverted back to saying, yose-mite, which Greg also did but he was being funny and I just legitimately couldn't remember how to correctly say it. A bus passed us today and I finally saw it - yo-sem-it-e, I don't know how I hadn't figured it out before! (Well, I do know, it is because I have a phonological learning disability.)
Song of the Day: Love Story by Taylor Swift
Quote of the Day: "I am so jealous. Those sandwiches still haunt me." Text from Kevan to Teri after she told them we were picking up lunch at Ike's Place.
Night's Accommodation: San Simeon Lodge

Both photos above taken by ME with my phone

Big Sur region, California Highway 1, USA