Day 8

After spending the night in Golet (Santa Barbara burb) we headed to Solvang to visit MY favorite bakery: Olsen's Village Bakery. They make the best cream puff in the world!! Just a touch of raspberry under the cream......yum. My memory did not let me down on this one. After scarfing that up, we walked around town and visited a wine tasing room or two. After picking up some butter cookies for the road, we moved on towards San Luis Obisbo. We tried to find the restaurant where we first had white chili but the town has grown so much that we just wandered and took in all of the sights. We settled for another great pizza place, the name escapes me...Woodhouse or something. Anyway...awesome pizza and salad. After an obligatory stop at Sephora we were off again, to Paso Robels this time. The canyons were gorgeous and covered with vineyards. We took a few pictures but they just don't do justice to the land. There were farms & ranches everywhere with everything from cattle to goats to ostriches, etc. We checked out a few wineries and landed for a while at Peachy Canyon, another of my favorites. After joining the vineyard club and picking up a few bottles, we began our climb over the coastal mountains to the Pacific Coast Highway. The rest of the day was spent slowly navigating the winding drive along the coastline, climbing above the clouds to the sunshine and then decending through the fog to the shore. We stopped to watch elephant seals lounging and playing on the beach. Other points of interest were San Simeon, Pismo Beach, Big Sur (another of my favorite spots) & Carmel. Mark handled the pin curves like a pro. The views are just surreal so we spent the best part of the drive just taking them all in. We arrived in Monterey just as the sun was setting but the marine fog was moving in. We met Dave at our hotel in San Jose and went out for a nice Italian dinner. We had a chance to relax and visit. This morning we will pick up Brad from the San Jose airport and meet Dave for lunch. We are planning to spend the afternoon in San Francisco and then head up to Napa this evening. The next couple of days will involve a lot of wine tasting so if you don't hear from us it's because we can't navigate the keyboard.