Being on the third floor, packing the car this morning for our trip to Morrow Bay was annoying. As you may have noticed we fell behind in the blog because of the mouse problems. Tim spend about an hour this morning uploading photos; internet at the hotel was very slow. I reorganized the trunk of the car; today marks the day we start going north and in our minds, home.
Traffic wasn’t bad leaving the city but was still heavy for 7am on a Sunday. We took highway 405 to the Pacific Highway, highway 1. Driving along the ocean was absolutely beautiful. The water was crystal blue and calm for as far as the eye can see. We made a few stops to enjoy the view, and watch the surfers.
We stopped a few more times to get some views of the whales, which are apparently migrating north. Unfortunately with the tide out they were too far from shore to get a photo. We could mainly see them blow air and only saw a hint of a crest.
The little black dot, passed the white boat is the while. (I said we had problems getting pics of it)
It was turning out to be a very warm, clear sky day. Our plan was to sit on a beach, but we hadn’t decided where. We followed highway 1 and 101 north through Malibu, Santa Barbara, Santa Maria and many other recognizable names from our Dean Koontz books. We considered stopping a few times but our hotel in Morrow Bay was right beside the beach, Tim could enjoy a drink too if we just pushed through.
After passing through some Wine Country, we arrived to our Motel6. Tim had a little bit of an issue with checking in. The clerk was unable to apply our military discount because we booked through Hotels.com. So, we cancelled the booking and got a room with discount. The lady was very nice giving us an early check-in and a ground floor room.
After quickly unpacking the car (did I mention we have too much stuff!), we packed a picnic and headed to the beach. As we expected the beach was about 200 metres away and we were definitely happy with the view we were greeted with.
Morrow Bay is a quiet spot that appears busiest close to the rock. We laid out our ranger blanket, enjoyed some chicken salad burritos, stawberries and whip cream and took in the views; Tim saw a jumping dolphin, twice, which I missed both times.
Beaches are funny places to people watch and although there were not many people sitting where we were, there was a steady stream of people passing by. Of most interest there was a tour group of horse drawn carriages. When I say horse, however, I don’t mean a full sized one; theses ones were miniature!
After spending most of the afternoon relaxing on the beech, we headed back to the hotel to replenish our provisions. We packed a bag of wine, cheese slices and some excellent Hawaiian buns we bought at a very interesting Mexican grocery store. Tim could have spent hours there.
We arrived back to the beach in time to set up our chairs, take a few photos and enjoy our snack. The sun was setting quite fast, but to our delight, as the tide was coming in we started seeing a lot of whales. Being sunset it was impossible to get a clear photo, but we enjoyed the show for about 30 minutes. It was getting chilly and dark, so we made the short walk back to the hotel and called it a night.
