The drive home

Since leaving the beach could have been a sad day, we decided to make the drive home an "experience." We started with a few hours in Santa Barbara.

We shopped and found some good stuff, including this giant flip flop :)

The outdoor mall on State St. I do love Santa Barbara shopping, and it was again a beautiful day.

We shared some amazing passion fruit frozen yogurt from PinkBerry.We proceeded up highway 1 (which goes along the coast almost the entire way) and decided to stop at Shell Beach near San Luis Obispo. There weren't very many shells but we saw some really cool stuff. We parked at the top and walked down some stairs to the beach. The houses on the road had this awesome view...
We had to climb through this little hole... To get to this...a little grotto. Luckily it was low tide or we would have been in a bit of trouble. Grant found some really cool stuff including the smallest octupus ever. It was about the size of a fingernail. We watched it "walk" on a rock Grant was holding and then released it into the water and saw it swim away and change colors. Very cool. There were huge rocks covered in thousands of pelicans, some elephant seals, and random little sea creatures.

Family picturesAfter some tidepooling we hopped back in the car and headed north again. Pulled off on a lookout point. As you will notice from our clothing...it got colder and colder as we went further and further north. It was fun to see the same ocean look so different as we traveled.

And our last stop was in Monterey for dinner. We went to Canary Row and found this awesome restaurant that sat right on the ocean. We sat on the heated patio with a gorgeous view. Sorry, no good pictures from inside but here is us out front. When we walked up to look at the menu they had a guy giving samples of clam chowder and it was so amazing that it sold us on eating there. If you want some good clam chowder, this is the place to go!

Grant and I shared a cup of clam chowder (obviously since it was so amazing) and this delicious fish and shrimp dish with grilled artichoke. It was all so good. (You can kind of see the view of the lights in the background). You could see Santa Cruz from across the bay...provided some cool lights on the water.

And last, on Cannery Row. Brought back lots of memories of trips to Monterey and field trips to "Steinbeck country". Everyone got tired and I finished up the drive home. It was a late night but worth the fun day trip!