Day 12: San Simeon to Pismo Beach

We started off the day at Hearst Castle, and I could have spent the whole day there if it wasn’t for needing to make it all the way to Pismo Beach by dark! We spent three hours there, and the tour was only about an hour.  We took the Upstairs Suites tour (there are numerous tour options, since it’s too big to see it all in one hour-long tour), because we’d all previously taken the Casa Grande tour.  The whole place is amazing, with the amount of detail that was put into the workmanship.  Even the chimneys are beautiful! Now they let you wander the grounds when your tour is over instead of shepherding you back down to the visitor center, so we took our time admiring the gardens and buildings and statues and pools.  

We stopped for lunch at Lynn’s Easy as Pie Café of Cambria.  It was pretty good.  Their specialty is ollalieberries, pie, and ollalieberry pie.  I had an ollalieberry mocha with my meal.  Too full for pie for dessert, but Dad had a chicken pot pie for lunch, so I guess we had the pie part covered too.

We continued down Highway 1 to Mission San Luis Obispo.  It’s a pretty little mission.  The complex is still used by the Church, so visitors are only able to see the chapel, the courtyard, and a moderate-sized museum with the “standard” mission history exhibits (Indian life, mission construction techniques, mission life, etc) and some unique exhibits as well (like a black wedding dress for a woman who was in mourning for her first husband, and an exhibit about the official mission bell ringers).  

On our ride through San Luis Obispo, we saw several utility boxes that were painted with murals, but the coolest was this one, which matched the landscaping behind it.  I just love how the painting “fits” the shrub in the yard:

Another strange painting in SLO was the symbol in the bike lanes, which always was wearing a hat (presumably a helmet, although it looks like it has a brim all the way around):

 

Dinner tonight was as Cool Cat Diner in downtown Pismo Beach, a newly opened 50's style diner. I was very impressed by their menu: it was the classic diner menu, but had a vegetarian burger section (!) AND an entire menu just for milk shakes, including "adult shakes" (milkshakes with alcohol added), and including Nutella as a shake ingredient option. I had a delicious veggie bbq burger (forget what they called it - all the names were cutesy names like "The Marilyn Monroe") and a custom milkshake of oreo plus nutella - wow!
Tonight’s campground is in Pismo Beach.  We are literally camped at the edge of the dunes.  It’s very pretty.

Today’s route: http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2860372