Vegas Vacation

California Cressler Christmas Camping

Just a couple quick pictures from out cookie baking afternoon.  Jesse actually enjoyed himself.

For Christmas Jesse and I headed north to go camping in Big Sur.  We left on Dec. 23rd, and the trip took about 5 hours.  On the way up we stopped in Pismo Beach for some fish and chips and to donate some skis to the disaster relief fund (Hopefully Meghan gets this reference).  Our destination was the Pfeiffer Big Sur state park where we stayed until Dec 26th.

The campground was mostly empty and the campsites were awesome.  Very secluded and surrounded by huge trees.

The only downfall with camping in December is that it got dark at 5 pm and then it got cold.  Since the firewood cost so much we tried to conserve it and therefore we couldn't have a fire all night thus sitting outside in the cold dark was not very appealing. So our nights typically consisted of watching a movie in the tent and then going to sleep at 9 pm.  We managed to stay warm during the night under our 5 layers of blankets though.

The days were much warmer and we were able to go hiking on the beautiful trails throughout the park.  What was great about the trails was that the scenery was constantly changing.  Our first trip on Christmas eve was called the Buzzards loop which ended at the top of one of the hills/mountains with a great view of the Pacific.  I should apologize now for the poor quality of some of the pictures.  We should have used the flash while in the forest due to poor light conditions, so some of the pictures are blurry.  However I wanted to show what the forest looked like so I included them anyway.

For the afternoon on the 24th, we went to Pfeiffer beach to hang out in the sun.  The weather was warm although it was extremely windy so we kind of hid in an alcove to escape the blowing sand.  The waves were amazing.

That evening was had pasta and then watched A Clockwork Orange.  Probably not the best movie selection for christmas eve.

On Christmas morning we made eggs and bacon on the stove and drank orange juice and champagne.  It wasn't as good as being at Aunt Lou's but we made do.

We went for another hike on Christmas day on some of the other trails in the park.  Below is a picture of the biggest tree in the forest.

One of the trails took us to another overlook, this time of the valley.

For the afternoon on Christmas we took a drive up the coast.  This is the beach where we stopped on our drive up to Monterey to find a coffee shop/internet connection/movie theater.

Our Christmas dinner consisted of steak and vegetables which was pretty tasty.  Since it was out last night, we sat around the fire for a little longer to use up the rest of the wood, but we still went to bed pretty early.

The next day Jesse and I headed home, making a stop at Hearst Castle on the way.  On our way to Hearst Castle we stopped along the coast in San Simeon to check out the Elephant seals.  A friend of mine from school told me that I needed to check them out and I was glad that we did.  December is the beginning of mating/birthing season so there were a lot of them on the beach.  It was pretty amazing to see a beach full of these giant moving blobs, especially since the beach was small and there was so many of them.

The males were very aggressive with the females and made sure that they couldn't escape.

There were only a few babies, but they were cute.

Our next stop was Hearst Castle.  If you've never heard of Heart Castle, it was built by William Randolph Hearst as a vacation home.  He was a wealthy newspaper publisher and he used to invite many celebrities and friends to stay at this house.  Construction began in 1919 and continued until 1947, but stopped due to Mr. Hearst's poor health.

What's funny is that Jesse and I had just watched Citizen Kane which is a movie loosely based on Mr. Hearst's life, and not in a good way, so it sort of biased me to the whole experience.  No matter how much our tour guide tried to make all of the extravagance seem impressive, all I could think was that Mr. Hearst was just a rich man with no friends who seemed to use money and luxury to gain affection. The place was cool, but kind of tacky.  I just think that it's too bad no one lives there anymore because the location and view were amazing.  Now it's owned and run by the State of California.  It was also too bad that we had to be part of a tour, complete with an annoying tour guide and a woman who asked way too many questions.

The view from the courtyard.

The diving board of the indoor pool.  All of the yellow in the picture is actually real gold, well gold leaf, a point which our tour guide made often.

And that was the end of the trip.  We were actually really glad to get home to our warm dry apartment.