Day trip!

The Monday before school started my husband suggested we get out and take a drive up the coast. So we started out from our town of Solvang and drove to San Luis Obispo and had lunch at Big Sky Cafe . This is one of my favorite places to eat, they have many vegan options and are very friendly and accommodating. My son had the Black Bean Vegetarian Chilli and I had the House Salad and a bowl of Black Eyed Pea Soup. Both were really good! My son loves their Vegetarian Vietnamese Bánh Mì Sandwich and their Traditional New Mexican Pozole soup is very tasty as well.

Before we left San Luis Obispo we had to stop at Sweet Earth Chocolates , per the write up on them from Melisser at The Urban Housewife . They have so many vegan chocolates to choose from. The older lady working their was extremely friendly and explained the history of the company. It smells so yummy when you walk in. They use coconut milk in many of the chocolates, very creamy, and the caramel is so light! The turtle(the large one on the left) has bits of hazelnut, rice crispies, caramel and then chocolate, it's so light tasting. Then you have the carmels above with the swirly chocolate drizzled on top and then the truffles, coconut, almond and espresso. Many more to choose from but we couldn't buy them all now could we. These so far are the best gourmet, if you will, vegan chocolates we've tasted. They are also fair trade which is even better!

Next stop was Cambria and we stopped in at Alloco's Italian Bakery . My husband wanted to stop their to meet the owners who he done some business with but had never met. My son and I had the chance of already meeting this couple and trying these great pretzels called Taralli, an Italian pretzel that they make. These pretzels rock! This bakery is the only one out here in the west coast to make them. So anyways a very sweet older couple run this bakery. My husband got to meet them and we just had to pick up a few bags more of the Taralli. These would be great with a dip or bruschetta sauce at a cocktail party or just to snack on, like we do.

As the day continued we stopped at Hearst Castle, San Simeon but we missed the last tour so we just looked around the musuem part and gift shop. We continued on north to check out the Northern Elephant Seals. The track you see here is by one of the males that just made it to the water, it took him about 10 minutes or so.

Aren't they cute! The males have the trunk, like the elephant, the females don't. There were quite a few seals spread out on the sand. The males are HUGE and they make these burping sounds when they raise themselves up and go at it with another male. I'm bummed cuz I took some video with my camera but it's not letting me download to post it. It was so cool to watch these creatures, it's like watching the Discovery Channel but live. I could've brought a chair and hung out for hours.

This little guy was hanging out and turned around for me to take his picture. lol!

All and all, we had a very nice day together as a family, enjoy the beautiful coastline and see some amazing creatures.