Up the coast without a paddle

We're back! Did you miss us? Actually, we were only gone two nights, so, yes, that WAS us you saw at the Chinese seeing Batman on Saturday! Here's the rundown of our adventure...

We started out Wednesday morning driving up PCH. The weather was a little overcast and bleh, but we ventured on nonetheless, getting sidetracked somewhere around Oxnard and Port Hueneme (Coastal Scenic Route, my ass!). We stopped in Carpenteria for lunch. Back on the road for another couple hours till we hit Pismo Beach. There, we checked into the very retro Kon Tiki Inn, "where every room features a panoramic ocean view." Unfortunately, when we got there, the view was of an extremely overcast and chilly sky. BUT, after a little bit, it cleared up, and we enjoyed a lovely private "cocktail hour" on our balcony (you all travel with your own cocktail kit, too, right?). N even went for a swim. Then we watched the fog roll back in and sort of mess up the sunset. Still nice, even so. THEN, we went for a fabulous dinner at The Cracked Crab, where they dumped a huge bucket of shellfish on the table in front of us. Glaaaauughhhh. It was fantastic...except for the misleading printing on the menu, which led us to believe we were adding an extra crab to our bucket for 8 bucks, when in fact, it was 28. We still don't get it, but whatever, we were on vacation!

The next day, despite having looked at a billion "things to do" brochures from the hotel lobby, we just took a walk to the Pismo Beach Pier and then plopped down on the beach under our hotel (accessible by the longest-ever flight of stairs down a cliff, which dammit, I forgot to take a picture of like I said). We were practically the only ones on the beach and it was awesome. Then we went back to the room for another balcony cocktail-hour-slash-foggy-sunset, before heading off for another shellfish dinner, this time at Brad's. We were the last customers standing at 9:30. Let me tell you, Pismo is an early-to-bed town.

The next day was up in the air, so we decided to drive north a bit and see what we saw. What we saw were some very nice views of oceanic things, and then a restaurant with an ocean view. As we sat there, the fog rolled in like you'd never believe! We could hardly see each other through it! (Okay, that was an exaggeration.) We thought we'd drive just a little bit more to check out San Luis Obispo, which didn't impress us, so we decided to head home and make some pit stops along the way. These included, in order, The Madonna Inn, where N peed into a waterfall; Arroyo Grande, which featured buildings built over a hundred years ago (I'm invoking Eddie Izzard here, can you tell?); Solvang, which wasn't as Epcot-y as we would've liked; Chumash Casino, which didn't have cheap enough blackjack tables for N; a just-closing berry stand (dammit, I really wanted those roadside berries!); and finally, back home in LA, Buffet City, where the entire UCLA graduating class was eating a post-graduation Asian buffet. It was a very silly dinner, which even if I tried, I couldn't explain.

All in all, a very nice little trip. What'd you do?